Don't waste your money. I am finally convinced that no one will be successful in making a "drop-in" LED replacement which will perform (or have the same optics) the same as a bulb and reflector combination.
A true LED design is totally different and our cars are too old for anyone to spend the time and effort to make an effective LED solution.
Thebeautiful thing about headlights is that only the headlight assembly will not have many molding pitons. There are only 2 aftermarket variations that are out there right now. Furthermore, the headlight iself, the bulb, is something that is easily replaced and if we convert over to LED assembly instead of an incandescent/halogen bulb, it's really not that big of a deal as long as things are accounted for appropriately.
70 CRI and 6800K is nothing to write home about, and a poor choice in my opinion. I'd want something closer to 4000-5000K and at least 80 CRI, preferably 90 CRI. The LED market is evolving rapidly and higher CRI diode packages are becoming more popular... give it a little while longer and you'll end up with a much better product.
Also, on my road trip last weekend, I saw a Suburban with drop-in LED headlights (the light quality was a dead give-away). They were fairly bright, but the beam control was very poor - too much light where you didn't need it and not enough where you did. It's pretty much the equivalent of running around with your high beams on all the time.
I'm very acquainted with Mouser's catalog and am even working on a custom lighting solution from work that required quite a bit of time going through one of the largest LED optics catalogs I've ever run across:
ledil.com.
There are appropriate CRI and CCT numbers that correlate well and if an overdriven LED is utilized properly, you can compensate for the lack of lumens. I think you might be interested in the luminous efficiency of
cones vs
rods, near the bottom for scotopic, which gives us the S/P, scotopic to photopic ratio, which is the general ruling as to
how useful a light is in
mesopic conditions. However, most S/P rations are 'computed' via an LED's CCT instead of its spectral power distribution as there is alway a gap in lighting around the 480 nm region due to the limits of the technology.
Also, despite high CRI and due to that lower output around 480 nm, CRI isn't completely telling as to the quality of the light as color casts independent f the CCT can still be present. This is why spectral power distribution is the more accurate means of determining quality, though don't get me wrong as CRI still has its merit. If you want to read up more on SPD for light, have a gander at
black bodies and
Planck's Law. Here is a sight with a
decent interactive interface
If you want to investigate CCT a little more, the
Kruithof curve is a good example of understanding the aesthetic. Though it was not intended as a scientific guide, it follows closely to what we perceive as white under mesopic vision. For the level of light that is required when we flip on our headlights, going above ~4250 will start showing up paler and more blue as a result. It is possible to find
small 90 CRI, 4000K LEDs in the current industry thankfully, but they are a rarity and hard to find.
I have heard good things about the LED replacement headlights from the guys at
www.firewireleds.com. Here is the link to his headlight kits:
http://www.firewireleds.com/led-headlight-kit/
It is product that is brought in from oveseas, but he stands behind it. I want to put a set in my son's Mk4 Jetta and my Chevy Silverado.
He also owns
www.allhids.com and tells me that the led conversion in much better than the HID conversions that he and others offer especially in stock halogen housings. His LED replacement use an LED on the top and bottom of the mount with the low beam on the bottom and high beam from the top so that they are supposed to give a good beam pattern...
I haven't had the time to pick up a pair to try in anything of my own yet, and the trucks I have seen them in have been in the daylight so I have not seen the cutoff for myself yet...
I'll have a look at them when time permits. I spent several hours last night disassembling one of my two keyboards and cleaning the whole thing after our [small] dog managed to find her way onto my desk and walk around on it. To fix a couple concerns with keystroke, I ended up greasing each and every key too.
Anyhow, they key thing I've noted this far about LED headlights is to stay away from COB designs. You need a small bar of light emission in order to mimic a filament. As such a single chip or due chip LED that is in the neighborhood of 2mm thick by 5mm wide, this is an *estimate* and I need to destroy a bulb or wait for a burn out to be more accurate, will produce the closest light output that isn't too dissimilar to a standard bulb.
