Spider Farmer SF1000 vs AC Infinity IONBOARD S22

We have not tested either board. What follows is each manufacturer’s published specification, our arithmetic on those figures, and a note about one number that cannot be used at all.

These two get cross-shopped constantly and they deserve to be. Both are flat LED boards without a fan, both are sized for a 2 ft square, both dim, and both sit in the same part of the market. The specifications are close enough that the decision turns on details.

What each publishes

The two companies publish opposite halves of the same sum

This is the heart of the comparison. Photon output, wattage and efficacy are three numbers where any two give you the third. Spider Farmer publishes PPF and efficacy. AC Infinity publishes efficacy and wattage. Neither publishes all three, and what you can check differs as a result.

Taken at face value, the IONBOARD emits about 25% more photons than the SF1000 for 15% more power. That is a real advantage, and it is the reason it is ranked first here.

The AC Infinity number you should ignore

AC Infinity publishes “1098 PPFD” as a headline figure with no measurement distance attached. A PPFD is an intensity at a point, and intensity falls with the square of distance, so a PPFD without a distance describes nothing. It could be measured at two inches or at two feet and the number would differ by a factor of more than a hundred.

We do not use it anywhere on this site, and neither should you when comparing boards. Compare the efficacy figures, which both companies publish and which mean the same thing on both spec sheets.

What each delivers over a 2 ft square

Both are far above what any houseplant wants and squarely in the range for seedlings, herbs and high-light plants — which is the point of a board rather than a bulb. Both dim, and for most of this site’s readers both will spend their lives turned down. That is worth saying before the specification difference is allowed to decide anything.

Dimming, which matters more than the 25%

The SF1000 has a continuous knob. The IONBOARD dims in 20% steps.

For a grower running a board flat out at flowering, this is irrelevant. For this site’s typical reader — someone putting a board over a shelf of houseplants or a seed tray — it matters more than the 25% output difference, because the useful setting is somewhere between 20% and 60% and a knob lands on it exactly.

Against that, 20% steps are repeatable in a way a knob is not: you can return to 40% precisely after moving the fixture, which a knob position does not guarantee.

Coverage: the SF1000’s quiet advantage

Spider Farmer publishes two footprints — a 2 × 2 ft core and a 3 × 3 ft maximum — while AC Infinity publishes one 2 × 2 ft figure.

The honest reading is that both boards are 2 ft square devices and the 3 ft figure describes the area over which the SF1000 still does something useful rather than the area it lights well. But if your shelf is wider than two feet, the fixture publishing a maximum footprint is giving you more information about the falloff, and that is worth something.

Running cost

The honest downside of each

AC Infinity IONBOARD S22: it does not publish a PPF at all, so its output on this site is derived rather than quoted, and its one headline photon figure is unusable. It is also the more expensive of the two, and its dimming is coarser.

Spider Farmer SF1000: about 25% fewer photons for 15% fewer watts, so on pure efficiency it loses. Its published efficacy of 2.5 µmol/J is good rather than class-leading, and its Bridgelux diodes are a less-marketed brand than the Samsung LM301H in the IONBOARD — though neither company publishes anything that would let you verify what difference that makes.

The short answer

Buy the IONBOARD S22 if you want the most photons per watt and you are comfortable that its output figure is derived rather than published. Buy the SF1000 if you would rather have a manufacturer whose two headline numbers agree with each other, if you want a continuous dimmer, or if your shelf is wider than the two feet both are rated for. On plants, either will do the same job.

If the third board in this conversation is the Mars Hydro TS 1000, that comparison is in Mars Hydro versus AC Infinity.

What neither of them publishes

Both spec sheets are better than the category average, and both stop short in the same places.

• Neither publishes a usable PPFD. Spider Farmer publishes no PPFD at all; AC Infinity publishes one with no distance, which amounts to the same thing. So neither board can be placed by arithmetic the way a fixture with a stated measurement distance can — you are relying on the coverage rating and your own judgment of height.
• Neither publishes a spectral distribution. Both list peak wavelengths and color temperatures — 650-665 nm and 730-740 nm for the SF1000, 660 nm and 730 nm for the IONBOARD — but a list of peaks is not a curve, and the proportion of the output sitting at each is unstated.
• Neither publishes a location rating. For a board going over a propagation dome or a hydroponic reservoir that absence is worth weighing, and it is one place a third fixture beats both — see the VIVOSUN LumaLight review, which publishes an IP65 rating.

Diode brands, and how much to read into them

AC Infinity names Samsung LM301H diodes and a count of 272. Spider Farmer names Bridgelux. Samsung’s horticultural diodes have a strong reputation, and the IONBOARD’s higher published efficacy is consistent with that.

Be careful how far you take it. Neither company publishes the drive current, and efficacy depends on how hard the diodes are driven as much as on which diodes they are — the same emitter run gently is more efficient than the same emitter run hard. The published 2.7 against 2.5 µmol/J already contains whatever the diode difference amounts to, so the sensible approach is to compare the efficacy figures and treat the diode branding as marketing that happens to be true.

Which to buy for the job you actually have

If your shelf is longer than it is deep

Both of these are square fixtures, and a fair number of people buy one for a shelf that is four feet long and a foot deep. That is the wrong shape of light for the space, and no amount of choosing between them fixes it.

A square board over a long shelf lights the middle well and the ends poorly, because intensity falls with distance from the center in both directions. Two boards fix it at the cost of two boards. A single 4 ft bar fixes it for less money and less power, because its emitters run the length of the thing being lit — the argument is set out in bar versus panel coverage.

Buy either of these boards when the area is roughly square: a 2 ft shelf section, a tent footprint, a tote, one large plant. For a long run, the honest recommendation is that neither is the right product.

Emitter count, and why it is not just marketing

AC Infinity publishes a diode count of 272; Spider Farmer publishes none. Counts are easy to dismiss as a spec-sheet flourish, but they do describe something real about how light arrives.

Spreading a given output across more emitters produces a more even wash across the footprint and less intense hot-spotting directly beneath any single diode. Fewer, harder-driven emitters concentrate more light at each point, which shows up as brighter spots close to the board. At the heights either of these is used, both are diffuse enough that it rarely matters — but it matters more the closer you hang the fixture, which is exactly what people do over seedlings.