Headlight Upgrade - LED replacing Halogen

Route246

Route246

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Anyone have recent experience replacing halogen headlights with the newest LED offerings? I'm going to replace my '15 Prius halogens with LEDs I'm getting from Amazon. Our two other vehicles have LED headlights and I'm spoiled. The fitment is H11 bulbs. Prices range from about $45/pair up to $150+ so it is not that much to give it a try. I avoided HID because of the cost, size, heat and hassle. LED seems much easier and less problematic.
 
Most of the LED bulbs on Amazon are garbage. Do not let positive reviews (many of them fake) fool you into believing that its a great bulb. Because the sad reality is that many people don't understand what a proper beam pattern is. They see a ton of foreground light and light shining everywhere else (much of which is above the cutoff line causing disabling glare to other drivers) and automatically assume that its better than the original halogen source.

There are very few LED headlight bulbs that are properly designed optically to achieve the appropriate beam pattern. And even less that have both optical and thermal performance to maintain maximum brightness for a very long time.

One company I will say that has put in a lot of R&D to developing one of the best single filament LED bulbs on the market and that is Diode Dynamics. They have done plenty of photometric testing of their LED bulb in various headlamps to test for FMVSS 108 compliance. In projector and reflector headlamps they have faired quite well. Not only is the optical engineering on point, they have gone through great lengths to ensure that the materials used for the bulb assembly are high quality and ensure long life and high performance. Fully designed and manufactured in the USA from the ground up. Not a borrowed or copied Chinese design.

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With that being said, there are a few Chinese companies that also do put in the same effort to produce a quality LED bulb. There are a few details of a bulb that could potentially indicate its a quality bulb. Most of the best performing are ones that use CSP chips (Chip Scale Package) because of their tiny size and when stacked together can mimic the size of a tungsten filament. The Luxeon Z ES is probably the most popular. Any LED bulb that has large single chip usually means it will perform horrible.

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Now your Prius has a Koito h11 projector that is common in a lot of Toyota/Lexus vehicles. A member on another forum tested a particular H11 LED bulb and had good results.

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Halogen
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LED
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There are some other market H11 LED bulbs that are high quality but no beam pictures yet in US headlamps.

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The fact that Evo77 went Above and beyond to post so much information to help out the OP is impressive. Thanks for sharing.
 
Props to Evo77 for that information, just don't go throwing any bulbs in. Another very good distributor is TheRetrofitSource.com, Lightwerkz.com, and Opt7. Make sure your vehicle does have projector headlights because if not.... unless you have some kind of cutoff shield your going to blind many drivers.. and if you blind a cop, we will stop and cite you for it :( .
 
Unfortunately TRS doesn't offer a good performing LED headlight bulb. And Lightwerkz is only a installer/retrofitter and reseller. Opt7 only rebrands Chinese bulbs. They are not good performing bulbs.

With the right LED bulb, a reflector housing can achieve a proper beam pattern with very little extra glare over the original halogen. In fact all halogen reflector headlamps give off some amount of glare. It's just kept under the maximum glare levels allowed under the FMVSS 108 standard. Which by the way the US has higher allowed glare levels than Europe and Asia.

Here is the current H13 bulb I have in my car and the comparison I did with the halogen.

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Thank you for all of the feedback. This will be an interesting exercise.
 
I have an aftermarket LED bulb on my dual sport bike and I love it for off-road and speeds below 55mph at night. It is really freaking bright for lower speeds. If you're cruising down a dark road at higher speeds, it's not very good because it does not throw the light far enough.

Hey evo77, did you used to be on SRTFORUMS? That name seems very familiar.
 
Route246 said:
I chose these for the first pass: Amazon.com: CougarMotor LED Headlight Bulbs All-in-One Conversion Kit - H11 (H8, H9) -7,200Lm 6000K Cool White CREE - 3 Year Warranty: Automotive

I'm OK with making multiple purchases to get it right. This is 100% elective surgery so I can always revert to the stock halogen if things don't work out for whatever reason.
Click to expand...

Ok good. Yes I love Amazon for their returns. Makes it so easy.

I'm hopeful that the bulbs you chose are decent however its unlikely. :( But the good thing is I want to help you select the right bulb for your vehicle. One that will perform and provide a safe, compliant and usable beam pattern.

As here is more food for thought, below is a comparison of H11 halogen/LED/bad LED.

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And a thermal filter on the same image so that we can easily see the beam characteristics. The bad LED has no hotspot! This translates into poor distance visibility which is very unsafe. Most of the extra light is just foreground illumination (which often gives drivers a false sense of security because a ton of light is directly in front of them). I also want to point out that, as you can see, a distinct cutoff is still present with the bad LED. And just because you have a cutoff that won't glare to other drivers does not give this bulb a passing grade whatsoever.

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evo77 said:
Ok good. Yes I love Amazon for their returns. Makes it so easy.

I'm hopeful that the bulbs you chose are decent however its unlikely. :( But the good thing is I want to help you select the right bulb for your vehicle. One that will perform and provide a safe, compliant and usable beam pattern.

As here is more food for thought, below is a comparison of H11 halogen/LED/bad LED.

h11a.png



And a thermal filter on the same image so that we can easily see the beam characteristics. The bad LED has no hotspot! This translates into poor distance visibility which is very unsafe. Most of the extra light is just foreground illumination (which often gives drivers a false sense of security because a ton of light is directly in front of them). I also want to point out that, as you can see, a distinct cutoff is still present with the bad LED. And just because you have a cutoff that won't glare to other drivers does not give this bulb a passing grade whatsoever.

h11b.png
Click to expand...

I retrofitted the Cougar-branded H11 bulbs and drove around with them this weekend. The results are satisfactory in terms of brightness and improvement. I need to adjust the beam a few degrees upward which I will do once I get my garage door taped with calibration marks.

I drove around Los Altos (NorCal town notorious for having no streetlights) on Saturday night and the performance was quite good. The only downside is the performance is not up to my Focus RS or my wife's '18 RAV4 Hybrid Limited. From my standpoint, I'm probably done with the low beams for now. This is a significant improvement over the stock halogens.

I ordered Cougar-branded 9005 LED bulbs for the reflector high-beams. The halogen high beams are pretty good as-is but I'm hoping to get the same colder temperature of the LED to match the low-beams. I'm not expecting much for these as long as they are at least as good as the stock halogens.

Once I finish the high-beams I will probably revisit the low-beams and look for the improvement you mention, looking for a more intense hotspot in the middle of the projection beam.

Thank you for all of your technical input on this.

Specifically, do you have an H11 branded bulb you can recommend? Ditto for the 9005 high-beams.
 
Would you care to snap some pics of your new LED beams against your garage wall? Please be sure the distance is at least 20 ft so that the beam is developed.

I recommend the Diode Dynamics SL1 LED headlight bulbs from my first post. Unfortunately they are so popular right now that they continue to be back ordered (currently 6-8 weeks). If your in no rush I would place my order and just wait it out.

My second recommendation is the Xenon Depot Xtreme Pro, which I also posted above (blue gasket with aluminum bendable fins). Since we know how the beam pattern already looks inside a Toyota H11 halogen projector (from above) its also a winner.
 
Since the Prius came with HIDs as an option why not just upgrade to them?
 
I mounted these a few weeks ago on my honda HR-V and am very satisfied so far.. ..had numerous HID packs over the years, these mount so much easier. They come recommended to me from the honda forum , where many people are using them.

Amazon.com: NIGHTEYE-S1 H4/9003/HB2 LED Headlight Bulbs 2Pcs 50W 8000LM 6500K All-in-one Conversion Kit w/ CSP Chips Bulb Hi-Lo Beam Bulbs Super Bright LED Car light: Automotive

And these for my fogs:
Amazon.com: NIGHTEYE H11 H9 H8 H16(JP) LED Fog Light DRL 80W High Power Bulb CSP Chipsets White 2 Year Warranty: Automotive
 
Klasse Act said:
Since the Prius came with HIDs as an option why not just upgrade to them?
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It came with halogen, not HIDs.

One thing to note, there was nothing wrong with the stock halogens. They work fine. I just wanted something brighter to better compare with our two other vehicles.
 
Route246 said:
It came with halogen, not HIDs.

One thing to note, there was nothing wrong with the stock halogens. They work fine. I just wanted something brighter to better compare with our two other vehicles.
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Right...HIDs were on option, that's all I said.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 
evo77 said:
Would you care to snap some pics of your new LED beams against your garage wall? Please be sure the distance is at least 20 ft so that the beam is developed.

I recommend the Diode Dynamics SL1 LED headlight bulbs from my first post. Unfortunately they are so popular right now that they continue to be back ordered (currently 6-8 weeks). If your in no rush I would place my order and just wait it out.

My second recommendation is the Xenon Depot Xtreme Pro, which I also posted above (blue gasket with aluminum bendable fins). Since we know how the beam pattern already looks inside a Toyota H11 halogen projector (from above) its also a winner.
Click to expand...

Attached are the low beam and high beam shots 17’ from the garage door. Unfortunately there is a lot of backlight from the front yard lighting. I need to find a dark parking garage to get it right.

The high beams are beasts and reflector while the low beams are projector.

View attachment 62613View attachment 62614


Sent from my iPhone X using Tapatalk
 
I'm subbing to this thread because the H13 halogen bulbs in my Camaro are TERRIBLE!!!

Right now I'm looking at the *Headlight Experts* H13 bulb, does anyone have any feedback on them?
 
Don M said:
I'm subbing to this thread because the H13 halogen bulbs in my Camaro are TERRIBLE!!!

Right now I'm looking at the *Headlight Experts* H13 bulb, does anyone have any feedback on them?
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You started a thread a few months back about your bulbs. And I commented in your thread about H13 options.:xyxthumbs:
 
Route246 said:
Attached are the low beam and high beam shots 17’ from the garage door. Unfortunately there is a lot of backlight from the front yard lighting. I need to find a dark parking garage to get it right.

The high beams are beasts and reflector while the low beams are projector.

View attachment 62613View attachment 62614


Sent from my iPhone X using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing. Unfortunately the images are over exposed to really give a proper assessment of the quality of the beam. At that distance there appears to be a tremendous amount of foreground light (right under where the hotspot should be located). But technically your H11 projector (Koito) was actually designed to have more than typical foreground light (as shown in my previous wall shots). It just may be exaggerated by the unfocused light inside the projector.
 
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