3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

2nd Gen has better lights.

 

First gen retro

 

Trs has some discounted 2stroke bulbs if anyone is looking, no warranty though.

https://www.theretrofitsource.com/H11-H9-H8-Morimoto-2Stroke-3.0_2?quantity=1

 

Just like AlphaRex is relabeled Chinese Vland products, it appears the Morimoto XB headlights are relabeled Taiwanese CoPlus products:
https://www.coplus.com.tw/headlights-tacoma

 

They certainly do a convincing job of making it sound like they're developed in-house; especially in their Gen 2 video. All of CoPlus headlights are the same as Morimoto.

 

LOL. "In house" of CoPlus. Morimoto isn't a product company, it is just a TRS brand.

 

are you going to test the new hikari acme x lights?

 

They don't appear to be for sale. Just a product there

 

No plans to. The lights look very poorly designed, the emitters do not replicate a halogen at all as they are far larger and integrating the driver into the base will reduce performance over an external driver, which is why nearly all LEDs use an external driver to remove heat from the assembly. If someone wanted to send some my way I’d take a look as time allows, but the product is severely flawed.

 

Interesting, but not necessarily surprising. I had also read on another forum that The RetrofitSource/XenonDepot/Morimoto/HeadlightRevolution were all different faces of the same importer.

 

Wouldn’t be surprised either. Everything is a sham

 

Morimoto is a brand of the Retrofit Source (TRS). TRS recently started buying out competitors, including Xenon Depot and Headlight Revolution, so they are all under the same parent ownership and essentially one conglomerate.

 

It would surprise me more to find out that these companies were the actual manufacturers of the bulbs they sell than it would to find out they import the same basic bulbs from the same suppliers with different packaging and wrappers. There are only so many places that can manufacture goods like this. As I understand it, a lot of China’s economy is based on this kind of to-spec small to medium run manufacturing.

 

Given that we understand that the Morimoto units are re-branded, @crashnburn80 do you think there was still due diligence done to make sure the lights were DOT compliant by the manufacturer? The quality and pattern seem to be ahead of the AlphaRex stuff for sure.

 

Aside from the stray light above the cut off on one headlight assembly, I see no red flags in the design regarding compliance. While uplight is lacking and certainly a significant disadvantage vs the OEM LED assemblies, I believe the requirements spec a legal max for uplight and not a minimum. AlphaRex by comparison seems to be a train wreck of attempting to build a headlight with short range floods by a low quality Chinese manufacture that clearly lacks understanding or care for how these products are supposed to work.

 

Speaking of uplight, a couple weeks ago I got a good view of the OEM squirrel spotters before leaving work:



What does excessive uplight mean for you on the road? Glare in bad weather:


H9’s in oem projectors, lows only no fogs. Glare sucks for you, glare sucks for others.

 

You might mildly hate it in the snow, but on a dark road in clear weather not being able to see beyond your cut off (due to no uplight) poses a significant driving hazard, where one can only see what their headlights illuminate and nothing else.

 

Indeed! I’ve had or driven cars with headlights that don’t have the uplight and it’s like a black wall at the end of the beam pattern in all conditions. We’re coming to the end of headlight season here in Alaska, I think I’m going with better H11’s next winter over h9’s and SS3 sport fogs to get the glare and uplight situation under control.

 

Anyone got vid or pic of the difference of the h9 and h11 bulb how the h9 are that much brighter.

 

you mean like the one in the first post of this thread?