3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

I’ve got these on my desk waiting for testing.

Projection distance testing for the Hikaris, and testing Hella’s ‘performance’ H9s.

 

Nice. Interested in seeing how those H9's perform as well.

 

If I weren't already gearing up for a full blown youtube series launch of electronic off-road traction aid systems, I probably would.

The top of the board in the halogen pic is dark because the bulbs put out such a low amount of orange light that the board just doesn't appear to be well lit. The headlights were still throwing the same amount of light up there, proportionally. I'm pretty sure a much brighter halogen would've thrown more light to the top of the board as well. I think a lot of that is from my old lenses that probably scatter a lot of light. The LED only pic is kinda skewed because I forgot to turn off the overhead light. The "not as well defined" light in the hotspot is a product of my photography. Both of the actual hot spots from both bulbs are washed out. They are nearly identical in person, and both are well defined. You can almost make out the actual shape of the filament vs the individual LED diodes within the hot spots. I think the LED hot spot is slightly wider, though. When I utilize the oh-so-fancy "adjustability," I can separate the reflections of the opposing diodes. They are misaligned horizontally (adjusting affects the vertical alignment) by a little bit, presumably due to the fact that the board is thicker than the halogen filament as you said. The "glare" I was looking at is the stray beams on the LED side in the red circles. The upper part in the green box and the part above the cutoff in blue boxes do look to be slightly brighter on the LED side, but not by that much, and imo might be enhanced by the white light on the white board. I had my face in the light of both of these, and neither of them would bother me to be driving into. It also doesn't seem to light up road signs any more than my Fusion's factor LEDs did, either. The light that's hitting the surrounding stuff is a long way from being bright enough to bother anyone. This is a pitch black garage, and that stuff is only two feet away. Both sides do throw a lot more light to the wrong areas than a modern projector would, but I don't see a high performance halogen being much better in this regard for this application. That might be something I'm willing to test though. $30 for the sake of science seems to a fair price to find out if high performance halogens are better than LEDs in a battered 30 year old reflector. Although, I'd probably feel more comfortable with the light from an LED hitting the back of those cloudy old lenses than those beams of hellfire coming out of the 130+ monsters. Lol. I might not need to worry about it for long, though. I plan on swapping those out for some nice clear one piece assemblies.

 

“Here’s a pile of evidence and testing that shows your opinion is wrong.”

“yeah but I still feel like I’m right. So I’m right.”

So far all the testing I’ve seen, here and elsewhere, on drop in LED headlights have them all soundly beat by a $14 pair of Phillips H9 bulbs in terms of lighting performance. I’ll gladly shout it from the rooftops when that changes, but until then I prefer seeing along with not blinding oncoming traffic.

 

There are many other media channels that go into drop in LED headlight glare in significantly more detail than I cover, that use scientific industry standard US FVMSS 108 headlight tests from standardized points in the beam to provide quantifiable data comparisons against industry requirements. Here is one you could follow. Debating subjectively that the LED increased glare doesn't really bother person X doesn't really leave much room for anything constructive. The FVMSS 108 test is just not something I'm inclined to put that much time and effort into, if you want to debate LED glare someone that is running these comprehensive tests would be able to provide you with solid counter data. Spoiler alert, the conclusions are the drop-in products are not there yet.




Keep in mind, glare may not look so bad when you spend time in a garage staring at lights (even from behind the lights), as your eyes quickly get adjusted to seeing something very bright very close. There are also specified critical glare windows that are aimed at oncoming cars, it isn't just total light above the cut off. Short wavelength LED light glare isn't doing any favors either, as human eyes cannot focus on blue light, causing eyes to strain and harming the oncoming drivers night vision.

For your new housings, be sure to buy OEM. Anything else will be a downgrade.

 

I have a hunch the glare on those LED’s is going to be absolutely obscene for someone driving toward you on a two lane country road at 3am (assuming those are drop in’s in a halogen housing).

 

I dont think the glare coming out of the mustang's headlights is as much a product of the LEDs, but rather the old headlight design. I highly highly doubt a brighter halogen would have less glare. My guess is that those headlights were designed around the assumption that there was never going to be a bulb in them that is 5x brighter than stock.

 

If your lenses are hazed then it certainly isn’t helping. But if your lights are 5x brighter, then you have 5x the glare if they were the exact same size as a halogen filament. If they are larger, the geometry will be incorrect leading to compounding further increases in glare, leading to awful glare levels. This isn’t just true for old headlights, it is all reflector headlights where The LED is larger than the filament (which is all drop in LEDs). This is why focusing on smaller is better, output is increased and glare is decreased.

 

Hella H9 2.0 Performance bulbs

Few reputable brands say H9 and High Performance on the same package.


Hella manufactures bulbs in Korea and China, these are from Korea. Any true performance bulb should not have a blue coating over the filament, as blue coatings reduce output. The Hellas are coated.

Hella top, Philips bottom


Hella specs the color temp as 3700k, meaning the coating is lighter than products like Silverstar that are typically over 4000k. The higher the temp the more yellow long wavelength light is filtered out, which reduces overall output. While difficult to tell in the photo, the Hella filament does look a couple winds shorter than the Philips, and smaller light sources improve projection performance.

Hella 2.0 H9 vs Philips H9


The Hella is a little whiter, but not as much as expected. Output is actually a bit better than I was expecting though. The Hellas draw 73.7w vs the Philips 74w.



You can see that the Hellas are closer to 3500k, not the spec’d 3700k. The Philips bulbs still come in higher by approx 6%.

Here you can see the affect of the blue coating filtering down the long wavelength output. Long wavelength light in the spectrum takes roughly a 10% loss due to the coating.


This is why you want to avoid coatings in performance bulbs. This coating is fairly light, coatings to achieve higher color temps take larger losses.

The Hella H9 performance 2.0s are not as white as some other H11 performance options, but they do just barely beat out the GE Xenon +120 in peak lux. Being a coated H9 and a what is claimed to be a performance filament H9, I would expect much shorter bulb life than the Philips. Some may say the slightly whiter color temp is worth it, personally I’d rather have the 6% more output and longer life. But I’m just providing data for others to decide what best fits their needs.

To be clear, for the low beam these Hella H9 2.0 Performance bulbs are a massive upgrade over stock H11s, but the Philips are just a little better.

Hella H9 2.0 vs stock H11
1220 lx vs 623 lx

 

The Philips H9 bulbs I bought had a ever so slight blue coating on them, barely noticeable. I don't recall anyone mentioning that with those bulbs.

 

Really? The Philips standard H9s are non-coated.

 

I bought them from Amazon with the link you provided

 

I have a bunch of them, both China and German, and none are coated.

 

You just broke crash lol

 

I'll try to take pics tomorrow. It's so light it might not even show up on camera.

 

Turn off the blue LEDs in your garage.

 

THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!!!



Don't even try to pretend you have more important things to do in life than conduct a thorough test on some headlights you're not likely to ever use yourself, and write up a detailed report of your findings for some strangers you're not likely to ever meet. Let's get this done, man!

 

I’ll add to it, the Hikaris are the smallest LED I’ve tested, which translates to improved focus for better projection. Still need to run the distance test though.

 

To be clear, I'm not expecting them to outperform the best halogens have to offer since I've learned enough in all your threads that they are probably not going to focus as well. However, if they are an improvement over stock, I'll probably go that route over high output halogens for the aesthetics and longevity. I rarely run my fogs, so I'm not too worried about color matching.

Ooh. 15% off coupon on Amazon right now.... Lol

 

They are 15% smaller than the next best tested in this thread. I'd willing to bet their distance projection numbers are better than stock as the other larger ones are just shy of stock. I just need the weather and my schedule to coordinate for outdoor distance tests.