i remember the first time I drove a car with xenon headlights I swore I old never buy another car without them. I could never go back to halogen headlights again. Are the jewel eye led headlights on par or and advancement to xenons??

Are they form over function or do they perform as good as they look?

 

I had a TLX loaner with the jewel eye LEDs and was very impressed with the quality of light those things put out.

 

As far as I know they perform as well as Xenons or even better. A single LED may not best a Xenon bulb in terms of range and width, that probably is the reason they use multiple LEDs (3 for low beam and 2 for high beam) to make up for that deficiency.

 

The head lamps work very well on our new RDX, very pleased indeed! Plenty of light, plenty of distance and width.

 

They are designed to be = to good Xenon headlights, but with out the warmup time and with lower wattage.


The Jewleyes in the 2016 ILX for example use only 47W combined (left and right) vs 70-80W combined for a OEM Xenon set.




That said, As someone who has a set of retrofitted Mini D2S projectors in my civic. My 2016 ILX does not have quite as wide a beam as my 55W Morimoto + Osram CBIs have. But then again, that system is a bit extreme.

I've also gotten used to the more warm look of my CBI's (running at 55W they have more of a 4700K look) vs the advertised 5500K light from my '16 ILX Jewleyes. But compared to the competition at that price point (most use reflector or halogen projectors) you could easily consider the JewelEyes on the ILX an upgrade.


I would assume the higher end models like the TLX, RLX, and MDX have a wider and more even beam

 

Are you the same guy from HID planet who does comparison tests of various bulbs?

 

lol yeah, that me =D

 

Simply put, they are brighter with stronger range. This is also why foglights are no longer used except as an accessory, just don't add much of anything to the standard LED headlamp performance.

 

Did Honda solve the jewel eye delamination issue?

 

Any one have feedback on LEDs at night with rain, fog, wet roads or falling snow compared to HIDs?

 

Oh I can give a little bit of feedback when I had a loaner TLX and MDX. We had some rainy weather in CA when I got both as a loaner on two separate occasions.

I will say that the TLX sits lower so the range is pretty significant in really seeing the road ahead, with the rainfall and wet roads, it illuminated pretty well compared to my 2005 TL I had with Bi-Xenon HIDs.

The MDX I had of course is taller, but it seemed at night time driving with rainfall it also did fine but the illumination of the road ahead, seemed the light did not disperse all too well. It was kind of hard with to see the road ahead for night time driving, but cloudy overcast rainfall during the day it was great.

But the MDX loaner had an all around better visibility in both night driving during rainfall and some fog in the early morning on the way to work compared to my MDX which I feel the HIDs don't illuminate the road that well.

 

My +9 year old 06 TSX with OEM HIDs have the best all around illumination compared to my RDX (2nd place) or MDX (about a 5 out of 10 compared to the TSX). I always figured the higher HID position in a SUV would illuminate better; but, real world evidence proves the contrary. I had to upgrade the MDX HIDs to Osram Xenarc 66240 D2S CBI Bulbs to at least get the illumination to about an 8 out of 10.

 

I haven't driven an Acura with the new jewel eye led's yet, but I can tell you that the MDX's I see with those headlights are amazing, they are incredibly bright, they even tend to blind me actually (almost like the auto level function is not working properly...). I LOVE the color temperature as well, PERFECTLY white, not even a hint of yellow and absolutely no blue.

on a side note, I also really like that acura went this route rather than putting on some led strips or something like that.

 

Yes, the jewel eye LEDs are definitely as bright as the xenons I have on my TL.

Haven't driven the car too much at night as daylight is longest now, plus this is my wife's DD.