3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

Yeah, ideally a fan should blow upward through a heat sink to work with convection, like Diode Dynamics and Sylvania, not perpendicular to it like Hikari.

By comparison, I’ve measured the fanless Philips design in the H4 base, and it does pull the full spec’d 22w, so I am sure the H11 does as well. Meaning the fanless LED pulls more power than those two fan based models, though the output isn’t spec’d quite as high as Diode Dynamics, so there is something to be said for the added efficiency. The Philips fanless heatsink by comparison is significantly larger though than the heat sinks of those specific fan based models. Looks like I forgot to capture the Hikari Power draw, I’ll have to add that later.

 

Driving home I kept thinking about your test @crashnburn80 and how my lights just don’t seem to be dimmer than stock. Maybe it’s the “color” throwing me off but here is a pic driving with fogs only
And here is with the dogs and the headlights on here


they look brighter in person to me also but it’s what I could do while driving.

I’m interested as I stated before in the Phillips leds when they arrive.

 

Interesting. That leads me to think these little heatsinks are all overkill for 20w, Philips thinks everyone is smart enough to ensure the passive cooler has adequate airflow, or the fanless Philips will burn out prematurely. Hopefully its option #1

 

It’s honestly looks like the whiter color washes out in front really nice but doesn’t project as far forward as the cars headlights in front of you.

 

Possibly yeah. Great comment. Lol

I’m trying to compare to my wife's 2020 Hyundai Palisade as its all LED from factory and mine seems like it projects farther but hers maybe “brighter” but only up to a point.

could also be because I’m lifted with taller tires ...

 

Pictures are not a very good representation of light output, especially with a lot of ambient light. Your photos do not depict a very significant difference in projection range from just the fogs to the fogs plus headlights. The headlights should have more down range illumination that what is being depicted. But there are so many variables in a camera it is difficult to tell, which is why measured data is always better. My test did not determine if your lights are actually dimmer than stock, my test showed the pattern hot spot was dimmer than stock. Big difference. The pattern hot spot is the area responsible for distance projection. A non-focused light like BeamTech produces a short range flood light. Humans intrinsically favor foreground light over distance light as it makes people feel safer, even though distance light is what is really needed in a vehicle and actually makes people safer. So if you modify your lights to short range flood light, the initial reaction is that the lights are brighter and better, because there is more light immediately in front of you. This will be especially true in urban environments where high ambient light makes no need for proper distance projection. But then driving on a dark windy stretch of highway, you will come to realize you are overdriving your headlights because they are not focused enough to project as far as they need to for the highway speed you are traveling at. The whiter LED color can also contribute to being misleading.

 

I think a lot of people don’t really understand the led in halogen reflector “glare” issue. I put the Philips LED’s in my fogs and my first impression was “WOW, these are INSANELY BRIGHT and the cutoff is INTENSE... these are totally legit!”

But paying closer attention... On a dark, tree lined city street (no street lamps) with only my low beams on... everything was dark above the low beam cutoff. Pitch black.

But when I turned on the fogs... Wowzers. I could still see the very defined fog beam cut off directly in front of the truck. But when I looked “up”... all of the tree leaves were dimly glowing. Like 25 feet up in the air 15 feet in front of my truck for a long way down the street. That’s from glare.

No, it’s not as intense as being “in the hot spot”. But to oncoming drivers, it can be blinding. Especially out on the highway with little to no ambient lighting.

I don’t have the fog light anytime mod on my truck. But if I did, and I pulled up to a 3 story house with my fogs on, it would light up the entire house, albeit with the cut off being visible near the foundation. Low beams wouldn’t do that.

I think crash has a couple pics illustrating this effect on a garage door in the fog light thread (maybe with the rigids?).

 

That's not an LED issue. That will occur with any bulb without a glare cap, be it LED, halogen, HID, laser, etc. The fact that the overhead light is closer is a product of the shallow buckets combined with no glare cap. An uncapped halogen (like an H9) would do the exact same thing.

 

@crashnburn80 have you tested a rx350 retrofit headlight before? Or anyone else reading this, have you see a test compared to a the standard Toyota projector elsewhere?

 

I'll add to this that some reflector housings have a glare cap built in to the housing. Neither of my reflectors (bike and mustang) have built-in glare caps, but the glare is still not that bad. This type of glare is strictly the light coming directly from the light emitter, straight to your eye, so it's not focused at all. While not ideal, it's not much more than a mild annoyance, especially at driving distances. It's like looking at a flashlight bulb outside the flashlight compared to having a flashlight shined at your face. The light coming straight from the emitter of a halogen or LED is annoying, but it doesn't have a serious affect on the night vision of other motorists. Light from a HID on the other hand is so intense that, even without being focused, it will likely cause some temporary night blindness if looked at directly.

 

The Rx350 projector IS a standard Toyota projector. Both are made by Koito. The Rx350 is a bi-xenon (combo hi/low beam HID) while the halogen projector in our truck is designed for low beam only. Some Toyotas (not sure which) also use the Koito Bi-LED projector, which is another great retrofit option. They are all among the best in their respective category because Koito makes good shit. The xenon will be the brightest, the LED will give up some lux to the HID, but will last longer and doesn't need to warm up. Both are combo hi/low headlights, so you'd either double up on the high beam or disable it on one of them.

 

I use there Philips xtreme vision ultinon led bulbs in my factory fog lights. Philips specifically states these are fog light bulbs. I tried many LED bulbs in my fog lights before settling on these. They work excellent! The beam pattern mimics the stock halogen bulbs well except they produce FAR more light. I don’t have any equipment to test them but I can tell you from first hand experience that they don’t have the glare that cheaper bulbs produce, they are designed very well. I HIGHLY recommend these as an upgrade to the factory halogen fog light bulbs but they do carry a hefty price tag of around $150. Another appealing feature is the properly designed heat sink that doesn’t have a failure prone cooling fan. Philips also offers a 5 year warranty on them.

 

Please keep us up to date on how these perform for you! Please test in both the low beam and high beam. Your testing is second to none!

I’m in the process of a RX350 retrofit and looking for a suitable LED replacement for my high beam. I’d like the quad high beams to be all the same color.

Great work sir!!

 

Shared in another post, but worth reposting here. 2020 Tacoma LED headlights earn a ‘good’ rating by IIHS vs the standard stock halogen headlights earn a rating of ‘marginal’.

https://carbuzz.com/news/2020-toyota-tacoma-is-much-safer-thanks-to-one-key-feature

 

That is indeed good news. You can never tell much from those ratings as they do NOT check factory headlight alignment before testing. As a result you can see a wide variety of ratings for identical lights. This does indicate that at least this one test vehicle was properly aligned, or at least darned close.

 

Would be so interesting to see the numbers on the rx350 and the new LED's as compared to all the other data here.

 

OEM LED tests:



Vs the halogen


LED Low BEAMS Average minimum useful
illumination distance (5 lux) Amount glare
exceeded threshold
Straightaway right edge 86.3 m None
Straightaway left edge 49.6 m None
250m radius right curve, right edge 74.5 m None
250m radius left curve, right edge 48.9 m None
150m radius right curve, right edge 60.0 m None
150m radius left curve, left edge 52.2 m None
HIGH BEAMS Average minimum useful
illumination distance (5 lux)
Straightaway right edge 164.7 m
Straightaway left edge 163.8 m
250m radius right curve, right edge 95.2 m
250m radius left curve, left edge 83.7 m
150m radius right curve, right edge 71.0 m
150m radius left curve, left edge 70.9 m


HALOGEN LOW BEAMS Average minimum useful
illumination distance (5 lux) Amount glare
exceeded threshold
Straightaway right edge 68.0 m None
Straightaway left edge 40.6 m None
250m radius right curve, right edge 50.2 m None
250m radius left curve, left edge 41.9 m None
150m radius right curve, right edge 40.9 m None
150m radius left curve, left edge 37.4 m None
HIGH BEAMS Average minimum useful
illumination distance (5 lux)
Straightaway right edge 142.6 m
Straightaway left edge 118.9 m
250m radius right curve, right edge 68.4 m
250m radius left curve, left edge 63.3 m
150m radius right curve, right edge 52.5 m
150m radius left curve, left edge 51.8 m

I wish it were possible to do a test with the halogen units with H9 bulbs and re-aimed up slightly, but I doubt that's gonna be feasible. It does appear that the new OE LEDS are superior in most every way at least!

 

I wonder how the pre-2020 headlights with the H9 bulbs in the low beams compare to the 2020 LED headlights.

 

XenCN H9 selective yellow in TRD OR fogs, Phillips h9 lows, Stock highs plus hella 700FF with 100w h3 halogens. Fogs only, fogs+lows, highs+hella. Notice my lows project much further than the fogs only, and how much light is in the entire pattern.