I wanted to wait a few months before I wrote an accurate review. I bought this light (4ft 8 tube)in January to give myself a jump start on the garden. My setup has been this light, heat mat, and a fan all plugged into a Christmas light timer. I've grown everything: artichokes, basil, onions, leeks, shallots, celeriac, cotton, peppers and the list goes on, and the light has been outstanding for all of it.

I will say I had a bit of a learning curve with it. For one I do not have all 8 lights on. I did for a while, but when I tried to start a second batch of seedlings in with the first, it scorched them as if I had put them in the July sun at full blast. It's fine to have all eight lights going as long as the second or third set of true leaves have developed, but until then just keep the outer four on. The ballast will reflect enough light on the rest.

Also, this light draws moisture from the soil quicker than what I had expected. Although I started with plugs I would recommend using a seed starting soil like fox farms. I was watering the plugs twice every day to compete with the heat of the light. People had recommended to keep the plants 2-3 inches near the light- don't. Scorched the leaves horrifically on some plants. 1-2 ft. is fine and my plants are not spindly at all. It does emit heat even for a fluorescent, so the distance and fan compensate most of your heat problems. The fan encourages stronger rootstock well so it's a win all around. It seems to be low energy, we never saw a spike in our electric bill so that is the biggest plus.

In summary great light, great price, and will keep using this product for time to come.

I ordered the 6 bulb light. I had read that some people experience broken bulbs but I thought I would take a chance. It came with 5 working bulbs and 1 bulb that was intact but not working. I contacted Amazon or the seller, not sure which, wherever they sent me with the links online for this product and I had a refund for a bulb in my account that day. So great customer service so that is why I gave 5 stars and not 4. I hung the light in our basement, got a table that I had pre measured to work perfectly for the light. Then I purchased some fiberglass trays (purchased on Amazon) to fit and put the seed blocks in the trays. I placed heating pads under the trays (purchased on Amazon) and you can see in the phone that we are ramping up for planting in March (greenhouse).

We purchased two of these lights to keep our outside perennial plants alive in the basement over the winter, as we got tired of the expense of buying new ones every year, in addition to having to start over with small plants every year and wait for them to grow again. We have double-paned windows that filter out the sun's rays, so even though we placed them inside in front of windows every winter, they always proceeded to die a slow death. We have several coleus and lantana plants on two long tables under the lights. We also purchased the iPower GLROPE Heavy Duty Adjustable Grow Light Ratchet Rope Hangers for each light, and the Hydrofarm TM01715D 7-Day Digital Program Timer. It was an easy process to hang the lights from the ceiling and adjust the height. We pruned back the plants, placed them under the lights, set the timer for 8 hours of light 7 days a week, and never had to worry about another thing, except watering as needed and adding some plant food occasionally. All the plants grew back very lush, with good color, and thrived all winter. We live in Colorado, so we benefited from the advice of someone with a different type of "indoor grow operation" experience, all legal of course, and that person assured us this was a good price for this product.

Nice light, but the heat it puts out would have had me buying LED had I known. It is the product they advertise, and it IS a good light, so if you need a 2 foot fluorescent, this would do you nicely.

updated
So, I've had this little light for almost 6 years now.
Any complaint I may have had, has been far surpassed by it's flawless functioning.
The heat problems I had in the beginning went away when I took it out of the confined space it was stuck in.
Year after year this little light starts all my veggie seeds. I no longer overdo my starts, as this light keeps me within my limits due to it's size. The coverage is small, but effective.
I wanted to copy some of my yard plants and bought a cloner, and this little light acts as if it was made to hang over it. Fantastic results!
It works and has the power to give seedlings a good start without stretching, when used a half dozen inches away from new seedlings. will work considerably further away than that, with associated internodal stretching resulting. (I take some flower starts out from under it early, or they get really lanky)
I've dropped it twice, once to a hardwood floor; replaced one bulb and was back in business. Sturdy light, solidly made. Slightly heavy, but i judge that to be a measure of it's quality.
This light gets the exceedingly rare 5 star review from me. With no reservations.
I am well satisfied. I think I may be getting emotionally attached to this thing. :)

I purchased this 6x54 watt unit for my 150g reef aquarium. The bulbs that come with the kit are all 65000k and will give you a washed out look if you put them on your aquarium straight out of the box. However, I replaced 3 bulbs with 420 actinics and it gave me a 50/50 daylight look. If you wanted a higher concentration of blue spectrum, then you could go 2x65000k and 4x420 and it would highlight more of the fluorescent colors of the corals.

My tank is 31" deep and the light is strong enough for the Zoanthids and Palythoas on the bottom of my tank, as well as, the LPS on top. I run the fixture 8 hours a day, on an automatic timer. After 8 weeks, my tank has not bloomed any excessive microalgae, cyanobacteria, or hair algae. The macroalgae in my tank has noticable growth and all of my corals have full polyp extension.

One word of caution. There are a few quirks about these lights. First, there are two on/off switches each controlling three bulbs, but there is only one power line. That means that you can't control each set of lights independantly. For people that want to simulate day/night time lighting with an Apex controller, this will not be possible. Second, the unit will turn off 3 bulbs when the fixture gets too hot. I have mine in a closed canopy and once every two hours the fixture will dim itself. I'm assuming to prevent damage. Lastly, this unit does not come with any mounting hardware. For those that want to hang it from the ceiling above their tank, a ceiling fan mounting kit works great and costs about $20. I mounted mine in the canopy using a section of white vinyl wire shelving costing around $5.

Overall, I love this unit! All of my corals are happy and the price was great. I got this unit for $165 with free shipping and replaced three bulbs at $10 each, also with free shipping. For under $200, I got a great lighting system that would normally cost over $400 at an online pet retailer and probably closer to $600 at a petstore (if you could even find one that carries such hightec equipment).