Sounds like you’re getting confused between colour temp and CRI.
Lower temps often have higher CRI, but if you compare equal CRI LEDs then the only difference should be colour, not how good quality the light is.
Obviously a light that outputs lower wavelengths will make colours in that wavelegth pop more.
A lower colour temperature would have more red wavelengths and make a stop sign pop more.
The point is that this does not apply to all colours. A higher colour temperature light would make blue and green colours pop more, because it has more blue and green wavelengths than a low colour temp.
The point of CRI is to evaluate all the colours equally.
You can’t just say you only look at yellow and red objects all night and therefore lower colour temp is better.
It sounds like this model may need to be slightly rotated or else moved further inward/outward in order to get rid of the dark spots.
You could probably confirm this by holding the led next to a stock bulb and checking the placement of the leds against the filament.
You say it’s in the upper part of the beam?
If you think it’s a safety issue and it has a set screw on it, you might try tweaking the depth or rotation to try and improve the pattern. Even a tiny adjustment can make a noticable change.
What size lights are in your car? I use 9007, so if I find a good set, I will report back and let you know about it.
Thanks for your suggestion, but I already checked position of the LED before installing, I don’t think the model of LED I have can be adjusted length wise, It can only be rotated and I have the LEDs pointing sideways. The LEDs are at the same position of the halogen filament already anyway.
The beam pattern I think is not a problem of the LED, but the design of the reflector, its most likely the lines were there with the halogen bulbs too but not visible due to the light not being bright enough in that area. The lines are very feint and is certainly not a safety issue, they can only be seen when the LEDs are shining onto a plain surface at close range (like your garage wall).
I have a pair of these H4 versions running in my car for almost a year now.
Still working fine even when it runs scorching hot in my “very hot humid country”
I don’t know about other socket lamps but for my type the h4 only runs single LED and they lasts pretty well despite my situations.
The ballast/driver always gets to scary temperatures in less than 3 minutes but the LED lamp itself never really go hot to touch. The fins do get hot but that’s due to the engine heat mostly.
One problem I had was the High beam was TOO HIGH as if I was shooting the planes with my high beam. It also causes a dark shadow separating low and high beam rendering it useless to be there.
“plus one of the LEDs were growing green with age… not sure if heat caused the color change but oh well they’re useless to me right now”
I recently gotten myself a pair of these H4 bulbs for my car. Seems good so far. The beam profile is closer to the stock incans.
Well these however had poor built quality with cheap aluminum/tin cage covering the high powered “silent” fan
It gets hot the same like the other LED pair but these runs less hot compared to it.
One word. BRIGHT!
They are running x4 XHP50s after all compared to the single XHP50
Well I gotta find ways to deal with the massive spill of these bulbs as they are quite floody. Glare is a pain to adjust with these
The glare is caused by the large emitter size. The stock reflector was designed for a thin little filament. This is why I don’t recommend these emitters. They are fine for flashlights, but not a car reflector housing. Glare is a big deal. It will get you pulled over by police or worse yet, cause an accident.
Mod it with XHP35? Usually, the emitters are on a MCPCB that is riveted to the post. Maybe you could cut the rivets and replace those XHP50 with XHP35 on Noctigon or SinkPad to get a tighter beam. You will probably get more light as well, since those XHP50 are probably a very low brightness bin.
Edit: just looked again at your picture. It looks like those are screwed on, so even easier to remove if you wanted to mod it.
I’m not sure what you mean by “fins”. Cooling fins or the shield next to the emitter?
It’s possible the one before was very close to the stock filament location and the new one is a bit off center or else too far forward/backward. The source of light is a very precise thing. A tiny bit off can really mess up the pattern.
Well, yeah, but when someone mentioned 6500K headlights, my reaction was just a generic “Eww.”. I stand by my outburst.
To me, CW is just too “blue”. Almost by definition, there’s much less red content, so colors you expect to see in nature (ie, brown, whether trees, critters, etc.), will take on a dull look because they have fairly little blue content in their colors, whereas warmer lights will make them look more natural (and visible).
“Red”-warm lights with little blue content will also have crappy CRI, but for things that aren’t blue, they’ll just look that much better in that light than in CW.
Didn’t you or someone have this same discussion about the 3-pack of Nichia WW bare emitters at FT?
I have tried 5000k headlights even way before I became the tint snob I am today and they were nice and white but still a bit blue to deal with daily (did a lot of night driving at the time).
I think that my headlight tint taste is about the same as my flashlight, 4000-4500k seems about ideal (vs 4500-5000k for flashlights). Which interestingly enough most OEM HID’s are in that same range, there must be a reason.
i did something similar 9005 to hir9011, barley visible improvement, maybe the difference would be more noticeable in reflector type light, but in projector light (2016 sonata) it is not such a big improvement at all.
human eye does not see 2x lumen difference as 2x more light, you need at least 3x of lumens to see things 2x as bright
that is actually what factory hid and leds are, the reason you see them purple, or blue from some angles is optics,
4300k is the limit of white light, before blue spectrum creates glare issues.
not sure what projectors you had, but almost everyone who is educated on headlight performance will agree that currently, a top performing projector with a d2s oem bulb (osram/ philips) will outperform any pnp led. the only aftermarket led headlight product that is worth a look would be the cnlight bi-led projector, but it is still surpassed by most his projectors. also yes the razor sharp cutoff is still attractive to many people, some people are beginning to lean towards a softer. if you’re on facebook, you should post everything you posted here on the headlight junkies group page. all of the testing done by the retrofit source and lightwerkz over the years and on hidplanet have repeatedly demonstrated that an hid projector with a clear lens, oem brand d2s bulb, and oem ballast will trump pnp leds in width, throw, and lux
jasonWW, what projectors did u have before? i think you should give it another chance. aftermarkets such as the md2s 4.0 have come a long way. and custom brackets and designs has brackets that allow many oems to be swapped or bolted in….
I assume your directing this at me? It’s hard to tell without a quote.
I’ve been dealing with projectors and hid lights for about 10 years now so I’m pretty knowledgeable.
Earlier you said a “proper” hid retrofit will outperform any pnp led kit. Now your saying a top performing projector with a d2s oem bulb (osram/ philips) will outperform any pnp led kit.
Let’s just say that projectors perform on a scale. Some are better than others. Even the worst projectors are still pretty good.
In my car I used a kit called the G1, which is small. It didn’t require major surgery to the factory headlight bucket and it used a solenoid operated flap for the high beam. The G1 was at the low end of the scale due to its small lens (2.5” I think) and it’s slim bulb design (not as bright as an oem d2s bulb), but still pretty good. Better than the factory reflector and incandescent bulbs for sure.
I’m sure the md2s 4.0 would outperform my G1 projectors, but to fit them would require cutting out the back half of the housings and rebuilding it since their larger lens would require I set the projector further back in the housing.
So projectors/hid perform within a range (let’s say from good to great) and led kits perform within a range of (worse than stock to pretty good). Here’s a quick chart I made on my phone. Excuse the crudeness and spelling error.
I believe there are certain led kits out there that perform well above the stock bulbs and even better than some of the lesser performing projector and hid assemblies. Notice the overlap?
I don’t think a led kit in a reflector housing is ever going to be as good as the better projector kits, but that’s okay. Not everyone wants to spend huge money and do all that fabrication to fit the best projectors to their auto. Most folks just want better than stock and certain led kits can do that cheaply and easily.
Note that some led kits are actually worse than stock because they can scatter the beam and cause lots of glare.
This is the point I’m making. You can’t say projectors in general are always better than led bulbs. There is some overlap there where led bulb kits can give stock beam patterns, but be much brighter and give much better visability/safety compared to incandescent bulbs.
With hid bulbs, about 4300k is where you get the most output. As the temp goes down or up, output starts to drop. This is different from leds where output can keep going up as the color temp gets cooler and bluer. I think led output is the highest at around 6000k to 6500k? I’m sure someone here knows what color peak output is.
OEMs also use 4300k for the reasons mentioned above, such as better visability in the rain, making colors more accurate, etc…
If you see a bright headlight that color shifts from white to purple, then it’s probably a projector light. The lens sometimes creates those colors around the cutoff line. So as the vehicle goes through a dip in the road for example you catch a bit of color.
If the color is a constant blue or purple, then that’s just the owner being dumb. You can even get green and pink color hid, but they have very reduced outputs compared to 4300k.
