The Magic Crytal LED Car Bulb review!

it is not the brightest you need to look for, but the one that works best with your headlight, which kit that is… that is only possible to answer if someone who had tried several of them on exact car as yours. which will not be easy to find, otherwise you’ll have to try few and see how they work. or more like , if you like how they work, cuz none will worked properly with optics that were not designed for the light source. but if you insist of swapping, this will be how you find the best for you.
several years ago i read that certain kind of leds worked great, so i got those exact lights, installed them, and they worked worse than what i had before. so what is good in one man’s opinion, is unacceptable for another guy

I picked best two costumer photos I found on Aliexpress regarding “Magic Crystal LED” bulb (it can be bought under 4 different retailers, different OEM but they are same)

Projector headlights or optics in close valley (Sharp borders of aspheric lenses are clearly seen):

Reflector headlights:

They both look like short light beam? If I’ll judge photos they both look perfectly fine. Since I am aspherics fan first one looks much better with sharper borders but I have reflector headlights so mine will probably look like bottom one with wider spread…

alpg88,

This one seems like universal fit as you can see by photos.

yes, they will all physically fit, but they will all work different with different optics, and since the optic was not build for those, the beam quality will differ from car to car.

If they did, they wouldn’t get type approval. So I think that properly done LED bulbs are close enough to halogen for that to be a non-issue.

[quote=luminarium iaculator]

HID retrofit can blind others due to sheer brightness. LEDs are dimmer but it doesn’t mean there’s less glare - due to different optical characteristics and artifacts there can be much more glare! Like in your picture!

[quote=luminarium iaculator]

Your eyes are wrong, they look horrible! There are tonnes of glare in both puctires.

Yes, who cares about safety, right? There are nowhere near accidents on the roads right now, we should die more!

I said they can provide shorter range as that’s usually the cse with LED retrofits.

Being in the same manufacturer group says NOTHING about the optical characteristics of the reflector.

That beam patters is horrible as well, there’s monstrous glare that illuminates entire house and a tree in front of it.

You will not pass the inspection for one more reason - those bulbs have fans and they’re pretty loud. Guy performing the inspection will spot it right away.

lmao, whose approval?

Yes of course. We already mentioned that variables at the beginning of this thread.

As I said some reflectors are more forgiving than others but it has to be a specific bulb-reflector combination, every single combo has to be certified separately.

Phantom23,

You are mentioning glare. “Glare” or “useful spill” coming out of the reflector light is there. You can’t bypass natural halo effect of reflector headlight!
Considering that this on pictures is 6500k cold white tint of Osram LED it is not “Glary” at all.

You can always choose neutral or even warm LED tint for less glare so again I don’t see any problem with either type of beams on upper photos, and one more proof of LED superiority to Halogen bulbs, and the people who like halogens can choose LED bulb with warm tint

I drive a lot at night, you can spot the mods right away… usually so far out of adjustment and angry blue. I do wish for better headlights, but I will not blind the other driver like they blind me.

It’s not useful spill, it’s called glare. It’s blinding the oncoming traffic. Color temperature has nothing to do with it.

It does:

23:07 - H7 halogen - 1470lux
34:11 - noname crystal #1 - 1080lux
35:18 - noname crystal #2 - 760 lux

They are crap.

when i installed so called cree bulbs (they had cree cxa led, but the whole thing was not made by cree) in my 2013 accord, i noticed right away that signs in my underground garage that i used to see with my stock halogens, i could no longer see with new leds, the headlights lost their aim, and light was everywhere, like a flood light, I took them off, returned, and never bought any kit again. now more and more cars come standard with leds, so in 10-15 years we’ll forget about these lights like we forgot about cd changers in cars. and aftermarket audio in general.

Phantom23,

Nice find man! :+1: Man nothing against you but I have to inform you that you are wrong again :student:

Why?
Ok at 23:07 you have H7 halogen in projector type of headlightwith 147 on light meter or 1470lux BUT:

at 39:15 you have real “Magic Crystal” light but this one is with Cree emitter and we all know that Osram is far better than Cree at emitter surface brightness…
But no matter for that Cyclon LED type 35 (“Magic Crystal” with Cree emitter) is better than halogen as you can see lux meter going more than 155! Or 1550lux! :beer:

Nice find man. I appreciate that. Now I know I will receive “right stuff”. :+1:

So you didn’t get what’s in the video. There are three types of reflectors: H4, H7 and H11 based. Only H4 and H7 were tested with halogen bulbs. The last type of “crystal” (over 39 minute mark) was tested in a different reflector than previous ones so the result is not comparable. It produced ugly distorted beam that was much dimmer than “Cyclone type-38” LED retrofit.

It has nothing to do with the brand, both offer multiple types of LEDs that vary a lot when it somes to brightness, intensity etc.

phantom23,

I got everything I needed to know from the video… Thanks for video again :+1: Lets start:

- I ordered Osram type of “Magic Crystal” LED 60W version which differs from tested subject on youtube and it should be at least 20% brighter(if not more) than in Russian video. But ok even if it will be same intensity as Halogen that is still good…

- Osram LED really has higher surface brightness than Cree emitters(hint look at Djozz tests), and they have furthest throwing emitters and the best final finish of emitters on a market.

- From that test you can actually see how much better are LED bulbs comparing to halogen as you mentioned “Cyclone type-38” which is 2 sided led emitter bulb which produce 4500lux on that test!

But 2 sided LED Cyclone type-38 is giving distorted beam with blinds spots while Cyclone 35(Magic Crystal) gives even and much nicer beam as it is 360 degree light / less intense light but nicer imho.

What that means:

- It should not have any focusing issues/without blindspots in a beam

- It should stay within lux regulation laws since it is just bit better than halogen

  • It should also produce less glare than 2 sided led brother

You took this 20% number out of your bum. You have no reason to say it will be any brighter than Cree. Or halogen because the H7 variant was much dimmer than halogen.

One domeless Osram LED has higher surface brightness than Cree LEDs which were designed to be domed. That’s not the emitter used in LED retrofits. Multiple other Osram LEDs have much lower surface brightness.

Cyclone 38 produced good cutoff line with quite even hotspot right underneath. Meanwhile Cyclone 35 produced wider and discolored cutoff followed by misshaped hotspot (split in 2 light rays) which was 5-10cm below the cutoff line. Cyclone 35 gave the worst beam profile in the entire test.

You are right. I hope it will be brighter. That is currently one of the most expensive LED bulb set on aliexpress. Where did you seen in a video that H7 variant was much dimmer than halogen? I saw it is much better.

It is less likely that Cree would beat Osram.

That test is only relevant for lux results observation and beam pattern of projector headlight or headlight with lens. We yet have to see performance in reflector car headlight.

If you say that in your book Cyclone 38 looks better than ok… We are talking about car LED bulbs in this thread. You have right for your opinion. :beer:

But single emitter of “Magic Crystal” has cooling advantage. It has only one emitter on lets say 20mm DTP MCPCB (I don’t know this data I am estimating). From Aliexpress test it draws 5A out of 12V power supply and that is good…

I would rather want safer and cooler light than more powerful multi-emitter light driven on higher amperage which produce much more heat and should logically have higher failure rate…

Say what ya want about cops not knowing but my dad is a former mechanic (40+years) and now a local constable. He will pull ya over, write a fine, and have your car towed for running illegal lights. He has Nyctalopia (as well as I) and don’t take well to illegal lights trying to run him off the road.

He also write up the a holes running off road lights on the road at night. Those guys throw too big of d bag he has also called in the game warden to nail them for spot lighting wildlife. Far more goes into that than just a fine.

As much as I love leds and what can be accomplished with them, they are an absolute horrible idea for retrofitting into a reflector housing that was not designed for them. There’s a good reason they’re illegal in many places, whether or not it gets enforced (around here it does not, unless they’re blue/purple/etc), whether or not someone is actually caught or fined. The glare on almost all of them is really atrocious and they do NOT light up better or further than the halogens the fixtures were designed for. There are illusions to the eye, yes, and some of that comes from glare (that affects other drivers, but not you), and some of that comes from the change in color temp. I bought some of the newer gen a few years ago (no light pipe but a much better approach to orientation and die size than most of them) and it was a big mistake. My lenses were nice and clear, not all all yellowed or crazed (that’s very important), adjusted correctly and checked carefully to book specs, and I still got flashed by several drivers in the two nights I had them installed. Downroad visibility was the same or slightly worse, could see a little more to both sides and right in front of the bumper, but overall it was not an improvement and honestly the 6000K-ish got a little tiresome on my eyes when driving in rural areas. I did notice that reflective street and traffic signs were a lot brighter and would light up from farther away…which told me right away there was a ton of glare to others even if my eyes couldn’t make it out as well just looking at the beams. Took those out pretty fast. Got a new car after that with projectors and tried the same bulb design…no improvement although the housing of course did better in terms of glare. Went back to the halogens.

Factory LEDs seem to be either really good or just decent, depends on whose they are. The cold white temp is awful, though, and I seem to hear more and more that people do not like them as much, especially in rain and fog. I think LEDs will arrive sometime soon and hopefully they will adopt a warmer temp in the 4000K-4500K range.

But if you have reflector housings, please just skip the LED bulbs for them. Looks cool, might look better in urban areas if you don’t care about other drivers’ vision, but just clean up the lenses (or replace the housings if they’re really bad) and put some new halogens in. That is a huge improvement for many cars and people don’t realize how “dirty” their old lenses and bulbs were until they see crystal clear again.

Lots of previous threads here on BLF (and on CPF, but older) and almost everyone seems to agree that they’re not a good choice, and why. If you have to find out for yourself, just do the best you can for a proper installation (like a real proper installation) and take your chances. I know upgrade kits, if available for your car, and super expensive and very involved to install, but that’s really the way to go if you just can’t live with your halogen.

My polite two cents and experience.

I ordered some GTR Ultra series 2.0 led headlights. They should be here tomorrow. They're supposed to be as good as it gets for led headlights. I'll give my opinion on them once they're installed.