3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

Yeah. It was an H11. My Bad

 

This is so close.

Hella (Osram Hyper +30) left vs Philips Vision +30 right:

 

And . The Hella H9s ??

 

Philips Vision +30 is about 10% brighter than the Hellas at the hotspot.

Philips (left) pulls more power at 74.7w compared to Hella (right) at 72.2w.



The Philips bulbs typically go for ~$25/ea and must be purchased out of Europe. It can be difficult to find the real Vision +30 series bulbs vs the Standard series ones being sold as the Vision series. This also typically includes long slow shipping from overseas. I have not yet found a reputable source for Philips Vision H9s, I bought mine off eBay and they arrived without official product packaging.

The Hellas are available domestically, from high quality sources at $10/ea with much quicker ship times. Compared to the Hellas the Philips are 2.5x the price for about a 10% increase in performance.

Worth it? Up to you. I obsess over this stuff, so I’d pay more for the Philips, but it does start to reach a point of diminishing returns.

 

Wow. 25 each. I'll stay with the Hellas . About 50 for Four shipped. Do the Phillips have as good of coverage as the Hellas ? That's one thing I really like about them. And thanks.

 

Thanks for all this detailed research, it's basically what the internet lacks these days, in practically every topic immaginable.

 

Does anyone know Powerbulbs eBay handle? Is it MetroDirect?

 

Yes they do have as good of coverage. The very full beam pattern is due to utilizing an H9 bulb vs ultra high efficiency H11s, and both the Hellas (Osram Hyper) and Philips Vision are competing +30 H9s.

The Philips bulbs are still manufactured in Germany vs the Hella Osram Hypers that have moved manufacturing of that bulb for Hella to Korea, which I bet in part was likely due to Hella's price point target vs Osram's manufacturing decisions. I still have 2 more performance H9 bulbs to test that I am waiting on, a Xencn (Osram China) H9 +100 and a Xencn 70w 'Off Road' H9. I honestly do not expect a Chinese manufactured product (even from a German parent company) to challenge an ultra high quality performance German manufactured one. But in the interest of the unbiased scientific process, I ordered them anyway to compare, so that I would literally have tested every single non-fully-coated performance H9 on the market that I could find, and my Google skills are beyond Sensei level.

I expect the German made Philips Vision +30 H9s to be the best bulb on the market. But this really isn't surprising. Philips is one of the worlds largest most advanced and most experienced automotive lighting corperations and a high quality OEM supplier to many automotive manufactures including Ford. Philips is manufacturing their Vision performance lighting products in Germany, the country with a well established long history of building the best high precision automotive lighting products on the market. Philips outperforming the competition in building a performance H9 when the competition is either off shoring production to Asia or a startup status company with limited experience is no surprise.

Amen. Bringing science back to the internet.

 

Ok, so patiently waiting

 

Pre order 2 extra sets of the GEs from power bulbs so I have replacements

 

Patiently waiting. I’ll be buying four sets for me and her Outback when this happens.

 

I'm pretty sure it will happen soon, but cannot promise anything out of my control. We'll get the details sorted out and share them here. The 2nd Gen crowd has been all over the Headlight Services harness upgrade for some time and keeps them very busy. I run the Headlight Services harness on my 2nd Gen because it is by far the best quality harness I have been able to find, and it is priced lower than the competition. I'm determined to get a plug and play product built for you 3rd Gen guys, one way or another it will happen.

 

I’m sure they’ll make it if they sold the other well.. just gonna be a mad rush for the adapter once it is released!

I think it’s a smart buy considering the marginal loss in brightness versus bulb life / cost. You can get two sets of the linked Hella H9s for about the same price as one set of HE +130s. Easy.

 

I think that is my plan as well. Wait for the adapter so I can run H9's in both the highs and the lows. Unless the adapter ends up not happening then I will run the GE 130's.

 

I'm running the Hella H9s both high and low now. I'll add the harness when available for a performance boost.

 

@crashnburn80 Any chance you can post up one of your handy comparison charts between those Philips Vision and Hella H9s?

 

Sure thing. My Extech LT300 meter reported about a 10% difference, my AsenseTek LightingNavigator spectrum analyzer reported just over 6%. Usually the numbers are a bit more consistent than a 4% difference, so I was going to spend a little more time with it before publishing the numbers to make sure I have them correct, which is why I didn’t include it earlier. I am going to cross reference with my Extech LT45 meter as a 3rd data point. But here is what I pulled on my AsenseTek in the initial test:

 

Understood, and thank you. I was actually curious about the difference in color temperature, and it looks like they're basically identical in that.

 

Hellas are looking better and better. And for 10 bucks each , well..

 

And they shipped out this morning!