#Headlight bulb halogen vs led vs hid drivers

You'll notice that you can polish your headlights on the outside to clear it up.Ī whiter light might look cooler, but short wavelength light scatters more in fog and inclement weather. It's simply accumulated oxidation and UV exposure. The discoloration of headlight plastic has nothing to do with the heat of a halogen bulb. Imagine riding a bicycle and only looking down at the front tire the entire time.

So what you've effectively done is brighten your near field vision, at the expense of projecting distance. After that, they taper off in brightness because they lack focus, not brightness. See the two distance measurements? The XD bulbs seem brighter because they are brighter, for about the first couple dozen feet. Here is the problem, and I need you to pay attention: Both require a small tab trim to fit, but can be picked up at any auto parts store for $6-8 per bulb.Ĭlick to expand.So, the link I mentioned above specifically tested the XD LED bulbs.

#Headlight bulb halogen vs led vs hid drivers

HID bulb capsules can more correctly emulate a halogen filament, but those have their own problems- most seem to be an increase in glare above the cutoff, dazzling other drivers (a small amount of light is designed to 'leak' above the cutoff to gently illuminate street signs, and HIDs can make this much too bright) and cheapo ballasts that often burn up and need replacing.Īs far as bang for your buck, you can't beat H9 halogen bulbs for the low beams, and 9011 for the highs. None of them get close to a performance halogen or H9 halogen upgrade. There are precious few exceptions that manage to get close to the factory distance projection, and they are covered in that thread. It looks great but you've considerably reduced your usable driving horizon and ability to react to objects down the road. What results is a huge increase in foreground brightness, but a drastic dropoff in distance lighting. Focus is needed to 'throw' the light far down the road. By their nature, drop-in LED bulbs cannot occupy a small enough space, because they need room for the heatsink and copper circuitry between the emitters cannot approach zero thickness.īecause of this, LED bulbs can actually be brighter than their normal halogen counterparts- but they can never match the correct focus. All headlight housings (reflector or projector) are designed to collect and focus light from this tiny point in space, to project it far down the road where you need it. However, the one thing they are unable to emulate is the thickness of a halogen filament. They are also able to place them reasonably in the same location (X and Y dimension) as a halogen filament. Click to expand.Most of the LED bulb makers have been able to utilize the newest generation of very small and powerful emitter chips by Philips and Cree.