Report on the Philips X-Treme vision bulbs I installed on my S trim.
Many of us have noted that the standard Halogen lighing on these cars is not too good.
LED and HID conversions are expensive and not actually legal, and my car is a lease, so avoiding replacing the housings with projectors and expensive, difficult to reverse stuff like that.
Rather than go higher wattage bulb and take a chance on melting reflectors or damaging wiring or triggering codes I tried a set of "High-Output" bulbs from Philips.
Since you don't get something from nothing, these bulbs do not actually make more light, the theory is that the windings are tighter, acting more like a point source and allowing the reflectors to focus better, plus some blue filters to raise the color temperature a bit towards frequencies we perceive with higher sensitivity.
The bulbs are about $30 a set and I replaced the H7 low beams and the H11 fogs, so $60.
Low beams: Not dramatic, but definitely better. Beam is more even and does seem to extend somewhat further down the road. So we've gone from marginal to acceptable. I'm ok with that.
Fogs: Big, big difference. Again, even beam acts like a flood instead of scattered patches of light as before. You definitely see them when they come on as cornering lights. As fogs, they're much more effective. Major improvement.
Of course nothing is free, the life expectancy on these is half of normal bulbs, but I'm thinking $30 ever 2 years for lows beams and every 4-5 years for fogs is ok with me.
That's it.
Many of us have noted that the standard Halogen lighing on these cars is not too good.
LED and HID conversions are expensive and not actually legal, and my car is a lease, so avoiding replacing the housings with projectors and expensive, difficult to reverse stuff like that.
Rather than go higher wattage bulb and take a chance on melting reflectors or damaging wiring or triggering codes I tried a set of "High-Output" bulbs from Philips.
Since you don't get something from nothing, these bulbs do not actually make more light, the theory is that the windings are tighter, acting more like a point source and allowing the reflectors to focus better, plus some blue filters to raise the color temperature a bit towards frequencies we perceive with higher sensitivity.
The bulbs are about $30 a set and I replaced the H7 low beams and the H11 fogs, so $60.
Low beams: Not dramatic, but definitely better. Beam is more even and does seem to extend somewhat further down the road. So we've gone from marginal to acceptable. I'm ok with that.
Fogs: Big, big difference. Again, even beam acts like a flood instead of scattered patches of light as before. You definitely see them when they come on as cornering lights. As fogs, they're much more effective. Major improvement.
Of course nothing is free, the life expectancy on these is half of normal bulbs, but I'm thinking $30 ever 2 years for lows beams and every 4-5 years for fogs is ok with me.
That's it.
