Best LED Screw-in Grow Light on Amazon (2022 Edition): Screw-in Grow Light Bulbs Compared

Are you looking for a LED grow light for your plants, but feeling overwhelmed by the options? Or perhaps all the technical jargon has you feeling utterly confused?  

The good news is, you're not alone. Grow lights are hard enough to understand even when you have reliable information, and the truth is that in unregulated marketplaces like Amazon.com sellers are allowed to make all sorts of unsubstantiated claims. In our experience and professional opinion, these claims can range from flat out wrong, to intentionally misleading. Unfortunately, choosing the wrong grow light can mean you end up throwing money down the drain. 

In this blog we review the top screw-in type grow lights available on Amazon in 2022, compare and contrast them based on their key attributes, and provide our recommendations for which one(s) you should consider for specific use cases.

**Please Note: This blog contains affiliate links. You don't pay any extra by using our links, but doing so helps buy us a cup of coffee every now, which we sure do appreciate :)**

Why Choose E26 Grow Light Bulbs?

E26 grow light bulbs are also known as ‘screw in’ bulbs. This terminology simply means that they have the same ‘screw in’ thread/socket size as many of the conventional light bulbs that you are likely to have lying around at home.

There are 3 main reasons why we recommend E26 / screw-in bulbs as your first grow light: 

1. They’re affordable. The options we reviewed range from $10 up to $85. Even once you include a stand and timer, you can have a complete automated grow light setup for as little as $40. 
2. They are easy to integrate. You can choose a housing or lamp that suits your home's décor. 
3. They are easily upgradable and interchangeable. 

Choosing the Best LED Screw-in Plant Grow Light Bulbs

There are many ways to compare these grow lights, but we'll start below by comparing them based on their raw energy output. 

What are the Best E26 Grow Light Bulbs Based on Output?

If your sole objective is to buy as much output as you can for every dollar spent, then you’ll want to look at the GE32W, the Canagrow 35W, or the GE 9W. These units all ranked the highest in terms of PPF of output per $ spent.

What are the Best E26 Grow Light Bulbs Based on Power?

The upfront purchase cost of these units only represents about 30-70% of their total ownership cost, meaning that a large portion of your total ownership cost is going to be the electricity required to run them.

It is therefore important to understand how efficient these globes are. We measure this using the metric of PPF/W. 

Shown below are both the manufacturer's claims and our own measurements for PPF/W.

The best grow lights we tested in terms of efficiency were the 32W GE, the 10W Sansi, and the Aspect. 

What are the Best E26 Grow Light Bulbs Based on Life Expectancy?

Grow lights typically range in expected life from about 15,000 hours to 50,000 hours. At the risk of stating the obvious, however, we have not tested all of these things for that long, so we’re kind of just taking a leap of faith here. We would like to point out a couple of things though:

The High Hydro and Haus Bright grow lights seem to have been manufactured from exactly the same factory. Haus Bright puts theirs in a fancy box and charges an extra $10 for the packaging. Still, both companies appear to be buying their product from a third-party manufacturer located in China. 

We feel like this is worth mentioning because one company claims to have a 50,000 hr life, and the best answer we could find on the other was 15,000. We suspect that the real number is somewhere in between.

Ideally, what you should be doing here is looking at the number of watts going through each LED, because when you run LEDs with more power you tend to reduce their life. Unfortunately, given the design of these products we weren’t able to count how many LEDs each one has.

What are the Best E26 Grow Light Bulbs Based on Color?

Next, let’s talk about color. These companies didn’t publish all their Kelvin ratings, so you are looking at some of our own estimates and assumptions. But the overall color temperature is going to be important if you’re placing this light in a living space. 

If you live in a very warm climate or have large indoor spaces, then you might want to go for something that has a higher Kelvin rating as this will offer a cooler blue light. 

If however, you are in a cooler climate or have a small space, then we recommend going for something that has a lower K rating as it will make your space feel more cozy and warm. 

Only one of the grow lights we tested was purple. To know more about why we 100% recommend that you avoid purple grow lights, check out our whole article and Youtube video about it.

What are the Best E26 Grow Light Bulbs Based on Light Distribution?

In choosing the best E26 grow light bulbs based on light distribution, you will need to consider two things:

1. Lights with a high coefficient of utilization (CU) and very narrow beam angle or focused light distribution are going to be best at delivering a large amount of light into a small area. This would be useful if you have a plant that requires high DLI (for example a fruiting plant) or if you only have a small grow area.
2. Lights with low CU and wide distribution are better for either a) large grow areas, or b) grow tents - since the walls of the grow tent will act to reflect the light back in. They’d also be fine if you are just seed starting, and the light intensity doesn’t matter that much.

The grow lights with the narrowest and most targeted beam angle are the 10W Sansi, Vita, and Canagrow. 

What are the Best E26 Grow Light Bulbs Based on Listing Accuracy?

The final measure that we think you should consider when looking for new grow lights for your plants is the overall listing accuracy. Unlike the rest, this is a rather subjective assessment, but we definitely noticed some big differences. 

In the evaluation and data gathering that we conducted, we came across a lot of information being published by these manufacturers which were either 

1. a) a little inaccurate, or 
2. b) flat out wrong and misleading. 

Below, you’ll see the table that we created to show how we ranked each plant grow light on a scale from 1 (worst) to 10 (best) as shown here. We’ve also included some comments on where and how we think each listing is inaccurate.

Product	GE 9W	GE 32W	High Hydro 20W	Sansi 10W	Sansi 24W	Haus Bright 20W	Canagrow 35W	Vita	Aspect
Wattage	9	32	20	10	24	20	35	20	20
Purchase Price	10.88	24.49	20.99	20.99	29.99	29.95	25.99	84.99	149.99
Dimmable	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
PPF	16	50		15.1	36.3			25.95	23.7
PPF/W	1.78	1.56		1.51	1.51	7.00		1.30	1.19
Life	25,000	25,000	50,000	30,000	30,000	15,330	50,000	30,000	90,000
Spectrum	Balanced Light Spectrum	Balanced Light Spectrum	Limited Spectrum	Full Spectrum	Full Spectrum	Full Spectrum	Full Spectrum
Available From	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Urban Leaf	Urban Leaf
Optics	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No		Yes	Yes
Color	White	White	Purple	White	White	White (Purple, Warm White)	White	Warm White	Warm White
Temp	4000-5000K	3000-3500K		3000-3500K	4000K	5000-6000K	3500K	3000K	3000K
PPFD @12″							1,000
PPFD @8″						220	2,200
Made In	China	China	China	China	China	China	China	USA	USA
Listing Accuracy	3	8	3	8	5	1	9	10

Our Conclusion – Which E26 Grow Light Bulb Is Best

Now that we understand how these 8 grow lights vary, lets translate all this information into some grow light recommendations for various use cases.  

What are the Best E26 Grow Light Bulbs for Seed Starting?

When you’re starting seeds light intensity and color really don’t matter that much. Seed starting is done in a large tray or area, with lots of baby plants stacked next to each other. For this sort of scenario, we recommend either the 9W GE or the High Hydro in white. See the below table:

Grow Light
	9W GE	High Hydro

Neither of these units have optics, which means they have a very wide beam angle of unconcentrated light. These units are both pretty cheap, seedlings aren’t fussy, and you’re not going to be running it for very long so the efficacy and long-term electricity cost is less of a factor. Between the two, we would probably go with the GE since the LEDs are enclosed making them less vulnerable to water damage.

At distances of 4” and 8” from the globe, this is what the PPFD of the 9W GE looks like, and we assumed 12 hrs a day then the right-hand side shows the DLI. We also have the same data for the High Hydro, as shown below:

High Hydro