Bestva House Plant Grow Light Review

Bestva were kind enough to send me a grow light to test out, a couple of weeks after Mars Hydro sent me one.

Whenever I get sent products I test them for about three months before reviewing them so I can get to know the product well. Reviews after using the product for a week or two aren’t particularly useful IMO.

It was really good timing actually because I could compare them – the grow lights are pretty similar – the main difference being that the Mars Hydro is more powerful, BUT the Bestva is less than half the price.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Mars Hydro. It’s great. BUT the Bestva is pretty much all you need if you’re looking to use it to take care of house plants. It’s a really good product at a really great price.

You can also get it on Amazon, which is super convenient. It sometimes disappears from the UK site for…reasons, but you can get it shipped from the US. Or get it directly from their website.

Bestva 1000w Specifications

I don’t have the non-dimmable version of this, but the reviews suggest that the dimmable one is significantly brighter. Which is pretty much what we’re after.

Pros of the Bestva 1000w:

– Cheap to purchase and run

As I mentioned before, the Bestva is much cheaper than similar products of an equal spec – this model is $79.99, compared to $149.99 for the Mars Hydro (and that’s on sale).

I don’t think the Mars Hydro is overpriced – it’s actually great value for such a powerful grow light BUT for the purposes of growing house plants, most people will be more than happy with the results from the Bestva grow light.

I like to root propagations under my Bestva grow light because I’ve found that the Mars Hydro is a bit too bright for that – it tends to burn all the older foliage really quickly.

It’s really difficult to provide you with the running costs of the light, because it varies a LOT depending on your energy provider. We run various aquariums and terrariums, so we keep a close eye on energy usage. Whilst I can’t say exactly how much the Bestva costs to run, it didn’t make an impact significant enough for us to see, so e can conclude it’s pretty cheap to run.

Obviously, it’ll cost more if you run it for longer than we do, so for reference, we run ours for about 50 hours per week. You’re ‘meant’ to run grow light for about 12 hours a day, but I don’t like to run them when I’m not in the house, so they run for about 12 hours three days a week, and two or three on days when I’m working.

The plants don’t seem to care that they’re not on a strict daily schedule.

– Looks good

One of the issues that I have with grow lights is that they’re kind of utilitarian. I mean, it’s by design. They’re a piece of equipment, not home decor. Grow lights tend to live in outbuildings or designated plant rooms, but casual house plant fanciers are more likely to want them in pride of place.

Except that mine live in my bedroom and I want them to be pretty, or compact. Bestva, whilst not exactly being aesthetically pleasing, look much nicer than, er, every other grow light I’ve seen.

See? It’s a bit sleeker and just…nicer than other grow lights. It doesn’t have the reflectors that many grow lights have, but I quite like that, because it means I can fit more plants under it (because it casts a wider beam.

That could be a problem if you need really intense light for growing vegetables, but for growing house plants, it works really well.

Also, please don’t judge the light by the health of the plants that are underneath it. I like to use the Bestva grow light as a kind of hospital light. The plants get consistent bright light but its not so bright that they burn.

Plants grow quickly and produce bigger leaves

I moved my angel wing begonia from under the Mars Hydro to under the Bestva to see if she continued producing massive leaves, and yeah, she does.

Cons of the Bestva 1000w

This isn’t THAT big of a deal, and you can work around it, but it is annoying:

Pain to hang

Ok, so professional grow light users probably won’t even care about this issue, but it’s a pain point for house plant people.

This type of grow light is a pain to set up. You either need ceiling hooks, some kind of rack, or a shelving unit.

I bought a £30 greenhouse for the Bestva and it worked fine, EXCEPT I had to buy additional hangers because the little rope suspender things it came with were so damn long!

This is the one area that the Mars Hydro excelled the Bestva. The hanging rope things for the Mars Hydro are about 13cm long, so there’s a 13cm gap between the light and the clip that it’s hanging from (plus the distance between that clip and whatever the other end of the clip is attached to).

I know that’s confusing, so here’s a picture:

But for the Bestva light, that hanging string thing is THIRTY FIVE CENTIMETRES LONG.

So there’s a gap of 35cm AT LEAST (because there’s still that black clip thing to take into consideration) between the light and whatever you’re hanging it from.

That’s fine if you’re hanging it from the ceiling, but if you’re using a little greenhouse like I am, that’s a heck of a lot of wasted space.

It also only came with two of these hanging things, and they’re not split like the mars Hydro ones, because the holes you clip them through are in a different place. See how it’s forked and clips onto the power pack bit? On the Bestva they attach to each corner of the main light, like this:

You can see the original hanging things to the left of the power pack. They’re not actually doing anything, I just haven’t moved them.

The solution to this was simple – I just bought thought black clips and attached them directly. It’s still waaaaay cheaper than a comparable product BUT a bit annoying.

For all I know, a common complaint amongst veg-growing grow light users is that those things are too short.

Would I recommend the Bestva grow light?

Yes, definitely, just grab yourself a packet of these.

This is great light for using in a propagation box because it’s PLENTY bright to really increase the speed at which your plants grow but not so bright that it’ll stress them out.

I’ve just taken a quick pic of my grow light set up from across the room to try to illustrate the difference, but er, you can’t really tell.

The Bestva is on the left, and you can (kinda) see that whilst it’s still really, really bright, it’s not *quite* as bright as the Mars Hydro on the right.

It’s still far, far superior to using a regular LED light, and I’m super impressed with the results I’ve gotten from it. All the dead-looking guys underneath have been the victims of my latest thrips attack, but I’m confident they’ll recover quickly under the grow light.