The ultimate headlight upgrade H4 (not LED or HID)

Alright.. ordering 2 sets of those from BulbAmerica.. nothin in the garage. Thanks for the link.

 

I have three extra sets. Two sets are kept in storage behind rear seat. Also have spares for fogs (H11) and rears.

 

There seems to be a weird trend in my city. There a lot of 2nd gens with 3rd gen Taco or 5th gen 4Runner wheels, and aftermarket headlights where the fancy DRL is much brighter than the headlights themselves. They have halogen projectors that look like they have a 194 bulb in them.

 

That’s just most of the cheap Chinese aftermarket using garbage projectors as the lights are sold on looks, not performance.

 

Hella 80/100w H4s



These bulbs have always peaked my curiosity. In theory with a lower power rating than the 90/100 Osrams, you could make finer filaments for better focus while still boosting output over stock. Hella claims a +150 output intensity rating. The Hellas are relatively inexpensive, so I decided to finally give them a try.

Hella outsources manufacturing to both China and Korea. Seeing these were made in Korea I had reasonable hope for good performance.


Stock Osram 9003 (left) vs Hella 80/100w H4 (right)


Yeah. I did a double take on that too. I swapped the Hella bulb with the other one from the blister pack, same poor performance. The stock bulb isn't actually that white, it is just the Hella is that yellow, which makes the stock Osram appear whiter.

80w Hella bulb... pulling 70w (5.1A x 13.8w)


Look at the amp draw chart from the original post:


Even the stock wattage performance Philips +150/+200 bulbs pull more amps than the "high wattage" Hellas while also offering high efficiency performance gains.

Stock 9003 Osram vs Hella 80/100w H4 low beam


Just. Ouch. I could not believe this product was this bad. I seriously questioned the results and I triple checked everything; switched bulbs, cross checked my highly accurate digital spectrometer, swapped power supply leads. Literally everything I could think of that would affect the output measurements, and yet the Hellas were still consistently way under stock in terms of performance. This is not an unusual phenomenon in high wattage bulbs, it has been documented earlier in the thread with Hella's higher wattage 90/130w bulbs, but I was really surprised to see the 80/100w ones do just so incredibly poorly.

For perspective Hella 100/80w vs Osrams leading 100/90w high wattage bulb


The German Osrams are about 4.6x the output intensity of the Hellas. No contest. The Hella color temp is also very low, even for a halogen, far warmer/more yellow than stock.

There is a short article on how high efficiency bulbs work to boost performance here. High wattage bulbs basically do the opposite, by having less precise/larger filaments they reduce output intensity even if producing more raw output, so to have a good performing high wattage bulb you must minimize the focus loss while increasing the output intensity to maintain the focus precision with more intensity. These high wattage Hellas are definitely not recommended, with massive output intensity losses compared to stock. Stock is 2.5x+ higher intensity than the "High Wattage" Hellas. The stock wattage (though higher than Hella) performance Philips Racing Vision bulbs are 4x+ higher in output intensity than the Hella High Wattage bulbs. Just speechless on how pathetic of a product these are.

Out of all the high wattage H4 bulbs I've tested, Osram still seems to do it best.

 

seeing that link reminded me I needed to order some.. so I ordered 6 lol

 

That is absolutely wild how bad the performance is when the stock long life bulb is 250%+ brighter. I have never been a fan of Hella halogen bulbs just because of bad bulb life in my experiences (going back 20yrs), but this is on a whole new level! It surprises me just how bad they screwed up on a simple Halogen bulb when Hella is one of the leading light manufactures and how amazing their sealed beam style housing are.

 

This is a great example of why the Tacoma World Lighting sub-forum is absolutely the best place to go for factual, unbiased, instrumented, testing and information. Who would have guessed that a world leader in lighting products would come out with such a turkey. We're all extremely lucky to have @crashnburn80 here to help and guide us. Thanks crash!

 

I think it's also important to note that wattage is not a measure of light output. It's actually a measure of power consumption. That said, it's been used as a proxy for how bright / powerful an incandescent light is for many years. Where this becomes much more obvious is when you compare an incandescent light source / bulb to something like an LED light source which (generally) puts out much more light output, but draws far less power.

In the case of the Hella high wattage bulbs crash tested, it (sadly) further proves that power consumption does not equal light output. I'm willing to bet that many folks will trust the Hella brand and buy them anyway. At least they're not stupid expensive requiring an explanation to mama as to why she can't see crap with the new headlight bulbs.

 

I finally did a long highway drive for the first time after installing the harness and Osram bulbs. Pitch black, winter road conditions. OMG, what an upgrade over the stock bulbs. Also WAY brighter than any aftermarket LED bulb (yes, I'm ashamed to admit that I have tried them too). Driving with the high beams on even my wife commented that it was almost like driving in the daylight. Thank you @crashnburn80 for all the work you put into these tests.

 

Noticed my headlights were real shitty last night, yep, burned one out. Went to change them today and for some reason I had tried these. Can't remember why. Put some 100/90s in, and ordered some more. These 60/55 were ok, but nothing special, obviously

 

Looks like Nightbreaker Lasers?

 

Yes, that appears to be it.

 

The stock bulb is a Osram Standard 9003, not a long life, even so the results are surprising. Hella doesn’t actually manufacture their own bulbs, they are outsourced to factories in Korea and China. In the 3rd Gen headlight thread Hella’s H9s have shown to be excellent bulbs, both standard H9 and Performance 2.0 H9s. However it appears their high wattage H4 bulbs are not up to par.

What is surprising though is they are not 80w as advertised. While high wattage bulbs rarely match the exact number, more just a rounded approximation, the stock wattage Philips performance bulbs actually draw more power while also being a high efficiency bulb resulting in substantially better performance. High wattage bulbs can generate more raw light output, but if they sacrifice focus with larger filaments in doing so then the focus is reduced and so is the output intensity.

 

I'm running them now till I get the parts in for this headlight upgrade. They are covered in Osram Nightbreaker +200 post #4066. Relatively good stock wattage low beam bulbs, not quite as good as Philips Racing Visions and certainly no match for the Osram Superbrights, but much better than stock.

 

That's a good point. I just meant that it is surprising Hella would allow a bulb that poor in their line-up, maybe their quality control hasn't caught it? The reason it surprises me is that 9003/H4's are still widely used around the world and Hella is a big name to many.

Also, do you have any experience or knowledge with these replacement lenses? I saw them in another thread and asked what the OP thoughts were on them but haven't heard back. I don't expect them to be OEM quality for the UV coating, but as long as the fit is good I can sand them and clear coat them.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mKB3fRG

In your opinion, how much better are the Osram 100/90 compared to the Osram Nightbreaker Laser? I need to take my retrofitted headlights out to restore the lenses and make some changes I've been putting off. I'll have to put the halogen ones in for the time being with no particular rush to get the retrofitted ones back in since it's winter. lol

 

I didn't go anywhere last night, I'll get back to you on that

 

Have been running the recommended setup for some time now and absolutely love it! Only thing, are there whiter recommended bulbs by now? Or is the optilux still the best option? Curious since my dog lights are a cooler temp and it's driving me a bit crazy

 

The Philips Racing Vision are slightly cooler in temp, you can see the output temp charts in the original post. There are no good high wattage bulbs that are cooler in temp. What are you running for your fogs? Ideally a selective yellow SAE LED assembly will provide lower color temperature in your foreground which isn’t distracting like having whiter light in the foreground.

 

Real world eyecrometer says that it's not even fair to compare them. The 100/90 are a marked improvement over the lower wattage bulbs. I've been a little concerned I aimed my lights too low, but going back to the 100s it isn't a problem, there's plenty of light now