inbloom Hydroponics Growing System 12 Pods, Indoor Herb Garden with LEDs Full-Spectrum Plant Grow Light, Water Shortage Alarm, Automatic Timer, Height Adjustable, Ideal Gardening Gifts for Women

Absolutely love this smart garden. I have no experience with gardening and this kit/company provide you with step by step instructions with tips for best results. It’s also VERY QUIET. I had to check to make sure it was on when I first set it up based on how quiet the water filter is. I already have a little sproutling after 1 week of use and just ordered the larger version to expand my garden! It’s also appealing to look at and does not take up much room at all. 100% recommend and cannot wait for my bigger garden to arrive!

I have 2 Inbloom systems that I purchased 2 years ago. I have never had any issues with them at all. They are well made and have worked very well for me. I recently contacted the Inbloom company requesting a way to purchase a replacement light bar. I have to say, the customer service I received from this company was phenomenal! They responded immediately, and went above and beyond for me. They have a 1 year warranty on their product, which was clearly expired for me, but in less than a week they had me up and growing again! I am super impressed with this company and their representatives. Thank you Inbloom Labs Brand Manager, Jennifer Swift! You ROCK! I HIGHLY recommend this product!

I got the Inbloom 5 pod in green. I was searching for a smaller hydroponics unit that would fit on a shelf next to my sage colored Aerogarden one. This one was the right size and the green looked close to the sage color. I was thrilled when I got it, and it was the same color! In comparison the Aerogarden one it's not as easy to use but for the price it's a good machine. A few tips I learned. The first tip is when putting your seeds in the pods try to get them down the hole as far as you can. My black seeded simpson lettuce seeds weren't far enough in and when they sprouted the roots grew out. I tried pulling one out and pushing the root down in and it ended up dying. That maybe wasn't such a bad loss because it was the one in front of the water level meter so I can see the level easier. I also have Buttercrunch lettuce and a Aerogarden Basil in the other pods that are doing good. Tip two: Premix your water and plant food into a bottle and use that to fill your machine as the level gets lower. I was used to the Aerogarden and thought when it got low you would add the plant food directly into the machine. I ended up putting too much plant food in. Tip 3: make sure your plant's leaves aren't preventing the water gage from going up when filling with water. My lettuce leaf was holding it down and when the seed pods popped up I realized it was too high with water. Tip 4: it has two different light settings one is for vegetables and one for flowers make sure you have the right one on for what you're growing. It's a little hard to read the settings on the top because the writing is very small and faint. Tip 5: make sure your light isn't much higher than your plants. When you first start have it as low as it will go. Then as they grow keep raising it. This will prevent your plants from being stringy. Overall, I am very happy with my Inbloom unit. I think it's a good machine for an affordable price! It came extremely well packaged in this cool box. You might have to put the pump in place (I think mine wasn't and maybe the sponge wasn't in it, but it was pretty obvious where it was supposed to be). I like the covers to keep the light out on pods that aren't in use. The pod labels were kind of a pain to get on. I couldn't get the tabs to stick. But they stayed on even without the tabs tucked under. I didn't notice a difference in the pod moss quality from Aerogarden. They seemed to work just as good as long as you get the seeds down in there far enough and they are much cheaper. The light is a little hard to slide up and down. The plug in the back pulls out easily. The lights are much pinker in color than the Aerogarden but they seem to work just as well. Pretty soon I will be eating my lettuce. I've already harvested a few Basil leaves.

I’ve tested both the 5-pod and 10-pod Inbloom smart gardens and they both offer great value for anyone not wanting to spend a lot of money on tabletop hydroponic gardens. The 5-pod garden is cute and well-designed. It feels like a step ahead of the larger garden in some design aspects, but the 10-pod garden fills an important role, too.The LED light panel and extending arm in the 5-pod garden are better than the 10-pod garden. The range of heights goes from zero (really!) up to 17 inches. The 10-pod LED panel only provides a minimum of 7” from the deck, which is a disadvantage for seedlings. When starting seeds, the ability to lower the LEDs to a few inches above the plants may make the difference between leggy plants stretching for light and bushy plants. They’ve also designed the extending arm of the LED panel with all the wiring inside the arm as opposed to the slightly unsightly wires outside the arm of the larger garden. The maximum height of the arm in the 5-pod garden is 17” so herbs, lettuces, greens, and most flowers will be fine, but I wouldn’t use this for fruiting plants like tomatoes, peppers, or cucumbers. There are some varieties of dwarf plants that would fit under the 17” maximum height, but I would suggest the larger garden, with the larger reservoir, for that type of plant. I grew shishito peppers in the 10-pod garden and was glad to have the 21” of space that garden provided, as the plants reached that height easily.The small reservoir in the 5-pod garden will need to be refilled regularly and they recommend adding nutrients with every top-up. This is a good workaround for the lack of a “add nutrients” automatic reminder found in the name-brand gardens. The water-level indicator in the small garden is more elegant than the one found on the 10-pod version but both do the job. The 5-pod garden does not have a drain plug, so you have to tip out the water in this model.One concern I have with both gardens is how they use the pump to stir the nutrient water rather than actively oxygenating it. Plant roots need oxygen and the AG name-brand gardens pump the nutrient water over the roots, giving them water, nutrients, and oxygen. The dissolved O2 level in the water increases as the water splashes. Some hydroponic gardens use an air pump and air stone instead of a water pump to increase the oxygen levels. Inbloom has chosen a more passive approach and while this makes for a very quiet garden without any splashing sounds, I don’t think the dissolved O2 level in the water will be much higher than in stagnant water. So far, the plants I’m growing in both gardens don’t seem to be suffering, but I think they would thrive with even more oxygen. The 90° elbow on the pump of the 10-pod garden is removable which will increase splashing. If the sound doesn’t bother you, I recommend pulling this elbow off as it will slightly increase the dissolved oxygen level of the water.Both the 5-pod and 10-pod gardens take a low-tech approach to the “smart” features. The lights come on in a repeated 24-hour cycle based on when you first turn them on; they aren’t programmable to come on at a specific time of day. There are no on-screen setup instructions. There is no “add nutrients” reminder every 2 weeks, as mentioned previously. However, these extras aren’t needed for plants to grow and the cost savings may be worthwhile for many growers.The instructions and reference card for the 5-pod garden are excellent, a little better than the 10-pod garden, in fact. All the extra supplies (domes, covers, fertilizer, etc) are high quality. The big-name brand gardens ship with pre-planted pods and Inbloom’s pods are ready to add your own seeds. If you want to purchase the overpriced pods from the other brand ($2-4 per pod), they’re interchangeable with the Inbloom pods, but it’s more cost-effective to plant your own seeds and purchase the replacement pods in bulk (about 25¢ per pod). This also allows you to grow the infinite variety of plants available in seed packs as opposed to only the varieties that AG produces. I use these hydroponic gardens as seed starters; once the seeds germinate and have a few leaves, I plant the pods in my outside garden which is less expensive than purchasing six-packs at the nursery.It’s great to see competition in this market. Inbloom is offering a high-value alternative for indoor hydroponic gardens. They have made some cost-cutting design decisions that will not affect plant growth and may make these gardens more accessible to more people. The gardens look great and perform well.

inbloom’s customer service is fast, easy, and complete. I had issues with the activation code, wrote to customer service, and they handled the issue immediately! Top-notch company.