Hi guys,

How do you guys think of the TLX light output? With all the hypes giving for the TLX's led, it seems that mine is kinda dim. Maybe it just my car is bad, but after browsing thru some pictures on the forum, I saw some that seem to be brighter than what I have.

Would it be possible if you guys can share some pictures of your car light beam?

 

In my opinion, the LED's are not as intense or sharp as the HID's in my TSX.

Pictures can be deceiving since everyone may have different camera settings.
If you think yours are dimmer then other TLX's then maybe you should have them checked-out by the dealer.

 

I know it is hard to compare with different camera settings. I just want to get an idea of what it like the light shine on the road and such. It is hard to bring to the dealer and tell them "I think the light are dim". I can ask them to compare with other car but this still be hard to tell when it still bright outside and there are other lights in the garage.

And especially when I used high beam, I can barely see the different on the road. It is bright if my car is in front of a wall or something, but once I'm on the road, its seem mine is weak. I'll ask the tech guy tomorrow when I drop off my car =\

 

Mine are plenty bright. Lights up the road pretty good and the high beams have worked great for the handful of times I used it.

 

Maybe I am just too picky, but for sure the high beam didn't light up the road any brighter than low beam. =\

 

I think the LEDs produce a brighter light but don't seem to shine very far. The high beams are almost useless.

 

I think they're bright enough. They just seem to be aimed too low.

 

Mine shine a bit further than my accord's HID, but dimmer. I know there has been a discussion that LED isnt as bright as HID, but I just want to make sure there isn't something wrong with my car lol. After seeing some pictures that the TLX it light up the road, mine isn't come near that.

 

How much light pollution are you getting from other sources like street lights, lights from buildings, advertisement lights from businesses, other cars beside/behind you, headlight coming towards you, etc... I've even notice my H.I.D.s reflect less light back compared to old halogen on new(er) darker asphalt or wet roads. It could be the same disadvantage with LEDs with the darker and wetter surfaces?

I don't know the color temp of LEDs -vs- H.I.D.s for Acura TL/TSX and TLX? Maybe the color temp might not be the same as the old H.I.Ds?

 

Comparing to a ILX and the RDX that I test drove, drove around the same area, and it seem that my TLX is a little bit dimmer. I might have to play around with aiming...will see what happen

 

I see that Consumer Reports rated the TLX headlights as Poor. I see the discussion here about them being "dim" or not, but that seems pretty definitive. So two related questions:

1. Anyone actually done a measured lumens test, TL vs TLX (I'd say vs Accord, but it looks like they have LEDs on the Touring too). I am wondering how bad exactly.
2. Anyone research replacing the LEDs with something brighter?

I am thinking Acura probably hasn't changed them in the 2 years or so, but the LEDs themselves have gotten a ton better during that period at the device level, so it should theoretically be possible to replace them with something brighter.

 

hmmm.. .do detail on how one would implement this...

 

There's a member here, ceb, who is extremely knowledgeable about lighting, perhaps he can shed some light (pun intended) on this topic?

 

Acura did have some issues with Jewel eye LED's getting dim very prematurely and headlamps were replaced on the TLX. LED's do get dimmer with age and use, and excessive heat can damage them.

LED headlamps give off more "light" but offer less useable light than HID's. HID's are still superior to LED lighting currently.

 

I took a peek at the after-market light replacements, and while there is some stuff out there, there does not appear to be LED replacements for the main headlight assembly. There's stuff to make the fog lights brighter, some stuff for the accent lights, but not the main bulbs, which is the main area of concern.

As near as I can make out from the Poor rating given the TLX LED bulbs, there is not much in the way of a write-up on the details and so forth. I doubt it is the auto-high problem, they probably did a static measure. And it is probably not the LED dimming with age problem, in that newer devices are less prone to that.

What I would expect to see, eventually, if this really is a problem, is for replacement units to come out with brighter, perhaps different color spectrum LEDs. Each year the devices that comprise the various headlights tend to get brighter. Probably Acura/Honda will replace with brighter itself at some point, as I cannot imagine they will let a Poor rating linger. Not much they can do with the drop in TLX rating for the transmission and electronics, seems TLX got caught when they started to include reliability into the overall rating (the other aspects of the CR ratings were pretty good, it would have been a much higher rated car without the problem areas). But LEDs, especially given the couple of years for better devices to come out, I imagine Acura can fix fairly easily.

I also looked to see if there was a CR rating of the Honda Accord Touring, which also has LED headlights (hard to know if those are quite the same as the TLX), but I could not find that model.

 

In another TLX thread there was the numbers on how CR came to the conclusion the light output was poor. It was due to blinding oncoming traffic moreso than what they though was acceptable and as well the usability of the light on the corners, replacement, etc. CR doesn't really give any accurate info any more, it's all about how pays them the $ to favor their product over the others.

 

I've haven't checked the forum to see if the same problem exist with the RLX LEDs that split into an upper/lower beam for each LED housing. The RLX LEDs housing have 8-10 output lenses to direct the light compared to 4-5 for the TLX depending if you using HI or Low beams. I doubt the RLX and TLX headlight assembly are interchangeable. I was expecting the MDX to have the same 10 lens LED like the RLX with the +17 MMC.

 

I think it is fair to criticize the Consumer Reports reviews, they do give a Road Test Score, but there is an emphasis on mileage and other factors that maybe are not what a semi-luxury car buyer might typically look for, and that resulted in for example them rating the Acura TLX 4 as higher than the 6. Granted, quite a few car magazines kind of did the same (mostly due to the smoother shifting 8AT). But I really do not see it as a situation where they CR is taking pay in terms of $s to favor a product or manufacturer. They do not really carry advertising on their magazine or web site. They do not use loaners, they buy the cars. And they do have the Honda Accord fairly high in their ratings, so it is a pretty direct counter-example. Other than the emphasis on economy over performance, which is really personal choice anyway, the other criticism that could be levied is that the reviews are simplistic, they do that for comparison, and they do a wide range of cars so it is somewhat useful, but they do not always explain the poor ratings or other things in the text. What Acura ran into with the TLX (4 and 6) and actually RLX, is that Consumers recently made a change to factor in Reliability, the Poor ratings there dropped the TLX and RLX to near bottom of the category. It is hard to argue that, most of us include expected reliability in our subjective buying decisions, and there is no question that Acura is having problems there, with the transmissions and electronics. The ZF Recall seems to confirm the 9AT difficulties. Before that, the TLX was decently ranked, most of the cars that were higher were more expensive (ex. BMW 3-series).

 

I did notice one thing in Consumer Reports ratings of Acura TLX headlights. They have both the 4 and 6 rated as poor, so whatever is wrong about the headlights, it is on both models. In their on-line review, they do give specifics on the LED lights, saying they look cool and provide a bright white light, but have a problem with low forward visibility. That is a pretty fundamental problem.

 

I was going to mention the Consumer Reports. TLX only comes in one flavor when it comes to the headlamps, so it is harder to compare, but for instance, Accord which has projector beam headlamps (not HIDs) and LEDs (on Touring) scored better with projectors than with LEDs. I am not sure how much better or worse the TLX'es LEDs are compared to Accord Touring models, but given this scenario, I would not be surprised if HIDs from TLs or TSXs are performing better than TLXes LEDs.