Letpot LPH-Max Review: The Best All-in-One Garden?

The Letpot Max is a unique, multi-purpose indoor garden with lots of advanced features. From seed starting to growing large plants, this medium hydroponic system can do it all – and is affordably priced!

When it comes to hydroponics, bigger is often better.

I’m always attempting to grow as many vegetables as possible inside my apartment so I tend to gravitate towards large indoor gardens that can grow fruiting vegetables like peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.

With Aerogarden shutting down, there unfortunately aren’t many brands making large hydroponic machines.

So when I discovered Letpot, I was really excited.

Here’s my review of the Letpot LPH-Max after using it for nearly a year.

Letpot

Letpot is one of the best affordable Amazon indoor garden brands. The company has a couple different machines, with the LPH-Max as their largest size.

I previously reviewed their smaller countertop garden, the LPH-Air here.

Letpot LPH-Max

The Letpot Max has a 21 plant capacity and measures 14.5 inches wide by 10 inches deep.

It’s a medium sized machine that can fit in a large kitchen, or on any piece of furniture. 

The garden has a 36 watt light capacity (pretty strong for indoor gardens and great for growing larger vegetables) and the light has a height extension of 21 inches.

Unboxing

The Letpot LPH-Max is available on Letpot & Amazon.

When it arrived, it was very neatly packaged with the stainless steel indoor garden, along with several accessories.

 

Two Lid Design

What I really like about the Letpot Max is their dual deck trays.

If you want to maximize the garden to grow as many plants as possible, you can use the 21 pod tray.

This would work well for smaller, non fruiting plants like herbs, lettuces and Asian greens.

If you want to maximize the garden to grow large plants, you can use the 2 pod tray.

This allows you to grow just 2 plants, but give each plant as much room as possible and would be great for fruiting plants like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and eggplants.

While you can use the 21 pod tray and cover the empty spaces, it’s a cleaner and sleeker look to use the 2 pod tray if you plan to only use two grow spaces!

Setting Up the Garden

Setting up the Letpot Max was very simple.

One of the main reasons I like these hydroponic machines is they do all the hard work for you – and that includes starting a garden.

Simply assemble the grow deck onto the machine, fill the tank up with water, and plant your seeds.

Pros

There are lots of really impressive features that are available with the Max model that make it worth the buy over the company’s other indoor gardens.

Here are some of my favorite aspects!

• Size
• LCD screen
• Mobile app
• Automatic watering

Size

This is a medium large hydroponic garden.

While there are lots of small countertop gardens on the market, there aren’t nearly as many options in the medium to large category.

The Max is like the ‘goldilocks’ of indoor hydroponic machines – small enough to still sit on a countertop but large enough to grow sizeable fruiting plants.

I also appreciate how the garden is designed.

It has a squarish rectangle design that fits an impressive capacity of both plants and water.

You can grow up to 21 plants and the tank holds 7.5 liters.

I find that I don’t need to water this garden nearly as often as my other indoor gardens, thanks to the large tank capacity.

LCD Screen

I always prefer my indoor gardens to have an LCD screen that displays the time, the on/off hours, # of days the garden’s been running, and the water level.

If you have multiple gardens, it’s really nice to sync them all to run at the same time.

Most of the smaller, entry level indoor gardens don’t have the LCD screen (I guess because of cost) and will automatically run when the electric cord is first plugged in.

This makes it very annoying if you ever have to unplug the cord or if you have multiple gardens and want them to all turn on/off at the same time.

So I always prefer indoor garden systems with an LCD display and light customization abilities.

Mobile App

Letpot has a great, easy to use mobile app where you can further customize the garden’s settings.

It allows you to easily view all your gardens (if you have more than one) and adjust the light on/off times, light brightness, light modes and more.

Automatic Watering

A really unique feature about the Max is its automatic watering mode.

The garden comes with tubing that allows you to connect the machine to an external water reservoir so that you don’t have to manually refill the garden with water.

You will need a separate bucket or container, so personally I don’t really use this feature. (The Max holds a decent amount of water on its own – 7.5 liters!)

But the automatic watering feature is really nice to have.

It would be especially handy for anyone who travels often, or simply hates to have to re-fill on a weekly basis.

Inside the garden grow bowl, there’s also a little divided compartment where you can pour nutrition.

The garden will automatically drip nutrients into the reservoir on a schedule, so that you also don’t have to worry about topping up nutrients.

This makes the Max a great garden for those who like to ‘set and forget’ it and be really hands off.

Read more: The Best Hydroponic Nutrients

Cons

I really like the Max so it’s hard to name many cons.

Water Hole

My main complaint is the size of the water hole – it’s very small.

All of the Amazon indoor garden brands like to slot the water hole off to the right hand side, and they make the opening very small.

There’s also a strange bar underneath it so that if you pour in water too quickly, it splashes out all over the grow deck.

I’d prefer a large water opening in the center of the machine, like the Aerogarden design.

But that’s a very minor complaint!

Sometimes I just lift the whole grow deck and pour water directly into the tank.

Light Height

My second criticism is the way the company markets the light height.

The product description states the LED height at 21 inches, but they’re including the grow bowl in the height measurement.

The actual available height for plants is 18 inches.

Since the light height is a limiting factor for how large plants can get, I always look for indoor hydroponic machines with as tall a height as possible.

18 inches is still decent, but it would be great if the product had a 24 inch light height.

Additional Accessories

Currently, I’m growing 2 types of cucumbers in my Letpot Max (this pickling variety and this mini variety).

One accessory that’s sold separately is Letpot’s trellises.

If you’re growing any type of plant that needs support (beans, peas, cucumbers, some tomato types), you should pick up their trellis system.

It’s modular and stackable, so you can add multiple trellis tiers and train your plants to grow upward.

Letpot Max Trellis System

When I first grew cucumbers without the trellis, the vines were growing all over the place, in every direction.

I tried to keep things tidy by wrapping them in a circular pattern, but it was definitely getting very messy and I wasn’t getting as many cucumbers as I wanted.

Once I started using the trellis, the plant had more room to grow.

I also had a better visual on the developing flowers and fruit, which enabled me to improve pollination and grow more cucumbers.

Highly recommend checking out Letpot’s extra accessories!

Letpot LPH-Max Review

Overall, I’m a huge fan of the Letpot Max.

There aren’t many hydroponic machines in the ‘medium’ size category that can be used for all different growing purposes.

I initially used the Letpot Max to seed start.

With 21 slots, it acted as a seed starting tray to grow tons of plants all at once.

the Max is super versatile – I used it to start seeds for all my indoor gardens, then when that was done, used it to grow cucumbers

I used it several times to populate all my indoor gardens, as well as to start seeds for my vertical tower garden, the Lettuce Grow.

Now that all my machines have plants growing, I refocused the Max to grow more veggies.

So you can use it 3 ways – to start seeds, grow small plants and for large plants.

It’s a unique all-in-one machine!

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