There is a leading global manufacturer of LEDs with a worldwide reputation - the USA company Wolfspeed Inc, which until 2021 was called Cree Inc. This company has its own LED production facilities both in the USA and in China, the production of LEDs for which is very tightly controlled. Original Cree LEDs have conquered the world market, most of which in this area belongs to this manufacturer. The quality and parameters of Cree LEDs are beyond doubt; in addition, they have a long service life of about 50,000 hours.
There are also high-quality clones of Cree LEDs that are manufactured by leading Chinese or Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturers. Their LEDs are slightly cheaper than the original Cree LEDs, and their quality is quite comparable to the original.
And there are many different LEDs from unknown manufacturers, the price of which can be 2-3 times less than the price for which you can buy high-quality Cree LEDs. Not only Aliexpress and other similar sites are flooded with such cheap LEDs, but there are quite enough similar offers from many sellers in different countries of the world.
But the catch is that the quality of the LEDs themselves leaves much to be desired - neither the color temperature nor the wavelength of the emitted light is observed, which is especially important for phytolamps. But another significant disadvantage of LEDs from an unknown manufacturer is their service life, which is at best 10,000-20,000 hours, and this is if you are lucky that you manage to buy LEDs that will initially be in good working order, and they will fulfill the service life specified by the manufacturer.
And from the above data it follows that, in the end, expensive branded LEDs are several times cheaper than cheap Chinese counterfeits, which are often used by unscrupulous manufacturers of phytolights for plants, which work on the principle of “sell and forget.” But if the quality and reliability of manufactured products is important, then you should choose the highest quality components for LED phyto lamps