3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

After about a year after discovering this thread, I am still very happy with the Phillips H9s in the low beams. When people ride with me, they even notice and are a bit envious. I still tend to check in on this thread from time to time to see what the scuttle is (still wish I could get that white light from led/hid, but love the reliability, simplicity, and cost of a halogen) but am grateful for @crashnburn80 and his research.

 

Well said & nice refresh to this most excellent thread.

Same setup here for bout a year. Love having same Phillips H9s halogens in low and highs for multiple reasons.

Upgraded to led fogs per crash recommendations, now can actually see down the road at night with 2 super easy mods at a minimal cost that are reliable and easily reversible

 

There is plenty of misleading information in that ad and on their webpage, with even 3 different conflicting output specs. And poor comprehension statements like stacking two rows of emitter strips is better than having one, when the opposite is true. Pretty obvious it is a non-reputable generic off-brand typical of poor quality Amazon LEDs. What is interesting, is they advertise the LED as 1.2mm, they don’t bother to specify what that measurement actually is though, but it seems to imply width. If so, that would make them the thinnest I’ve seen yet, but likely that is the board width in between the emitters meaning it is only a partial measurement and not the complete distance, providing little informative value. If they were the thinnest, they will have sacrificed some of the focus performance by stacking multiple rows of emitters rather than using a single row like every other leading major name brand, since that provides best focus. Which is well understood amongst every single reputable lighting company. They claim to be ‘long term partners’ with Toyota, Maserati, BMW, Daimler AG, Porsche and more, which is obviously such complete BS. Their website and amazon listing reads like poorly translated Chinese, and searching no reputable source has heard of this brand, just their own site which directly references everything to amazon, typical of Chinese off-band LEDs. Again another red flag. In LEDs you typically get what you pay for, meaning sub-$40 per set is likely going to deliver performance on par with with generic poor performing amazon off-brands.

What can be so misleading though, is people with no experience posting how great some LED is they got off Amazon for cheap as a “a great deal”, and inspire others to do the same. Worst are the YouTube videos that promote this practice. Often people are even given free product to promote this trend, I’ve even seen it here on this forum, to which I was not un-shy about challenging opinions with measured data as fact. People will swear by the products as poorly designed LEDs blow out foreground light and lose distance light, but to the untrained eye it looks like a major improvement, because people are very poor at judging light. We as humans inherently rate foreground light as better, which is how a poorly designed LED shifts the pattern, when that is the opposite of what you actually want in a headlight. Just look at the Beamtech example in this thread, covered in post #3, that received great reviews on Amazon, was promoted by a member in this thread and was a complete failure of a product to the point output was below the legal minimum even required for a headlight and downright dangerous to drive with. But people swore they were better than stock, because they didn’t understand what to look for.

If someone wanted to send them my way, I’d test them and provide my 2c before forwarding them on to the buyer, but I could bet they stand no match at all to Hikari which is the only LED I’d recommend as any improvement over stock.

 

You might consider trying the Hella Performance 2.0 H9s, linked in post #2, they are a little whiter and 2nd in performance to the Philips bulbs.

 

@crashnburn80 were you able to get your hands on OEM Led headlights for testing?

 

Have a member possibly loaning a set for testing soon. Still working out timing/details.

 

Still running the Philips H9 upgrade on my truck and am completely satisfied for a couple of reasons, cost, and ease of install, anyone on a dark roadway with no traffic I'm sure will appreciate the work and research done by him. I decided to keep it simple and get what I think is the most cost effective lighting upgrade for my use. Thanks crash.

 

Damn what a thread. Great information for new tacoma owners.
Looks like I'll be picking up some Philips H9 for high & low.
Still on the fence about fogs. I need something to actually see through fog, ya know?

 

You already have Philips H9s for the highs. For fogs, all that info is in the fog thread, check out Diode Dynamics SS3 linked in the updates at the top, which are currently the best performing on the market. Go with the selective yellow version for poor weather/fog use.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-led-sae-j583-fog-pod-fog-light-review.554813/

 

I can't wait for this one.

 

Thanks for the recommendation on the fog pods. A little pricey for me ATM though. Any replacement bulb you would recommend in the meantime?

 

See also this great thread: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-foglight-upgrade-h11-not-led-or-hid.435419/

I was in your boat as well, spent way too much time thinking through the cost/value (not much low fog in San Diego) and only recently bit on ss3 sports. However, I definitely don't think it was money I _needed_ to spend. It took me a long time to warm up to this plan though, after a little bit of confusion on which bulb to consider for the fogs. For me, it started with wrangling through amber vs white which took me months too. After hours of reading, I finally agreed on amber, at which point the choice to replace with LED became a bit more obvious vs spending time on a mod or hunting for an amber bulb. Anyway, this thread is for headlights so follow-up should probably go to one of the dedicated fog threads.

 

I've been very satisfied with the

$20 Nokya NOK7618 Halogen Bulb

Nokya NOK7618 Hyper Yellow halogen bulbs.

Inexpensive but they work great.

 

Unfortunately in a non-TRD 3rd Gen, you have H16 fogs. There is no performance support for an H16 halogen since they are so low power and only designated for fogs at 19w. There are a few yellow bulb options as pointed out above, but they are not increasing output. The 12-15 trucks or 16+ TRD models use a 55w H11. Diode Dynamics does have some great sales from time to time, I'd suspect the next one would be Labor Day. The best budget friendly option is the OEM Toyota LED fogs, also linked in the top of that fog thread, cost something like $115 shipped. Output color is ~6000k though, which really isn't ideal for poor weather use.

Lots of info and ideas in that thread, might help to have a little backstory (a little off topic for headlights):
When I created that thread, very few SAE LED fogs existed, and they were all in the 6000k+ ballpark for color temp which is not going to perform well in actual fog/poor weather and none were really capable of resisting icing over/clearing snow accumulation, not to mention few products were actually an upgrade over the stock H11 fogs. Many companies sold "fogs" that were not actually even a fog pattern. My primary use for fogs is driving over windy 2-lane mountain passes at night, often in snow. While the OEM fogs have a nice wide throw, I often found myself wanting more output. And there were just no good fog upgrade options for poor snowy weather. So I iterated on a few halogen ideas from harnessed 90w Flosser H11s, to custom made glare capped H9s, to Subaru fogs running yellow H9s. The first two were much brighter than stock, but they also didn't do a good job of glare control, due to the OEM halogen open reflector fog design. The Subaru upgrade did a great job at cutting out glare due to their internal glare shields (like reflector headlights) and allowed the use of off the shelf H9s making them very bright, but the pattern was far more narrow/forward facing in a way I didn't like.

I was not really satisfied with any of my halogen solutions. I put together the SAE LED thread to evaluate all the LED options and try and promote SAE compliant products and pattern education. While there were some good performers in white color temps, they didn't satisfy everything I was looking for either. I decided I was going to try building my own lower color temp LED fogs using Rigid's white SAE fog housing and optics as a platform. When discussing my ideas with Rigid's reps they really liked the idea and put me in touch with their R&D. Turned out my plans had some compatibility flaws that I would need to work around. Rather than me trying to build something, they decided to make the SAE D-series in selective yellow, which I believe was an SAE LED industry first. The selective yellow Rigid fogs were the first LED fogs that I was actually satisfied with, the filtering lens would eventually get hot to clear snow, selective yellow color performs great in poor weather conditions and the output was higher than stock while providing significantly better cut offs with less glare than stock. It checked all the boxes. Only minor issue was there were no OEM style mounting solutions for mounting the traditional square pod in the OEM fog location, they all involved some kind of steel plate bumper adapter mount. Despite the suboptimal mount and headaches aiming a mount with little adjustment, they worked great but the mounting solutions requiring drilling into the bumper weren't for everyone.

Since then several selective yellow LED fog assembly options have come to market, with much better OEM style mounting solutions that are plug and play. There are many more color temp choices, even fogs in awesome 4000k, which is a closer match to halogen for those that may not be interested in selective yellow, but also don't want a 5000-6000k white fog either. And several options capable of clearing snow, while being far brighter than stock and providing better cut offs with less glare.

Very long winded story short, that thread was my attempt at increasing fog performance when no existing products on the market could do what I desired. But now there are some really great plug and play SAE LED choices available. Using a modern SAE LED fog replacement assembly is the far superior and correct way to upgrade the fogs. With the options available today I would not recommend the higher power halogen upgrade solutions covered in the halogen fog thread.

 

Would love to see some data on those alpharex headlights. I dig them

 

I pinged then on TW FB when they posted their Tacoma product launch there and got a very non-cooperative response. I asked Meso to check them out at their SEMA booth as well, but that was pre-Tacoma release. I’m curious as well, they are certainly on my radar though not as high of a priority as the OEM LEDs.

 

For sure, that’s a bummer. I wonder if they’ve seen this thread. Literally every lighting upgrade I have gotten have been from your data, and I’m sure many others can say the same. Would only help them but oh well.

I know I’ve said it before too but would be interesting to see an rx350 projector retro test too.

 

Did someone change the hid head lamp lights in a Tacoma Off Road to the LED 2020 lights ?
Some one do it ?
I need to change the wire harness ??
Thanks

 

Recommended h11 to h9 adapter for lows?

 

There is a link somewhere in this thread I believe to an Amazon harness which has a few reviews noting possible heat damage which got me worried.
I ordered a Nokya harness at someone else's recommendation (sorry I don't remember the user but thank you), and while I've connected it, I haven't put it through anything resembling a heat cycle. I did add some loom and tape, but I've since ordered fancy heat tape for engine loom and I intend to re-tape before installing it for real. Haven't driven at night since I got it, thought it'd be fun to do one H9 vs one H11 130+ to try to compare visually while driving.

Nokya Wire Harness H9 NoK9117 Head Light Bulb Socket Female Male High Beam Plug

With all that said, it's awfully trivial to modify the bulb base directly, I just tend to dislike any "unnecessary" mods which can be solved with inexpensive purchases. I also find the stock harness on the passenger side to be a tad short given the location of the washer fluid reservoir.