Should you choose LED or HID Bulbs? Everything you need to know!

people ask us all the time when considering which type of lighting upgrades to do to their headlights what's better HID or LED in this video we're going to talk about the four main things to consider with each technology color components brightness and beam pattern [Music] [Applause] first let's talk about color color is a very important component to your lighting choice because different kinds of colors react differently in different driving environments sometimes if you're in inclement weather like snow rain or dust a more warm color like 4000 K or 3,000 K makes more sense but if it's a clear night some of the higher Kelvin color temperatures are better when you use a 5,000 K 6000 here 8000 K you get a bright crisp white color that most people prefer when driving the way color is created in an HID bulb is pretty interesting you've got this glass tube and inside the glass tube is a glass capsule inside the glass capsule our electrodes and a mixture of salts metal and gas watch our video on HID colors explaining in depth how that process works by checking out our other videos for now you'll just have to take my word for it when you turn on your headlights which electricity powers up the ballast goes up the wiring to the bulb and creates an electric arc inside that glass capsule which turns the gases and the mixture of chemicals into a plasma that emits light in a certain color and they can adjust the color by changing the chemical composition inside that tube it's a pretty volatile situation what happens is with an HID you get different colors out of the box you can do a 3000 K yellow 4000 K 5000 K 6000k 8,000 K 10,000 K 12,000 K you can even do red and pink and green they can make pretty much any color you want based on what's inside that glass tube the problem is you get a lot of variations from one manufacturer to the other from one batch to the other one time you might get a 6000 k bulb that has a hint of green another time you might get a 6000k bulb that has a hint of blue the more reputable the brand of light the more reliable the color will be but it's always a variable that you might run into now with LED creating color happens in a completely different way instead of having a volatile chemical reaction of gases and electricity it's essentially a circuit board when power goes from your headlight switch into bulb it goes right here this is a solid-state set of light-emitting diodes essentially what happens is on the molecular level when you give the bulb power there's something called a PN Junction and when atoms and electrons are moving back and forth they release energy that creates light on a white LED that light is actually blue and the reason your LED chips are yellow is as a filter you put yellow phosphor filter over blue LED light you get different shades of white depending on how much phosphor you put over the LED chips as a filter you get different colors more yellow phosphor gives it more of a warm color like 4,000 K or 5,000 K less yellow phosphor gives it a cooler color like 6000 K or 8,000 K that's why when a lot of people say I have a 6000 K LED headlight bulb or 6500 K LED headlight bulb they might be trying to make it but depending on how much yellow phosphor they put on the bulb it's gonna have different shades of white most LED headlight bulbs call their color 6000k it's the easiest to create it's cheap and it's what most people want that's why you don't see a whole lot of options out there for different colors the problem is one 6000k from one brand is gonna look different in real world than a 6000 k on another brand you're also seeing other headlight bulbs coming out in a 3000 k or a yellow color this is ideal for inclement weather like fog specifically fog lights that color is either created by having a yellow or amber chip with some kind of a filter or a white chip with a lot of amber or yellow filter in front of it it all depends on how the manufacturer decides to make the chip some methods are cheaper some methods are more efficient so it all depends on if you're getting a high-end product or a value brand with all that being said when we tested all the different HID colors we found that 5000 K and 6,000 K right in the middle of the color spectrum the most pure white possible gave us the best lighting performance so if you just want to get the brightest thing go with one of those colors next up components the short story is there's a lot more going on with an HID conversion kit you've basically got two or three parts depending on what you're working with you've got a ballast you've got your bulb and depending on your application you might also need some kind of a really harness let's start with a ballast the ballast is the thing that takes the electricity from the vehicle and converts it to a 23,000 AC high voltage electric spark to fire up that xenon gas light bulb depending on the brand you get they're gonna be manufacture a little bit differently but I assure you they've all got the same components on the ballast body you've got a power input and a power output that's going to be the same thing as something like this Morimoto even though it's modular you've got the ballast body you've got your power input and your power output so even though they look a little bit differently all HID ballast pretty much work the same and do the same thing the biggest difference between one ballast to another is how quickly they start how reliable they are and how solid the power is some ballast you'll get some fluctuation in color and brightness if the internal components aren't up to snuff but for the most part they all operate the same way when it comes to an HID bulb you've got two different types a single beam and a dual beam a lot of vehicles come with one specific light bulb for low beam and another just for high beam so your one headlight might have two separate headlight bulbs and then another vehicle that uses a dual beam bulb has one light bulb that does both high and low beam so let's start with a single beam this is probably the most common type of HID bulb you're gonna find and it's one glass cap so that does either your low beam or your high beam you've got the bulb with wiring coming off of it a grommet because normally an HID kit needs to pass through the headlight housing and your wiring to connect everything up the idea is your ballast is too big to fit inside your headlight housing so we have to pass the wiring through which is why it's fairly complicated you've got your power input on the inside of the headlight the grommet to pass your wiring through the headlight housing and everything out on the other side that connects to your balus it doesn't matter what brand you use they're all gonna essentially operate the same way you've got your bulb your internal wiring your grommet and your external wiring now when you go to connect everything it also connects the same way all these HID kits pretty much connect one way you've got your power that goes in there you've got two smaller wires that connect on the outside and there is your finished configuration now if your car truck came with a dual beam bulb like nine thousand four H thirteen or H four that does both high and low beam in one bulb you need a couple extra pieces of equipment the bulbs are totally different instead of having one bulb that does one beam this one actually has an electromagnetic solenoid on the bottom that when energized moves the bulb inside the housing when it's up it's further away from the reflector base which gives you your low beam when you turn your high beam on the bulb gets sucked down and the light source grows closer to the reflector base giving you your high beam now how do you control all of this it still plugs into your HID ballast the same way as before but there's an extra step if you have a dual beam bulb you also need a dual being really harness this one connects directly to your factory wiring and it has all the wiring to go to your battery the bulb and the ballast this thing stretches all over your vehicle from your battery to each headlight housing to each ballast and each bulb this kind of a harness is what's required if you have one light bulb that does both high and low beam it's a fairly complicated process with a little bit more install time but it's tried-and-true it works and it works well when talking about the LED light bulbs it's a much more simple refined and concise situation for a single beam bulb we've got one bulb that does just your low beam or just your high beam this is it you take out your old bulb you put in the LED you plug in the wiring for your original housing and everything fits inside the headlight housing it's a pretty simple install you've got one set of LEDs because this is just doing one beam pattern if you have a dual beam bulb where one light bulb does both beams like high and low together it's pretty similar you just see this again it's one led that fits in your headlight plugs into your wiring and everything fits nicely inside the housing there's no really harnesses to mount it's all very plug-and-play you can see the big difference on this one is instead of having one array of LEDs you have two one does your low beam one does your high beam there's no moving parts there's no extra really harnesses in general and LED headlight bulb is a much more simple install there are other types of LEDs that are a little bit different you've got some like this where there is no driver it's a very short cable everything's actually built inside the LED what happens with this type is they're usually not as bright and they're more prone to failure because the driver is built inside then you have some that are more like an HID kit with a connection in the middle the driver is external and you have a grommet to pass the wiring through sometimes this type can be really handy depending on your application but in my experience I found that most of them can be installed without the need for all these extra parts one of the most important topics when considering which way to go is brightness it's been a well-known fact for years maybe even decades that an HID conversion kit is the brightest option for your headlights but we're seeing a lot of LED technology get into the same realm in certain applications as the brightest HID kits we actually just finished a video comparing the brightness between 35 watt HID 55 watt HID halogen and four different LED headlight bulbs go check out that video so you see the conclusive results showing you which LED headlight bulbs are the brightest we even found some of them that were brighter than 35 watt HID and as bright as a 55 watt HID a year ago we couldn't have talked to you about that so it's a pretty exciting change in lighting technology generally speaking your original halogen light bulb comes in at about 900 to 1000 lumens of light lumens is just the measurement of brightness the measurement of light created by the light source in this case it's a little filament that glows when you give it power of 35 watt HID kit comes in at about 3,500 lumens a ballast plus that bulb creates light about three and a half times brighter than your stock halogen bulbs if you were to replace your ballast with a 55 watt ballast you'd actually be getting about 5,000 lumens of light that's a significant increase in light output from your stock bulb now when we talk about LED headlight bulbs there are a ton of options on the market you know HID is tried-and-true the technology has been perfected there's really not a lot of advances happening with HID but every single year we see more and more products that are better and better in the world of LED headlight bulbs today the gt-r lighting ultra - actually surpassed a 35 watt hid in our test in the other video and we proved that it's as bright as a 55 watt hid that is truly amazing there's no way we could have said that even six months ago let alone today now not all LED headlight bulbs are created equal if you go check out our other videos where we do a shootout between many different brands of LED headlight bulbs you'll see that even though they use similar technology similar designs some of them even look the same they all come in at different brightness levels and that's due to the construction what type of LEDs how are they built what type of heat sinks how much power do they draw and so we talk about that in different videos today we're just talking about the differences between LED and hid the biggest thing that you're gonna see was brightness with hid as soon as you turn on your headlights they actually get super dim probably less bright than your original halogen headlight bulb but in eight to 15 seconds they warm up and they glow a massive amount of light with LED it's instant because there's no moving parts there's no chemical reaction there's no charging up or warming up that needs to happen it's a solid state light emitting diode you give it energy it turns on next up beam patterns if you're considering an HID headlight up grade or an LED headlight upgrade that probably means that you originally had a halogen light bulb now you might have a halogen light bulb in a reflector headlight where it's all wide open with these big chrome mirrors or you might have a halogen light bulb in a projector headlight where there's a chrome ball behind a glass lens which focuses the beam in the past we would tell you HID is the only way to go for projector headlights and that's because the light source it's omnidirectional you've got light shining all the way around it and with LED headlight bulbs the LED tips are very unidirectional which means whichever way you've got the LED pointed is the only way the lights gonna shine so if they made the LED bulb in correctly and you put it inside a projector it's not gonna make a good beam pattern we've done a ton of testing with different LED headlight bulbs in projectors sometimes they work sometimes they don't we're seeing more and more how some of the best of the best LED headlight bulbs do work well in projector headlights and we've proven it many times so you can't just go by some random LED headlight bulb throw it in a projector headlight and think it's gonna work your hope for the best strategy isn't a strategy when we talk about reflector headlights the technologies are a lot more forgiving there's a lot more wiggle room in this kind of a headlight in what's gonna work pretty much all LED headlight bulbs will work in a reflector headlight to some degree pretty much all HIDs will work in a reflector headlight to some degree what we found is that even the best HIDs have a little bit more scatter in the beam pattern and glare to oncoming drivers but with the right LED bulbs we're seeing more precise optical alignment that makes the best beam pattern but it kind of goes both ways if you get the wrong LED bulbs that you haven't tested that you haven't seen reviews on that we haven't tested you might get more scatter than with an HID so you really just got to know your stuff you got to do your research and making sure that you're putting something in your headlights that's actually gonna work here's the goal mimic the original beam pattern if you put an LED bulb in that takes your Slim wide beam and blows it out of proportion you're doing it wrong having a tight controlled beam pattern not only helps you as a driver see better but it also prevents dangerous glare to oncoming drivers beam pattern is so much more than just glare and looks the better the beam pattern the brighter your headlights are and safer so are you gonna go with HID or LED HID is a tried-and-true technology it works in pretty much everything and it's a perfected type of product you're not gonna see a lot of changes in the market on an HID conversion kit whereas LED bulbs are an emerging new technology that are changing all the time the newest stuff and the best of the best is actually pretty exciting and worth considering you probably guess by now that I'm going with LED we test for the best of the best and when they're good they are good we do a ton of testing so if you want to see our other videos go check those out and subscribe so you don't miss what we come out with next [Music]

Channel: Headlight Revolution

Views: 5,193,755

Keywords: Hikari, Lasfit, Auxbeam, OPT7, Toyota, Tundra, Ford, F150, Chevy, Silverado, GMC, Sierra, Headlight, bulbs, best, brightest, cheapest, lumen, lux, LED, Lighting, s-v.4, sv4, v4, v.4, gtr lighting, morimoto, diode dynamics, ultra, 2stroke, sl1, vleds, micro, oracle, racesport, putco, nitro, headlight, fog light, reflector, low beam, high beam, supernova

Id: TAmpVnZD9TI

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 28 2019