HID or LED and why ?
Community Team
Joined: Jun 2016
Posts: 8,951
Likes: 7,486
From: Vermont
Well, depending on the housing.
For a standard reflector housing, the halogen bulb designed for it is going to give you the best beam patturn and put the usable light where it supposed to go.
You can use certain leds in that use a cutoff shield and theyll work well. I use the H13 4x4truckleds sells and I like them a lot. Theyre bright and the built in shield right under the low beam diode cuts the light off so it will not blind others. The beam pattern ends up kind of looking like two blocks side by side, but the do have a definitive cutoff, which matters.
An led with large diodes and no cut off shield will look bright but its not going to focus the light on the road. There will be glare and itll be in other drivers eyes.
HIDs never belong in a reflector housing. They need to be used in a projector only.
HIDs dont produce light the same way from a tiny filament like a halogen does (leds can use tiny diodes to try and mimic this). They produce a big blob of light and when used in a reflector housing, its not solely focused on the road, but will be equally thrown in all directions which does you no good and blinds oncoming traffic.
For a standard reflector housing, the halogen bulb designed for it is going to give you the best beam patturn and put the usable light where it supposed to go.
You can use certain leds in that use a cutoff shield and theyll work well. I use the H13 4x4truckleds sells and I like them a lot. Theyre bright and the built in shield right under the low beam diode cuts the light off so it will not blind others. The beam pattern ends up kind of looking like two blocks side by side, but the do have a definitive cutoff, which matters.
An led with large diodes and no cut off shield will look bright but its not going to focus the light on the road. There will be glare and itll be in other drivers eyes.
HIDs never belong in a reflector housing. They need to be used in a projector only.
HIDs dont produce light the same way from a tiny filament like a halogen does (leds can use tiny diodes to try and mimic this). They produce a big blob of light and when used in a reflector housing, its not solely focused on the road, but will be equally thrown in all directions which does you no good and blinds oncoming traffic.
