LED VS HID

[86salmon]

Leds are getting better fast. Within another 5 years they will blow hid away. Hell they are knocking on that door now.

Taking this with a grain of salt...

• It's from a vendor
• They gimped the color in favor of led
• The hid bulbs look improperly installed (shadow!!)
• There's no measure of throw or distance test is taken at

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[turbo lover]

Leds are getting better fast. Within another 5 years they will blow hid away. Hell they are knocking on that door now.

Simply measuring the maximum intensity of a light source is not a very useful test. A light like this would do well on that test, but we would probably all agree that it would be a terrible headlight for night driving.

 

[Shankmeyster]

Morimoto's newest version of the 2 stroke seems to be just as good as HID's now. I took my Morimoto HID kit out of my old hatch and put the 2st gen 2 strokes in and they work pretty good. The new ones are even better.

 

[julianzh]

Morimoto's newest version of the 2 stroke seems to be just as good as HID's now. I took my Morimoto HID kit out of my old hatch and put the 2st gen 2 strokes in and they work pretty good. The new ones are even better.

Not anymore, GTR Lighting Ultra 2 beat them.

 

[geoken2]

Not anymore, GTR Lighting Ultra 2 beat them.

Just wanted to mention again that GTR Lighting is Headlight Revolution's brand. Of course its totally possible that they are both the in-house brand of the shop doing the review and the best bulbs in the review. Just something to keep in mind when using headlight revolution as the source of comparison.

Not trying to say they are intentionally misleading, but it is possible for unintentional bias. Like if you think x and y are the most important things in a headlight (out of 10 possible things) then you will both design and test to be really good at doing x and y but maybe you pay less attention to a,b and c.

 

[Penut]

So I bought the GTR ultra 2s to replace my 35W morimoto 5500k since one of the ballasts went. I have the after pictures but unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures. All I can say is it is way brighter than the HIDs. For what it's worth, when I compare it while driving to other cars with stock LEDs or HIDs they seem comparable I'm terms of brightness.

The cutoff looks good and throw is about the same to slightly less than the HIDs.

*I have a RHD Civic.

 

[geoken2]

So I bought the GTR ultra 2s to replace my 35W morimoto 5500k since one of the ballasts went. I have the after pictures but unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures. All I can say is it is way brighter than the HIDs. For what it's worth, when I compare it while driving to other cars with stock LEDs or HIDs they seem comparable I'm terms of brightness.

The cutoff looks good and throw is about the same to slightly less than the HIDs.

*I have a RHD Civic.

How close is the throw? Like 10% shorter, 20%?

I'm glad to read your post because a lot of people in here are making comparisons with really low end LED bulbs. Its great to see a comparison between the HID kit I'd likely be getting vs. higher end LED bulbs.

Now that you've had both on your car, if you had to do it over again (assuming the price of each was the same) which would you go with?

 

[Penut]

How close is the throw? Like 10% shorter, 20%?

I'm glad to read your post because a lot of people in here are making comparisons with really low end LED bulbs. Its great to see a comparison between the HID kit I'd likely be getting vs. higher end LED bulbs.

Now that you've had both on your car, if you had to do it over again (assuming the price of each was the same) which would you go with?

Actually the more I drive with the headlights the more I think they are better in everyway compared to the HIDs. The throw is probably the same (or slightly better) but everything below the cutoff is noticably brighter. I took some more pics this morning.

I would choose the LEDs because they are easier to install (no relay, less cable management, fewer things to mount, more compact), have no warm up time and perform better in my opinion.

 

[julianzh]

Holy shit, my morimoto hids can't even throw like that and the cut off suck too. Time to start a GoFundMe to buy that gtr headlight!

 

[Shankmeyster]

Would rather do a full bi-xenon retrofit for the cost those things go for.

 

[julianzh]

Would rather do a full bi-xenon retrofit for the cost those things go for.

Pretty sure most people bought it for plug and play aka convenient.

 

[Penut]

Would rather do a full bi-xenon retrofit for the cost those things go for.

That's fair, they are pretty expensive.

I do not know much about the process of doing a retrofit other than I have to open my headlights. I am not interested in having my headlight housing modified at all. I only wanted to see better at night, which the HID/LED drop ins did that. The aesthetic improvements are a nice bonus.

I was also thinking that when I sell the vehicle, my LEDs/HIDs are coming with me. I am not sure if it possible or how easy it would be to convert a retrofit back to stock.

 

[ELIAS64]

https://www.civicx.com/threads/gtr-lighting-gen-3-led-headlight-bulbs.11858/#post-739411

You guys missed out on the GTR Lighting Gen3s. They were on sale $89.99...

 

[Shankmeyster]

I've got the Morimoto 2Stroke 2.0's now and they are way better than the gen 1 2Stroke's. Throw is good and bright. Anyway you can get the quick retro kit from retrofit source for under $200 but a little over with all the options for doing it yourself. It's a direct swap over for the projectors and you get bi-xenon.

 

[geoken2]

I took this picture this morning when I was parked in front of a glass window and was able to get a good reflection of the light itself. Had to tweak the exposure abit to get it to show.


This is the Hikari Ultra LED (the current gen) . I would think this problem would be common with other brands.

They specifically advertise how thin the wafer that the LEDs are mounted on is; “0.8mm Ultra Slim Design. The next gen LED has an incredible slim profile of 0.8mm,same as the filament of a halogen lamp.” But there is still an obviously visible gap and with that a huge amount of forward projecting light is just non existent. I think this is probably a pretty big contributing factor in all the downsides with LED bulbs.


If you think about it, they boast about the thickness of the wafer being equal to the thickness of the filament in a normal bulb; but even if they got the thickness to 0mm it still would not project light straight forward the way a filament based bulb would.

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