3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

This is way too in-depth for my brain when it comes to lighting... I am impressed... But so, so confuze

I have a cheapo set of LEDs that I threw in for giggles and they are running like champs lol

 

interesting little read on adaptive headlights
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/ne...chnology-could-prevent-millions-of-accidents/

 

Running like champs != working like headlights.

See LED recommendations from post #3. If you want replacement LEDs the only two that are recommended are the Hikari Ultras and Morimoto 2stroke 3.0s. Nearly everything else is worse than stock, with more misleading foreground light. I guarantee you your cheapo LEDs fall into the later category.

 

Wow thanks for knowledge

 

Weird, my 4Runner won't let my use my high beams unless the low beams are on

 

I'm glad you are testing these new philips leds but you made some mistakes. The philips leds have fans, so active cooling. And the legal status in Germany was obtained by osram (osram night breaker led) for a couple of cars, not by philips.
The ultinon pro series looks promising based on their width, focusing more on efficient light delivery than on more lumens without proper control. In reality, bulb facts managed to test them and in a h7 halogen projector they were quite weak. In a reflector headlight they managed to do a better job. https://www.bulbfacts.com/led-kits/reviews/philips-ultinon-pro9000-pro5000-led-review.html
Also, what do you think about the new DDM Tuning SaberLED ProX 55W Accu/V2 ? https://www.bulbfacts.com/led-kits/reviews/ddm-tuning-saberled-prox-55w-accu-v2-led-review.html There is a mistake in the review because the photos are from the philips ultinon but on the bulb chart you can find the correct one.

 

Is there a fan in there? That certainly looks like the same passive cooling style design they have used in their previous LED headlight products. But after some googling, yes I stand corrected they are actively cooled.



Facepalm. Right it was Osram that got the legal certification, not Philips.

Note that BulbFacts does testing at 12', which can lead to highly inaccurate results for LEDs as the distance is inadequate to integrate the LED output evenly in the beam pattern. Even my indoor testing at 18' is inadequate for LEDs as I have shown the results to be very inaccurate at that distance, and typically giving a big boost to LED output readings that are not there are greater distances where the light output is able to be more uniform. Which is why I test them at 42' even though it is a PITA. I don't expect the Philips output to match Morimoto 2stroke 3.0 or Hikari Ultra, both those lights put out far greater output, whereas the Philips is designed around trying to be a compliant product. Projectors are both problematic and helpful for replacement LEDs. They are problematic because they are more sensitive to the size and design differences of a bi-directional LED light source compared to a halogen vs a larger reflector, leading to reduced performance. But on the other hand they do a far better job integrating the bi-directional light source into a more even pattern distribution than a reflector and provide the cut offs to eliminate glare.

As for the SaberLEDs, those appear quite powerful. However the emitters look far too large which will mean poor focus, which is something a 12' test would conceal and return artificially inflated results for. Would be interesting to know what the cross section between emitter faces is, but it doesn't look like a product that is accurately designed to replicate a halogen.

 

Curious about this... They light up the road in front of me brighter than my stock headlights did. Is there a simpleton way of explaining why this is worse than stock?

::Edit:: That wasn't sarcasm, I honestly don't understand what that means.

 

Very basically, while more light near the vehicle is comforting, and undoubtedly useful in low speed situations, LED retrofit bulbs that Crashnburn80 has tested have generally (with a few exceptions) simultaneously put more light near the vehicle and less light further down the road.

This is the opposite of how high performance H11 bulbs perform - they produce roughoy the same amount of total light (lumens) but are better focused (more tightly wound and precisely placed filament) and a higher intensity lightsource. These improvements result in similar amounts of light throughout the majority of the beam pattern (or small improvements in intensity that fall below the roughly 40% increase needed for the human eye to see a difference), but a large intensity increase in the hotspot - resulting in more light further down the road, which improves distance vision.

Extra light near the vehicle is fine, if there is also a similar increase in intensity projected down the road.

Extra light near the vehicle with the same/similar amount projected forward is a net *Negative* because the extra light in the foreground is going to constrict your pupils at night, reducing your ability to see the same amount of light that would be bouncing back to you from 300' down the roadway. [This is why driving in clear weather with your fog lights on is not generally advised. While the extra illuminated width may be comforting, you're still reducing your distance vision, decreasing your reaction time to avoid road debris/deer/whatever.]

And if you have a situation where you have a significant increase in foreground light, and a *Decrease* in the intensity of light projected forward, you have significantly reduced your distance vision, while also feeling more "comfortable" about driving quickly because the road near the vehicle is well lit.

This last situation is where most LED retrofit bulbs fall into - they put much more light in the wrong place. People base their perception of performance off of what they can see near the vehicle, which is why lots of poorly made bulbs will still get lots of rave reviews. Crash's testing has shown again and again and again that LED retrofit bulbs have significant focus issues and have very generally failed to be suitable replacements for even a standard bulb, let alone a high performance H11 (in the context of this thread) and way behind a significantly higher performing halogen bulb (H9).

 

That makes sense actually... But, this applies to projectors as well? I thought that these just took the light that was being produced and focused them out to where it needed to be.
Again... I thought a bulb was a bulb and bright was bright.

 

Yes and no. A projector is built to focus the light based upon where the light source originates from, if you change the location of the light source the projector is no longer functioning as designed. If you look back to the first page there are pictures of @crashnburn80 where he actually is measuring the filament diameter. If you look at most of the Led lights they have quite a bit different shape and dimensions to the filament found in a H9 or H11.

 

The projectors can help eliminate glare to incoming traffic but projectors are engineered for a specific blub specification. Changing from a halogen to led bulb changes the position of the light source in turn changing the intended light pattern that is output by the projector.

Something that helps me understand the foreground piece is how the human eye perceives an image. Our brains make a lot of educated guesses on what we see outside our focus, this is why 99% of the time you forget you're looking at your nose all day, your brain edits it out. The center of our focus is the highest resolution and clearest image. The image quality drops off significantly as you move away towards your peripheral vision. Increased brightness in the peripheral vision will make it harder to focus where you're supposed to be looking down road. Or cause you to drive short sighted looking down in front of your vehicle.

I image changing your headlights to excessive fore ground lighting in the middle of a nightime drive would be like your nose changing to safety vest green. It would be really difficult to focus.

 

I was looking at that but my braing was already melting by that point. Wasn't sure what any of that meant.

 

See, I hadn't realized that the position of the light source inside the projector actually mattered. If I was just throwing these into an old school headlight with just a reflector then yeah that would have made more sense, but I thought that the projector did something more I guess. As you can tell... Lighting isn't my thing

But when it comes down to brass tacks though... If I see further and clearer, isn't that better?

 

If you can’t get a warm feeling about the details then just stick with the recommendations. Avoid LED’s in a halogen projector. If you must use an LED because you simply must have 6000k then go Hikari (80?) or Morimoto ($180). Best value and max performance is $6 Philips H9 halogen (requires harness or minor bulb mod).

 

The suggested Hikari Ultras have been superseded by the Hikari Acme-Xs. I wonder of they are truly better?

Hikari Ultra
https://www.amazon.com/HIKARI-Headl...hikari+ultra&qid=1619456857&sr=8-4&pldnSite=1

Hikari Acme-X
https://www.amazon.com/HIKARI-Acme-...B08S37X311/dp/B08S37X311/ref=dp_ob_title_auto

 

Arguably, a large reflector (like the 2nd gen headlamps) is actually *More* forgiving to a large, high wattage filament or a large (effectively out of focus) LED chipset. A projector has a small, but very precisely formed reflector inside it that helps create the beampattern. Its not just left up to the front lens.

So a projector can deal with physically restricting unfocused/improperly focused light, but it is more sensitive to imorecise lightsource placement.

@Steve_Armstrong

No, the older Hikari Ultras would still perform better. The newer bulb has two sets of emitters, meaning either one is completely out of focus, or they're both out of focus for whatever lamp you stick them in. They'll be brighter, but without the ability to be focused forward/down the road.

 

The only thing special about a projector is it has an internal light shield to prevent/minimize glare. Unfortunately this has lead many to incorrectly believe that you can put any light source in a projector and it will function the same, when that isn't the case. As an example that people can relate to, think about an adjustable flashlight like a Maglight, where you can change the pattern by adjusting the reflector position. If you bring the light source into focus you end up with a smaller high intensity beam which projects further, and out of focus results in a larger pattern that is not as bright, and is more of a flood light which will not project as far. A replacement LED is somewhat similar to this concept, except rather than adjusting the reflector bowl in a projector, you are adjusting the light source, and LEDs move the light source out of focus. How much out of focus depends on the design of the LED, so your headlight pattern becomes more of a flood light in most cases.

However from the driver seat, you are seeing more light right in front of you due to the flood effect, which makes you believe you can see better and think your lights are brighter, but headlights should illuminate distance not immediately in front of the vehicle. Like the Maglight example, you have shifted away from the focused light that is required to illuminate distance, but it looks brighter because of the light now immediately in front of you, which is supposed to be minimized in relation to the distance light in a headlight. So driving on a dark highway, you may over drive your headlights since the light may not illuminate an obstacle with enough time for you to safely react to it, because the distance projection is reduced.

The key to making a replacement LED light that works acceptably is to to make it as small as possible and accurately replicate a halogen filament in placement. However the LED also needs to generate enough output to overcome the performance tax it will pay for effectively not matching a halogen filament. It is tricky to make very small high output LEDs since heat is an issue, and as LEDs get hot their performance drops, one of the ways to help reduce heat is add more material for heat transfer as a heat sink, but that often makes the LED bulkier and less focused and now you are back to a poor LED. Both the Hikari Ultras and Morimoto 2stroke 3.0s have come up with different creative solutions to this problem, while having the most focused designs on the market which is why they excel when most others don't.

 

These new ones have been posted a few times. They have mounted the very hot driver on the back of the LED that needs to be kept cool. Good for the marketing of the packaging, but a very poor design choice from a performance perspective. As LEDs get hot the output is reduced, which is why you have the driver separate from the LED, to remove significant heat from the LED so that is performance better. Maybe the fans can keep up with that, but performance would be better with the driver separate, there is a reason no high output LEDs use that design. Maybe I'll try them at some point, but I don't find the design promising.