RX350 Retrofit vs. Factory LED headlights - has anyone compared them?

I'm not going to argue with you. I have spent a lot of money on different halogen upgrades. I have the best bulbs Sylvania makes halogen wise in my work truck. My 20 TRD off-road LEDs is much better imo. I have a F250, a Rubicon that I have put all types of different lights in and my off road. I also had an Infinity with HIDs which was excellent. I'm 50 years old and I've compared quite a bit. My wife says I have a lighting obsession.

 

You haven't given a single fact. You have given a lot of subjective opinion.
Cutoff comparisons? Output measurements? Those are the "facts" you keep touting.

 

All you fools need to post data and facts. Everything seems anecdotal

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-hid-vs-led-vs-halogen-h11-projector-headlights.589465/


All measurements are done by Crashnburn80 using a specroradiometer rather an these inaccurate lux meteres that bias a certain spectrum of light to make LEDs read higher.

 

That comparison is aftermarket LED bulbs shoved into OEM halogen projectors. You cannot reasonably extrapolate that out to 2020 OEM LED headlights, which are downward firing LEDs into reflectors designed to that task.

Your assertion is still not based in facts.

 

MorimotoXB listed in the second graph is the $1200 full enosure sealed LED housing. GE+130 are halogen replacements shown in both graphs. Phillips HID in stock housings are listed in the first chart. This covers everything ive been talking about. You can clearly see the difference. The morimotos are only marginally better than the GE+130 halogens, and the GE+130 gets blown out of the water by HID in stock housings. An HID with proper focus and beam coming out of a retrofit projector only increases the HID effeciveness.

Everything ive read saye the morimotos are better than the stock 2020 LED set up, so until crash does a test of them we wont truely know how they compare. Either way LEDs have significantly very little return on investment compared to HID or halogen upgrades.

 

Simple graphs rarely tell the whole story. As someone who has tried, and measured with higher end equipment than our buddy crash, all the high performance H11 halogens in the stock projector housing, and then swapped out to the new Tacoma LED assemblies, the difference is night and day. What you notice immediately, the first time you drive them after proper aiming (which is crucial) is having a broader, brighter, far more even beam with none of the shadows that the stock projectors have, but it's really that it puts so much light down in areas where the stock lamps are just missing. Yes, the LED's have a higher color temperature and a lower CRI, but that doesn't seem to affect how well these lights let you actually see, which is the most important factor. And who gives a fuck about the little TRD and PRO lights. That doesn't affect the functionality and you can't see it while your driving anyway. The 2020 Tacoma LEDs are also the only legal way to put an LED light in your truck, regardless of what some of those companies claim. Morimoto is just an American marketing company that came up with a Japanese sounding name to pawn cheap Chinese crap on to uneducated and unsuspecting people who are dazzled by their ads. When you're dealing with something as important as your night time lighting, you really don't want to take any chances. Now if you could only put the Subaru Forester LED's in our trucks. Those are even better than the Tacoma's.

 

If im going to spend that kind of money on headlight upgrades, im spending it on retrofit HIDs. Theres no question that theyre brighter and rx350 and DS2 are the industry standard forbeam pattern and crisp clean cutoff.

 

Projector retrofit > XB LEDs > OEM LEDs > OEM Halogens

It's really just whether you want to do the work (or pay for someone to do it), or just pop in some housings. That's the primary differentiation.

 

I suppose I worded that incorrectly. I won't disagree with total output that the RX350's are far better than the Morimoto XB headlights. HOWEVER, the amount of work (man hours) compared to light output is what I am looking at. Lets assume you go baller status (all parts based off Lightwerkz).....

-RX350 w/ STI clear lens AND tuning - $370
-OEM Ballast setup - Denso Potted ballasts, Osram NBL bulbs, H4 harness - $407
-Butyl - $15

That alone is $792 total! Thats ASSUMING you don't add ANY halos, demon eyes, BLHM or other additional items. Now that means it will LOOK exactly the same as your stock headlight, even down to the stock running light and halogen blinkers still. If you go that deep into it, you might as well add some extra touches if you get what I'm saying. Looks/appearance is a MAJOR factor when doing a retrofit, maybe not to you personally but to the majority of others it is.

Now for about $950-$1100 you get a fully assembled headlight, looks awesome (everyone's opinion is different), has a beautiful swithcback C bar, has a warrenty (won't get that a retrofit!!) AND you still have your stock headlights IF anything goes wrong and the Morimoto headlight is getting replaced for warranty.

Yet ANOTHER option IF a retrofit is the route someone wants to go is to the new Morimoto MLED 2.0. It is actually on par with the RX350 and G5-BRT in the real world! There are many on Headlight Junkies that have installed them and believe that they are as good or better. Many have done legitimate testing showing that the MLED 2.0 is closely comparable.

Trust me, I am diehard HID guy. All 4 of my vehicles have a retrofit, all HID as well. But LED is coming up, not PNP though...it's not likely that I'll ever get behind PNP's.

 

/thread

 

Fixed

 

deal!

 

Nice to see TRS can post here while it takes you 2 weeks to respond to a simple question submitted on your website (because your phones are only manned from 10-2 daily).

PSA - steer clear of these guys.

PS - the morimoto ballast they sold me crapped out after a few years of light use on a Ducati.

 

I’m personally not at all a fan of the Morimotos LED replacement headlights for our trucks. I won’t even consider them. The way the turn signals illuminate around the projector looks super ricey to me, they look like they belong on a Honda Civic from the first ‘Fast & the Furious’ movie. I think the white LED daytime running light accents that surround the projectors look pretty bad as well. Rather than evenly dispersed light like the stock 2020 OEM DRL’s have, there’s 100 little discernible hot spots surrounding the entire perimeter of the headlight, it just looks cheap.

 

The first 4 seconds of this video shows the turn signals and why I hate them. If all the LED’s just flashed simultaneously it would look so much better. The way they start illuminating at the inside and move to the outside of the assembly just looks like carnival lighting or something that belongs on a civic circa 2001.

https://youtu.be/j2um4U67jUU

 

there is a connector on the back that you can plug or unplug to set simultaneous or sequential mode.

 

Except for one thing. The third gen halogens suck.

 

Well I just went from having the oem projectors with HIDs in them and they were much better than the oem halogens thats for damn sure. I just installed the ab6 headlights 2 days ago with the rx350 retrofit in them and those things throw out further than the oem projectors and the light output is crazy lol.

 

That's for damn sure. First thing I did to my truck at less than 200 miles was an HID conversion, the factory halogen projectors are terrible. It was pretty disappointing to spend $40k on a truck and find out the headlights performed worse than a couple flashlights. I'll never understand why some vehicle manufacturers opted to use LED running lights with halogen projectors. Seems like a strange design choice when you have such a stark difference in the color of the light from the LED and halogen right next to each other. When you have the running lights on, the LED's make it look nice and modern, turn on the headlights and it looks like every other car from the early 2000's.