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Helzberg Light Heart Diamonds Review with ring-by-ring price comparisons and alternatives to save $1,000s

Review: Are Helzberg’s Light Heart Diamonds good? Are they worth buying? Are they real diamonds? Are they overpriced?

What are Helzberg Light Heart diamonds?

Helzberg Light Heart diamonds are a Helzberg branded line of lab-created diamonds.

Like all lab-created diamonds, they’re 100% authentic, 100% identical to earth-created diamonds. They just weren’t ripped from the earth. They were created in diamond-gemstone-creating labs.

A big advantage that Helzberg Light Heart diamonds have over some other lab-created diamonds? They come with GCAL diamond certificate / grading reports. You see, some mass-market lab-created diamonds don’t have any 3rd-party grading lab grading certificates.

To be clear: I can’t strongly recommend Helzberg Light Heart diamonds. Why?

Because I don’t recommend mass-market diamonds — lab-created or earth-created. I recommend buying lab-created diamonds from James Allen. (Yup, that sounds so biased, but the solid truth is: prices on spec by spec comparison are just far better at James Allen than anywhere else. AND the James Allen lab-created diamonds come with IGI certificates / grading reports.)

But if you’re going to buy a mass-market lab-created diamond (just don’t!), then Helzberg isn’t a terrible choice, because at least you can know that the Color and Clarity scores are trustworthy. Why? The GCAL diamond grading certificates they come with.

But as you’ll see in this review, Helzberg Light Heart brand of diamonds don’t compete well at all against unbranded lab-created diamonds at the biggest and best online diamond retailer of all: James Allen.

Some of the price gaps below are simply astounding. There’s no catch. There’s no (good) reason (from a consumer’s point of view) that the Helzberg diamonds are offered at such higher prices vs James Allen.

It’s just the way the diamond industry is right now. Brick and mortar connected stores, old school types, still — sorry to say it — are snowing customers. They’re pumping up the meaningless ad copy to distract you from the crucial specs in the diamond grading reports.

James Allen and Blue Nile are killing every brick and mortar diamond retailer on price, selection, quality, and service. They can do that because they invented super efficient online diamond-selling business models. They never had to drag along with them the old way of doing things in brick and mortar.

Are they good diamonds?

Light Heart branded diamonds can be possibly decent diamonds. They’re not terrible. They’re not great. Almost all of them are graded at I-Color, SI2-Clarity. I have yet to see any Cut Quality scores, even for Round cut diamonds, which should all come with clearly stated Cut Quality scores.

A very few are graded worse than I-Color, SI2-Clarity. (OMG I’ve even seen a K-Color diamond among the Light Hearts! It’s under “2-Carat Round Cut $7,999 vs $5,005”, in this article, below.)

That’s awful color, sorry to say. (See the color chart just below, in this article.) A very few are graded better. So it depends on each product’s GCAL diamond certificate grades.

(GCAL is a respected, 3rd-party, unbiased diamond grading lab. They are especially well known for grading lab-created diamonds.)

(See the details below of each Light Heart diamond I review.) As a class of diamonds, they’re neither better nor worse than any diamonds with the same diamond grades from GCAL. BUT, as you’ll see in real-world spec-by-spec comparison to James Allen offerings, the Light Heart brand seems pretty badly overpriced.

Are Helzberg Light Heart diamonds worth buying?

Yes, sometimes they are worth buying. I judge whether a ring is worth buying by comparing the 4Cs (Color grades, Clarity grades, Cut Quality grades, and Carat size) to the price.

And a prerequisite is a “5th C”: A Diamond CERTIFICATE. 😉 Helzberg Light Heart diamonds have an excellent lab’s certifications / grades: the GCAL. (Gem Certification and Assurance Lab).

I’ve found that Helzberg rarely almost even beats James Allen for price lab-created diamonds. Very rarely. True, James Allen usually wins. But not in every single case. See the full ring-by-ring reviews, comparisons and details below.

The details will tell you whether you should get any given Helzberg diamond or, on the other hand, opt for a James Allen alternative.

A solid rule of thumb in choosing between Helzberg Light Heart diamonds vs James Allen’s offerings of lab-created diamonds:

  • If you’re in a big hurry, Helzberg Light Heart diamonds aren’t a terrible decision. Because they are pre-mounted on settings already, they can be shipped very fast. (Loose diamonds at James Allen and elsewhere may need to be shipped from a warehouse to a jeweler, who then mounts it. And only then can it be sent to you. So the process takes a little longer.)
  • If you’re not in a huge hurry, James Allen is a better buy almost always. (You shouldn’t be in a hurry. It’s a huge decision. And you can save thousands by ordering from James Allen, as you can see below.)

Why don’t I compare to other stores’ lab-created diamonds? Why compare just Helzberg Light Heart diamonds vs James Allen’s lab-grown diamonds in this review?

Ideally, I would have dozens of competitive retailers to compare to.

But after years of diamond shopping, and while keeping an eye on the markets constantly, my observation is that James Allen is (for now) almost always the store to beat. No one else really competes all that well, especially in lab-created diamonds.

Blue Nile sometimes competes with James Allen in earth-created diamond quality / prices. But Blue Nile right now doesn’t compete with J.A. in the lab-created diamond selling market at all. Blue Nile hardly sells any lab-created diamonds.

Use these Clarity and Color charts for easy reference while reading this article.

3-Carat Cushion Cut $14,999 vs $13,685

A Better 3-Carat Cushion Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat Cushion Cut $8,999 vs $4,595

A Better 2-Carat Cushion Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

3-Carat Princess Cut $14,999 vs $13,765

A Better 3-Carat Princess Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

3-carat Oval Cut $14,999 vs $13,685

A Better 3-Carat Oval Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

3-Carat Emerald Cut $14,999 vs $16,795

A Better 3-Carat Emerald Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

3 Carat Round Cut $14,999 vs $10,655

A Better 3-Carat Round Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat-total-weight Round Cut Cluster $8,999 vs $4,285

  • 1.5-Carat center stone, 2-carat total weight of diamonds)
  • I-Color
  • SI2-Clarity
  • No stated Cut Quality
  • Helzberg item # 2395527
  • GCAL certification
  • $8,999

A Better 2-Carat-total-weight Round Cut cluster for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select this very setting.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat Emerald Cut $8,999 vs $6,925

A Better 2-Carat Emerald Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat Princess Cut $8,999 vs $5,845

A Better 2-Carat Princess Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat Pear Cut $8,999 vs $6,955

A Better 2-Carat Pear Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat Oval Cut $8,999 vs $4,815

A Better 2-Carat Oval Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat Round Cut $7,999 vs $5,005

  • 2-Carat
  • K-Color (Awful color… see the chart near the beginning of this article. Remember: the images you see on the Helzberg product pages are NOT the actual diamond you are buying. They are more or less idealized illustrations. The image there is NOT show the true K-Color of this diamond, which is quite yellow based on the spec of “K”.)
  • SI2-Clarity
  • No stated Cut Quality
  • Helzberg Light Heart, item # 2511745
  • GCAL certification
  • $7,999

A Better 2-Carat Round Cut for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

2-Carat Round Cut in Milgrain Setting $7,999 vs $6,272

A better near-equivalent for LESS:

To get a deal with diamonds of this quality range:
1) Select a setting at this link.
2) Execute this one-click diamond inventory search.
3) Choose a diamond from the results. Pay LESS and get a BETTER diamond.

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