These devices are supposed to be self contained hydroponic greenhouse. Do they actually work? The searches that I did turned up about a 50-50 split in terms of the devices’ usefulness.
One problem, is that most of the feedback seems to be from marijuana growers. This fact alone makes me want to discredit their opinions. OTOH, the company propaganda is equally easy to discard.
Have any of you Dopers used one of these, or know anyone who has used one?
Are they useful? Somewhat. You can grow plants in there but the main problem is that you’re using fluorescents as your grow lights- they do a mediocre job in terms of plant growth. For plant growth, you want something more like a high-pressure sodium light. For flowering, you want something in the light range of a metal halide. Both of these use a lot of energy and are fairly pricey but cover the inportant parts of the spectrum. The advantage of a phototron is that the lights are evenly distributed and hit the plant from all sides in addition to the timers. The disadvantage is that (IMO) it is not cost effective for growing only a single plant, which is about all you have room for.