As an engineer, my instinctive reaction is that the initial purchase price is so outrageous that you will never recoup it in electricity savings. But I went ahead and actually did the calculation, including the initial purchase price, cost of electricity, service life of the units, and replacement costs. If you run the lamps 12 hours per day, 365 days per year, and if electricity costs 10 cents per kw-hr, it will take 122 years to break even with fluorescents. This was using numbers that were biased in favor of the Lumibar. I have flowered and collected seed of many plants under conventional fluorescents. I and many others grow beautiful tomato and pepper seedlings under fluorescents. They are exaggerating the spectral deficiencies of fluorescents. If you are really worried about the lack of red light, you can always string a couple of small incandescents between the fluorescents, and have all the red light you need. A primary concern would be that this company will no longer be there when your unit fails prematurely. Also note that customer reviews cannot be found. I'm not sure how to interpret that. If I were doing horticultural research, and I needed a light source with adjustable spectrum, I would seriously consider this unit. The bells and whistles add a lot of value for research. But it is massive overkill for the indoor gardener, assuming it works. IMO, of course.