LED Headlight & Foglight Review

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Are LED headlights or foglights worth the upgrade? Do they really produce more light than halogen light? Will I get better light output from my stock housings?

This video is a comparison of a pair of 9006 LED 30W 3000LM 2-CREE Warm White LED bulbs in the fog light housings of a Lexus ES and Lexus GS.

Link to the bulbs:


Bulb replacement is fairly straight forward, simply unscrew the splash guard / under panel from the Lexus ES and look into the bumper cavity to access the bulb. The Lexus GS fog lights are even easier to remove, two Philips screws on the front of the bumper and the fog light assembly pops free from the bumper.

These LED's, from myled.com, come with a metal base that is significantly larger than a standard halogen bulb, although the length is the same. With a metal base, the construction feels durable, with the exception of the locking ring which rotates on its own making it difficult to twist lock the bulb.

Light output varies significantly with the housings you put these LED's in. Warm white LED's were ordered, but the color seemed to be more of a cool white than warm. Since there are only two high powered LED's on either side of the bulb (compared to all around lighting with a halogen bulb) optics really take a play in how the light is distributed, be it on the road, or into the sky.

In the Lexus ES fog light housings, which have a rounded or ovular shape, the LED light acted just like an HID bulb and exhibited a lot of glare with a significant amount of light going above the cutoff line, blinding oncoming drivers. It was significantly brighter than the incandescent bulb.

In the Lexus GS housings, the light was a lot more controlled, as its housings are rectangular. Since the LED is white, it showed up as a green light through the yellow capsules in the Lexus GS fog light housings. The beam pattern was much wider than the halogen bulb and significantly brighter though with a lot less glare.

In conclusion, high powered LED bulbs that are now emerging on the market are starting to output more than halogen bulbs and offer a reasonable low powered alternative for brighter light. Just make sure you've got enough room behind your headlight housings for the heatsink, and your reflector housings can handle the glare in a controlled manner.