3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

So I'm a new Tacoma owner, and in my excitement went ahead and bought led h11's from Amazon (Sealight $50) in earnest of matching the drl's. I bought 2 sets for the headlights and the fogs. Installation was easy and they looked great on the garage door test.

First drive with them at night was moderate rain, on a dark back road without any street lighting. First question from my wife was, "are these led bulbs supposed to be better? Because I'm finding it hard to see."

I respond stating that it's probably because we have to get used to the whiter light.

My initial garage door tests were great. I saw how white and bright the light was and I was happy how all the front facing lights matched the drl's colour.

In city driving, I could not tell the difference since the ambient lighting was bright enough everywhere to see how well the led's actually performed.

Now, I feel the need to get better bulbs since what I initially thought led's would accomplish does not improve the situation. Granted they look great, but traversing those back roads with less light really don't justify looking great compared to safety and visibility.

I've read through this thread and realize I should get the GE 130's or a modded H9.

My question is, are there any led h11's that still perform better than the stock halogens that are worthy enough to consider an upgrade? I've read the hikaru brand led as the OP tested, but are there others? I don't want to jump the gun and get another set of led's from amazon that users haven't vouched for in visibility. I really like the matching colour output of led's to the drl's.

 

You should really read the research that @crashburn80 has done at the beginning. Just trying to save you getting flamed in here.

 

I have read through most of the thread and I realize that halogens are the way to go, and the best upgrade would be the GE 130's.

My question is whether there are led bulbs that are better than the stock halogens in terms of projection.

 

Fair enough, simple question, simple answer is no.

 

Truthfully, I'd go with the Hella H9's for low. Better price point for quality light.

 

I took the advice of several here and put Hella H9's in both LB and HB. Very satisfied with results.

 

Just ordered 3 sets from PowerBulbs of the GE 130's on sale and promo code.

I was going to do H9's but the 130's appear whiter based on the OP's tests. This still matters somewhat to me, so I opted for the GE 130's instead.

 

I got flamed by haters for posting but I am happy with Beamtech LED H11 $36 Amazon....driven in night and rain. Are they as bright as the GE MEGA ULTRA SUPER DUPER 130+ .....no...science HAS proven that....but it is brighter than my stock bulbs and definitely great fog lights! Plus as I look "cool" as they say ....LOL

 

If I lived more inwards into the city, where street lighting and ambient lighting is everywhere, I probably wouldn't have noticed anything less than what the led bulbs claimed.

But since I live near poorly lit back roads near farmlands, I can't justify my truck looking cool versus visibility.

 

I was joking about the "cool" .....that is what I got hated on before about. I live in rural areas with farms as well......I am just responding the post that I am happy with this bulb...are there brighter options...yes...but these are brighter than stock with better than stock throw and good beam pattern and brighter light....which fit the bill for me...that is all

 

I'm out of night time for the next couple months to do any subjective testing, but just to reiterate my experience: The GE +130's are far superior to the Chinese Phillips H9 Standard's at least in terms of what I could see driving down the road especially in terms of lighting up the sides of the road. The GE's look more "focused" and have a better beam pattern whereas the H9's looked "fuzzy" for lack of a better description. Both still absolutely crush the stock long life H11, as I found out driving home from a work event that went to midnight a few days ago with my stock bulbs back in for summer. I really am thinking that the outright power of the bulb isn't as important as the size of the element in a projector (vs a reflector where it appears more power = more better), but I do not have a good idea of how to test this.

 

I agree a 4 bulb sample size is statistically insignificant and certainly isn't perfect. But I am not going to test a 100 bulb batch, especially when testing dozens of different bulbs. It just isn't practically feasible, I already spend many thousands of dollars on this stuff and invest too much time and energy into it. I don't get paid for this. I have compared my overall outcome with the high efficiency bulb testing to an industry leading expert, and we arrived at the same conclusion.

The argument that I would chose a misaligned hot spot as best based solely on data was demonstrated as not true in the thread, where I specifically pointed out the LED hotspot was not where it should be, and the effects that caused on the beam pattern and presented data of both misaligned hot spot and data on readings of where the hot spot should be.

By running on battery voltage, not alternator voltage, the bulbs will have notably lower output, but it should affect them all very similarly meaning you will just have a different relative baseline. Voltage exponentially increases halogen output to the power of 3.4. So if you are running them all in very short test cycles off the battery so that the first bulb isn't at a power advantage over the last bulb, they should all suffer equal performance handicap. I run all my tests at 13.8v which is the voltage output measured at the OEM headlight plug on a running 2015 Tacoma (alternator output).

All good discussion, we just have different ideologies.

The GE +130s are 500k whiter than stock. It is a small increase and typically those looking to color match the DRL will not be happy with the color results as the small increase in color temperature isn't very noticable when comparing against the ~6000k LED DRL. However, the GE bulbs will massively outperform your LEDs.

While putting LEDs in your projector has performance issues, the projector keeps the incompatible light source from causing massive glare to oncoming drivers. Your fogs are reflectors, there is no internal light shield to clean up the incompatible optic mess, meaning you cause significant glare and scatter to oncoming drivers. This is an exceptionally bad practice. See this thread:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/

For LED fogs you need to use an LED housing, I've covered nearly all the options in this thread:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-led-sae-j583-fog-pod-fog-light-review.554813/

I know you were joking, I just like the opportunity to bump nerds.

Right, because while the Chinese H9 has more lumen output it doesn't have the increased projection and focus gains from the high precision smaller filament build like the GEs, highlighting the importance on projection not just raw output.

Here is a short article from Philips describing how shrinking the filament size increases projected output:
https://www.philips.co.uk/p-m-au/au...e-articles/article/improve-your-lights-easily

Reflector technology works the same way. If referring to my 2nd Gen thread the original bulbs are the Osram Hyper 85/80w +30s, applying both higher power and increased focus. Unfortunately those exotic bulbs were discontinued. I am repeating the same kind of exercise done in this thread, of testing all the performance bulbs to have data backed recommendations, in the 2nd Gen thread. The H4 platform has higher power options than the H11/H9, so I had to invest in some new equipment. But I'll compare high power vs high efficiency over there.

 

These just arrived from the UK. Philips Vision H9s.



While Vision is supposed to be +30, the back of the package says Standard. The markings on the bulb seem to indicate they are Standard bulbs. Need to get the Standard German bulbs to compare.

 

Like I said, I was in the garage with the door closed. There was not a lot of run time. I don't think a 66 A-h battery is going to suffer much voltage sag running a set of 65 Watt bulbs for about 13 minutes total (I disconnected the other headlight to make better measurements). Without doing any math, because nobody is paying me, I think that is around 2% of the capacity.

I guess I could hook up a charger next time.

 

Right, I was just pointing out the output will be different, but the tests are all relative against the other bulbs, and since all the bulbs will be reduced in performance by approximately the same relative amount, the tests still work for determining relative performance.

 

So..... funny thing. There does not appear to be any Philips Standard German made bulbs. The Standard bulbs are Chinese, and labeled "Original Equipment Quality", whereas the German Vision bulbs are labeled "Original Equipment". It appears Philips used the 'Vision' branding to set apart the better German H9s from the cheaper Chinese ones. Since Vision meant +30 on the rest of the product line, it looks like people correlated that the Vision H9 must also be a +30, however the package lacks the +30 branding and increased performance claims associated with the other +30 products and on the back shows pattern performance as 'Standard'. I'll still test it against the Chinese Philips to see what the differences in output are.

 

I have question if I use the GE + 130S for the low beams what would be the correct H9 hi beam for color match?

 

3500k. Although it doesn’t make much sense to color match the high beam, since you don’t typically use the high beam if others are in front of you, and if you did people will be too busy looking away/blinded to notice the small light color difference of 300k.

 

3500k. Although it doesn’t make much sense to color match the high beam, since you don’t typically use the high beam if others are in front of you, and if you did people will be too busy looking away/blinded to notice the small light color difference of 300k.

So which brand bulb (H9) would you recommend. Thanks very informative post I almost went LED thanks for straightening me out

 

Of the H9s I have tested so far, the German Philips bulbs do best, which is what Toyota uses as the stock bulb for the high beam. I do have some higher wattage H9s arriving between 4/4 - 4/11 according to DHL, which if they actually are higher wattage they may likely perform better than the Philips for high beam. But I'll have to test to confirm.