The Daniel Stern site is legit. I've had difficulties with night road vision all my life, and have spent the money. Clip the H9's as shown. It's the best option, unless you buy LED specific housings.
Osram Nightbreaker headlights - burnt out after a year
- Thread starter ColoradoDriver
- Start date
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- Plano, Texas, USA
I like the Daniel Stern site. But sometimes we should be more open minded and try something new. I used to be against blindly putting in an LED equivalent into a halogen lamp housing. The reason was the halogen bulb has a small filament making a tiny light source to the reflector which is designed for that. The LED usually comes with a group of chips which makes the light source bigger and longer, and obviously it isn’t an ideal light source for the reflector designed for a tiny light spot. In addition, the group of LED chips have to be clustered on the side of the supporting structure, which will cause some blind spot for the reflector. Using a LED in the projector type headlight also creates problem on focusing to the magnifier lens for the same reason that the light source can’t be as small as the halogen bulb filament.
After I checked the specs and features of AUXITO H11 LEDs @Chocolate suggested, they did discuss the drawbacks of using a plug-and-play LED to replace the halogen bulb, and how their LED is different and trying to minimize them. I’m convinced and willing to try it if I’m in OP’s situation. 4.3 out of 5 rating with 9,604 reviewers at Amazon should be a good indication that it’s a good product. And he can always return it if he isn’t satisfied.
Of course the better factory headlights will always be the best alternative. I have poor eyesight in the night too and I always want the best headlights possible. The factory HID in the past, and the factory LED headlights right now, will always be the best option to have. That’s why I paid $1,200 for the optional factory HID headlights for my 2000 BMW 528i at the time; and I had to special order one as the salesman didn’t have a clue about the HID. And I also special ordered my 2016 CX-5 GT AWD with $1,600 optional Tech Package because I wanted the better LED headlights. Can’t wait to see the latest array-type LED headlights (ALH in Mazda’s term) available on new vehicles soon.
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- Plano, Texas, USA
The bad lighting is NOT caused by those LED manufactures, but by the restrictions of the halogen headlight housing design. However, the design of these LEDs have been improved lately to overcome these restrictions. Those manufactures in China are excellent and they can make very high quality products (hint: iPhones, or a luxurious BYD EV with 1,000 km / 621.37-mile range and 10-minute fast charging time) with reasonable prices. If it isn’t because the trade war against China and raised the tariff to additional 25%, we can enjoy even lower prices with good quality products.
Yes most halogen replacement LEDs aren’t legal because it cost a lot to get approved by the DOT. And they may never pass the regulations because the restrictions by the halogen housing. But for end users we can enjoy much better lighting (can never be as good as the factory LED headlights due to restrictions) with much lower prices from these LEDs.
DOT FMVSS guidelines? They may be good in 1950’s but they’re totally outdated! Remember the sealed beam requirement? Remember the ugly “3-dots” on headlight lens requirement for headlight alignment? Remember the wattage restrictions (55W low-beam / 60W high-beam)? Remember the poor light patterns on US headlights comparing to Euro headlights? Remember the low-beam、hign-beam 2-stage requirement? The last guideline (restriction?) on 2-stage low / high beam finally got removed recently after years of effort filing petitions by Audi and Toyota to DOT and NHTSA. We finally should be able to enjoy the latest and greatest LED array headlights like Mazda’s ALH which has been available in other countries for more than 10 years!
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- South Carolina
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- 12 MZ5 13 CX-5
Yet again, literally the only company in the world that has successfully done this is Osram. It takes a *tremendous* amount of engineering to overcome this obstacle.
I have personal experience with those Osram H4's, I used one on my bike.
I went from the factory halogen to the Osram LED. Big difference. But then I learned that motorcycle charging systems are completely different from car charging systems, and the need to have loads on them, or you can burn up the regulator. Because of that, and because I didn't want to go back to the crap stock unit, I looked up the H4's that DSL recommended.
WOAH!!!
The jump from factory to Osram LED was big. But the jump from the LED to a properly designed high performance halogen, specifically the Tungsram +120 that DSL recommended, was absolutely massive. No other way to put it.
In a halogen housing, a proper halogen bulb will leave even the best LED's on the market in the dust.
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- Denver, CO
Well I feel more comfortable trying the H9's and clipping them for now then I do trying LED's in a housing not designed for them, especially since a lot of those reviews said 5 stars light is good, but then they got flashed by oncoming traffic thinking they were using their brights.
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- Plano, Texas, USA
I got flashed too many times by oncoming traffic with the factory HID headlights on my BMW and the factory LED headlights on my CX-5. They‘re much brighter and whitish which make oncoming drivers feel like you’re using the high-beams. Besides, the LEDs themselves have nothing to do with low-beam light pattern cut-off, it’s the headlight housing, and they can be adjusted.
And just remember the reason why the H9 halogen is brighter than H11 halogen is because H9 has higher wattage, 65W, than the H11 which has DOT allowed 55W used on the low beams (see my post above about DOT FMVSS guidelines). In other words, using 65W halogen bulbs on the low beams isn’t “street legal”. I also saw some complaints that the wire to the headlights feeling hot even melting by using the 65W bulb although I believe that’s a bit exaggerating.
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- Denver, CO
Interesting. OK, well will consider my options.
These bulbs are still halogen, but a different type of halogen. The 9011's are HIR. No, not HID, HIR. Halogen Infrared. Because they're halogen, they behave perfectly in our factory housings, no mods to the housings whatsoever.
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