Mars Hydro TS 1000 vs AC Infinity IONBOARD S22

We have not tested either fixture. What follows is published specification, our arithmetic, and the one figure on each spec sheet that has to be treated carefully.

This is the clearest efficiency-against-output comparison on the site. The Mars Hydro TS 1000 emits more photons than anything else we cover. The AC Infinity IONBOARD S22 converts electricity into photons more efficiently than anything else we cover. They are not the same virtue, and which one you want depends on a question most buyers skip: how big is the area, really?

What each publishes

The trade, in one calculation

Put like that the IONBOARD looks like the obvious answer, and for a 2 ft square it is. But raw output is not a vanity metric — it is what determines how wide an area you can cover before the intensity at the edges falls below what the plants need.

The area question, which actually decides this

That last line is the comparison worth having. Asked to light the same 2.5 ft square, the two are within 10% of each other — and the IONBOARD does it on 35 W less. Asked to light a 2 ft square, the IONBOARD is the stronger fixture outright.

The TS 1000 wins when the area is genuinely wider than the IONBOARD is rated for, because it has more total light to spread. It is not a brighter fixture at a point so much as a larger one.

What that costs over a year

This is the argument the whole µmol/J ranking exists to make. Efficiency is not an abstraction; it is a monthly line item that continues for the life of the fixture.

Two spec-sheet problems, one on each side

AC Infinity does not publish a PPF. Its output on this page is derived from its published efficacy and wattage. That is sound arithmetic, but it is ours rather than the manufacturer’s, and it cannot be checked against a second figure the way Mars Hydro’s can. AC Infinity also publishes a “1098 PPFD” headline with no measurement distance, which makes that number unusable.

Mars Hydro does not publish a rated life. Every other panel on this site states one — 50,000 hours for the IONBOARD, 55,000 for the Spider Farmer SF1000. Its absence here is worth noticing on a fixture that costs this much to run.

Dimming and physical form

The TS 1000 is a hooded panel with a reflective surround and a continuous dimmer knob; it wants hanging from a ceiling hook and it looks like equipment. The IONBOARD is a flat aluminum board a centimeter thick with 20% dimming steps, and it reads as a fixture rather than a machine.

For a grow tent this is irrelevant. For a shelf in a room someone lives in — which is most of this site’s readership — the flat board is far easier to live with, and that is a legitimate reason to choose it even before the efficiency argument.

The honest downside of each

Mars Hydro TS 1000: the least efficient of the three panels we cover at 2.3 µmol/J, 30% more electricity for 10% more light, no published rated life, and a physical presence that suits a tent better than a living room. Over a small area it is simply more fixture than the job needs.

AC Infinity IONBOARD S22: no published PPF, an unusable headline PPFD, the smaller rated footprint of the two, and the higher purchase price. If the area you need to cover is genuinely 2.5 ft or wider, it is being asked to do something it is not rated for.

The short answer

For a 2 ft square, or anything smaller, buy the IONBOARD S22: more light where you need it, 35 W less on the meter, and a shape you can put in a room. For a footprint genuinely wider than that — a 2.5 ft square, a wide shelf, a big plant — buy the TS 1000, because total output is what covers area, and it has the most of anything here.

If the SF1000 is also on your list, the board-against-board version of this comparison is in Spider Farmer versus AC Infinity.

What neither of them publishes

Both are better documented than most of this category, and both leave the same gaps.

• Neither publishes a usable PPFD. Mars Hydro publishes none; AC Infinity publishes one with no measurement distance. Neither board can be placed by arithmetic, so the coverage rating and your own judgment of height are what you have.
• Neither publishes a spectral distribution. Both list peaks — 660-665 nm and 730-740 nm for the TS 1000, 660 nm and 730 nm for the IONBOARD, plus color temperatures — without stating how much of the output sits at each.
• Neither publishes a location rating, which matters for anything hung over water or in a humid space.
• Mars Hydro publishes no rated life at all, where the IONBOARD states 50,000 hours. On a fixture drawing 150 W, that is the more conspicuous omission of the two.

A tent and a shelf are different problems

Much of the disagreement about these two fixtures comes from people solving different problems with them.

In a grow tent, reflective walls return a good deal of the light that misses the canopy, the fixture is out of sight, and the constraint is usually total output over the tent’s footprint. That favors the TS 1000: more photons, a hooded reflector that suits a closed space, and no penalty for looking like equipment.

On an open shelf in a room, there are no walls to bounce anything back, the fixture is visible, and the area is usually narrower than a tent. That favors the IONBOARD: a flat board, better efficacy, and a footprint that matches a typical shelf. The wider geometry argument is in bar versus panel coverage.

Both will spend most of their lives dimmed

It is worth saying plainly, because the output difference between these two is what people argue about and it rarely decides anything for this site’s readers.

Over a 2 ft square, the IONBOARD at full output delivers about 670 µmol/m²/s and the TS 1000 about 738 over its own smaller stated footprint. Iowa State University Extension puts foliage and flowering houseplants at 6 to 10 mol/m²/day, which at 12 hours is about 185 to 230 µmol/m²/s. Either board reaches that at roughly a third of its output.

So unless you are running seedlings hard or trying to fruit something indoors, you are buying a fixture to turn down — and in that case the efficiency figure matters more than the peak, because you will be paying for the watts either way.

If you are weighing all three panels

These two and the Spider Farmer SF1000 are the three panels this site covers, and the pairwise comparisons can obscure the simple summary.

On published output the order is Mars Hydro TS 1000 at 343 µmol/s, AC Infinity IONBOARD S22 at about 311 derived, then Spider Farmer SF1000 at 249.21. On published efficacy it is the IONBOARD at 2.7 µmol/J, the SF1000 at 2.5, then the TS 1000 at 2.3 — the reverse order. On whether the figures can be checked against each other, only the SF1000 qualifies.

So: most light, the TS 1000. Most light per watt, the IONBOARD. Most trustworthy spec sheet, the SF1000. The board-against-board version of this is in Spider Farmer versus AC Infinity.

Dimming turns down the heat as well as the light

One practical consequence of running either board turned down, which gets forgotten in output comparisons.

Most of the wattage a fixture draws leaves as heat rather than light, so a board at 40% is not only emitting less — it is warming the space less and drawing proportionally less power. On the TS 1000 that is the difference between 150 W and roughly 60 W of load in the room, which in a small closed space in summer is noticeable on the thermometer as well as the meter. If the fixture shares a room with you, the efficient board run low is the more comfortable object as well as the cheaper one.