sniper5

I know it’s lengthy, but you’ll have to read it all to get the idea.

What is the brightest halogen bulb?
For the 55W marked segment, sorted in order of brightness:
+50%: Philips Vision Plus (achieves its extra performance by increased luminance, not lumens.)
+30%: Philips Premium, Osram/Sylvania Xtra Vision
+0%: Philips Bluevison, Osram/Sylvania Cool Blue, Osram/Sylvania Halogen Plus, and OEM bulbs like GE.
-10%: PIAA Superwite (read on to find out why)
Narva bulbs are also top notch. Narva is a daughter company of Philips with one intention: compete with top notch products on the aftermarket. Philips themselves are OEM oriented.
Are blue bulbs dangerous?
Yes, many of them are. Here are the nuts and bolts of why blue bulbs are a bad idea:
The output spectrum of halogen headlamp bulbs includes *very* little light in the blue frequency range. These blue bulbs have a filter coating on them that allows only the blue frequencies through the filter. Because very little light is produced by a halogen bulb in this range in the first place, it is only this very small amount--a tiny fraction of the total amount of light produced by a halogen bulb filament--that ever reaches the road. This can be confirmed this with a good-quality non-chromo sensitive light meter; even a very apparently-bright blue bulb actually throws very little light.
Tests by the US Department of Transportation's Office of Crash Avoidance Standards found that a standard-wattage 9004-type blue headlamp bulb reduced the road lighting ability of a standard headlamp by 67%, and increased glare for oncoming and proceeding traffic by 33%.
This illustrates the difference between the signal images, which is what you see when you look at an illuminated light, and the emitted luminous flux, which is the light that is thrown from the bulb to illuminate surrounding items, directly or via a reflector and/or lens.
Aside from the disadvantage of throwing less light onto the road, another aspect of blue light creates another road hazard when blue headlamp bulbs are used:
Blue is the shortest wavelength/highest frequency color of visible light, and, as such, scatters the most readily. This is why the sky is blue rather than any other color from the sun's white output spectrum. And, you may find it interesting to find a dark blue storefront sign or something else that's a dark, pure blue against a dark background in the absence of white light. From any appreciable distance, it's almost impossible for your eyes to see the blue lighted object as a sharply defined form...the edges blur significantly.)
The Scoop on Osram-Sylvania CoolBlue, Philips BlueVision, Narva Rangepower Blue, and other "Blue" bulbs from reputable manufacturers.
The current crop of bulbs, widely available in auto parts stores, with a blue single-layer absorption filter on the bulb glass, which is there to make the light look whiter. These bulbs are safe and legal, though not particularly advantageous.
Some people feel that "whiter" light than is produced by a clear halogen bulb is better. Some people prefer the appearance of the headlamp, though its operating appearance with these legal "blue" bulbs differs very little from the appearance of a headlamp operating with a regular clear bulb. And then there are the true believers, who ascribe all kinds of magical (and imaginary) benefits to "whiter" light.
Some companies (PIAA...) even capitalize on this by claiming that their "55W bulbs are as bright as 85W" bulbs, among other nonsensical claims. Here's how this claim works: Higher-wattage bulbs appear whiter than lower-wattage bulbs. Think of the time you replaced a 60W bulb in your home with a 100W bulb. So the idea with these "blue" filtered bulbs is to have a lower wattage bulb that produces a similar light color to a higher wattage bulb. However, there is no such a thing as "something for nothing". Light color similarity does not mean you're getting more light, or better quality light — just that the light is of a slightly different color.
In fact, you could be getting less light from such a bulb than from a regular clear bulb, and here's why: A blue filter removes non-blue components of the light passing through it. Halogen bulbs produce very little light in the blue frequency range. When you put a blue filter on the bulb or lamp, you are reducing the amount of usable light that gets from the glowing filament to the reflector, to the lens and from there to the road. Prove it to yourself using nothing more than the windshield in your car...drive towards a yellow-orange sodium vapor street light and watch the light as it shines first through the clear portion of the windshield, then through the blue strip at the top. Up there through the blue, it certainly looks "whiter"...but it's also dimmer. If a bulb's sales material focuses on the color of the light rather than the amount of light, you should ask critical questions about the amount of light the bulb produces before choosing to use it.
The manufacturer optimizes the bulb's efficacy through filament and gas-fill technology, so that the uncoated bulb performs up near the top end of the allowable output range, or even slightly above the maximum allowable output. But the bulb is blue, which "steals" some of the light. If the bulb is designed to produce within the legal light level without the blue, the presence of the blue bulb will drop the output closer to the bottom end of the allowable output range. If the bulb is designed to produce slightly over the legal light level without the blue, then the bulb will perform nearer the middle or towards the top of the legal range. Here again, though, we can't have something for nothing. Not only are there legal limits on light output, but also on power input. These wattage restrictions prevent bulb manufacturers from simply ramping-up the bulb wattage in order to have a bulb that produces high-end output even with a blue filter. It took Osram-Sylvania, Philips, and other major-name bulb makers quite a bit of research and development to produce blue filters that would not drop the bulb output below the legal minimum while still altering the appearance of the operating headlamp enough to appeal to consumers after a "whiter" appearance to their headlamps.
Part of the impetus for the development of these bulbs was for the makers of good-quality bulbs to take away a portion of the dangerous "crystal blue" type bulb sales and offer consumers desiring a different headlamp appearance a legal and safe product. The retail-level marketers have an easy sell here; Pep Boys offers a "Cool Blue Upgrade" service for fifty bucks, for instance. And there are always going to be people lining up to offer glowing testimonials about how much better they think they can see with these bulbs. But can they really?
There's no conclusive evidence that the type of light produced by this sort of bulb actually allows drivers to see better than the type of light produced by a regular, clear bulb. And there've been no studies on the effect of this type of light upon seeing and glare in bad weather, for instance. Can you see better with this sort of bulb? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Some people seem to think so. But what if that's exactly the problem — they think they can see better than they actually can? There've been no studies to determine exactly how dangerous it is to think you can see better than you really can, but it can't be very safe.
It should be mentioned that while these are critical questions that ought to be asked, they are academic to some degree as long as you stick to the product of a reputable manufacturer, such as Osram-Sylvania, Philips, or Narva.
For those who want the best possible performance from their headlamps and are more concerned with their ability to see rather than the appearance of their headlamps, the major bulb companies offer optimized bulbs WITHOUT the light-stealing blue coloration. Sylvania Xtravision (in the pink-and-black package), Osram Super and SilverStar(outside North America); Philips High Visibility (North America), Premium and Vision Plus (outside North America); Narva RangePower are the ones to look for.

For part II (PIAA myths) Click here