At 6 years and 95K miles on my car, the first bulb (of any type) finally burned out: The driver's side low-beam. My car lacks DRLs, so I drive with my low-beams on all the time, meaning the bulbs had been operating for every one of those 95K miles driven over those 6 years.
Not bad for a tungsten-halogen bulb, right?
Leading up to this I had been thinking I was losing my night vision, as the headlights seemed dimmer and more orange. Turns out a large part of that was the bulb actually dimming and turning more orange: While the halogen gas within the bulb massively reduces the rate at which tungsten vaporizes off the hot filament, it doesn't zero it. And what does come off makes its way to the cooler glass walls, slowly making them darker and acting as a filter that preferentially blocks shorter light frequencies, leading to both the dimming and the orange-ing.
I jumped onto Amazon and ordered a pair of replacement halogen bulbs, knowing they'd be good to use. But a minute after pressing "Buy" I decided to check out LED replacements, just for comparison.
What I found surprised me, though it shouldn't have: LED bulbs putting out the same light as 55 watt halogen bulbs use 1/10 the power! At the other extreme, I could get 10x the light for the same power!
I canceled my order to give me time to think about this. Would LED bulbs be a better way to go?
The first decision concerned what power level to get. While the halogen bulbs used 55 watts, none of the LED bulbs got close to that, maxing out at about 40 watts for ones that could illuminate the moon. And some very powerful, popular, and highly-rated bulbs were available for barely over $20 per pair.
But in the pictures they all looked way bigger and bulkier than I expected, making me wonder if I'd have enough room to install them.
It turns out they were big because all had fans in them, to keep the LEDs at a safe operating temperature. I immediately knew there was no way such tiny high-speed fans would last the next 95K miles. Some of the bulbs even advertised having fans that were "easy-to-replace". Not really a good sign.
So I searched for "fanless LED headlight bulbs", and the results were more to my liking. I chose the highest-rated of the mid-priced ones, which cost $31 for the pair, compared to the $11 for the halogen replacement bulbs. The LED bulbs consumed only 8 watts each, but put out nearly 3x the light of the original halogen bulbs. So, 3x the light for 3x the price (and 1/7 the power) sounded like a good value to me.
I placed the order, they arrived the next day, and I installed them that evening. The difference was, well, like night and day. The higher color temperature reveals much more color at night, and the reflective paint on the road and signs was visible at least 4x further away.
I immediately felt safer. And my eyes worked just fine.
If you're still driving on tungsten-halogen low-beams, please stop! The upgrade to LED bulbs is well worth it from a safety standpoint alone.
