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I absolutely love the jewel eye headlights. As far as the design goes versus real world functionality, they perform excellently. I commute once a week and drive unlit roads through the night and they illuminate the path vividly. The low-beams are aimed low enough to not blind oncoming traffic. The fact that there are a total of 10 LED's (6 low-beam, 4 high-beam) also really opens of the edges of the road well and not just the direct path in front of the vehicle. If I had to summarize, the low beams are very crisp, light up multiple car lengths ahead as well as the edges of the road, the high-beams are very direct, almost like lasers (exaggeration) and illuminate far ahead. They are so bright they seem to shine through thick fog in my experience. I do have the LED fogs as well.
Thx for the real world feedback. Not sure if others had seen that the IIHS has started testing headlight effectiveness? Results for 31 cars tested so far can be found here: New ratings focus on headlights
Neither the Accord nor the TLX LEDs got good ratings. The Accord halogens did better. I would believe that Acura probably uses similar designs for all their models but won't know better until IIHS publishes findings for more cars.
Personally I found the Jewel headlights to be a little disappointing. They are bright, don't get me wrong, and they look gorgeous. The beam itself just isn't as clear cut as some of the other current gen projectors out there, from the driver's point of view. I find when lined up with other vehicles at a stop, other vehicles have a brighter and more defined beam. Could just be me though....
The beam itself just isn't as clear cut as some of the other current gen projectors out there, from the driver's point of view. I find when lined up with other vehicles at a stop, other vehicles have a brighter and more defined beam. Could just be me though....
Not an exact comparison but if you look at the IIHS Accord results it shows the issue since that test was done for both halogen and LED configurations. Those can be found here: Vehicle details
The TLX only tested the LEDs since that's all it comes with but the IIHS light pattern chart looks to be similar to that of the Accord LED (not a big surprise to me).
Good news in all this, this is why IIHS is testing these. Over time shames manufactures to make things better.
I have a '16 ILX and I think the LED headlights are quite good. My other cars (RDX and RL) have HID projectors. I don't think the LEDs are necessarily any brighter or better than the HIDs, but the color of the LEDs are more white. I also like the lack of warm-up that HIDs have.
It's bright when you are behind a car. But once you out in the open during night time with the street lights on, it's that bright and stick out. Like someone said, it's not define or hmm concentrated like an HID. It does lit up the road but due the whiteness of the light and not concentrate, it kinda scatter all over. I would say it's soft and not intense. But trust, it's really bright compare to HID just not intense.
The '16 ILX (and '16 RDX since they share a very similar design) have Above-Good Headlight output.
I say "above good" because its not FANTASTIC, but it doesn't suck, its pretty good (better then say the LED headlights in a Corolla for example), especially with a proper set of matching LED fogs like some Morimotos.
=------------= I did a HIDp post about the 2016 ILX LED Headlights a while back leme find it,
...but in summary, the ILX LED headlights are I'd say 150-200% as bright as a good quality OEM Halogen Projector setup. However their white point and CRI leave a little bit to be desired.
Acura claims it as a 5500K, and I trust them on that based on some reference LED's that I have that I know are 5700K from Philips for example...
But I feel the ILX's OEM Jewel Eye LED Headlights make colors look a little bit too-much blue to the eye... Perfectly amazing for 90%+ of people out there believe me... but I've gotten used to 55W Morimoto's with Osram 5000K CBI bulbs in my civic, and maybe I'm just used to a higher level of color quality and representation at night. Which is weird to say since 'technically' HID bulbs (even OEM ones like my Osram D2S CBI's) have relatively low levels of CRI when compared to a Halogen.
But driving them back-to-back on a daily basis. I Can definitely say the 2016 ILX Jewel Eye LED headlights makes colors at night look a little blue, making colors like RED paint, or white... look a bit blue or faded; especially when compared to the color output my CBI's provide.
I think the jewel eyed LEDs are better than most lights out there, but not the best. Having a sharp cutoff line isnt an indication of how good output is, but the consistency and spread. I used to have an 07 TL which had really good bixenon projectors, and I had best on the market Osram CBI's and rare authentic ZKW lens. The ILX comes close in output but I would say the TL was still better.
I wonder how it compares against the ILX with the single projector verse the TL and the ILX jewels.
My assumption is that the projector ILX would out preform the new jewel eyes. The jewel eyes just dont seem that bright to me.
I used to work on headlights and retrofit as a side job so I've seen lots of HID setups first hand. In my opinion, the jewel eye LEDS are better than the average HID projector setup, but not as good as the best HID projectors(s2k, tl, ls430, etc). I'm not sure how the projectors are on the 13-15 ilx though, but acura/honda has always had pretty decent hid projector setups(s2k, tsx, tl, rl)
The '16 ILX (and '16 RDX since they share a very similar design) have Above-Good Headlight output.
I say "above good" because its not FANTASTIC, but it doesn't suck, its pretty good (better then say the LED headlights in a Corolla for example), especially with a proper set of matching LED fogs like some Morimotos.
=------------= I did a HIDp post about the 2016 ILX LED Headlights a while back leme find it,
...but in summary, the ILX LED headlights are I'd say 150-200% as bright as a good quality OEM Halogen Projector setup. However their white point and CRI leave a little bit to be desired.
Acura claims it as a 5500K, and I trust them on that based on some reference LED's that I have that I know are 5700K from Philips for example...
But I feel the ILX's OEM Jewel Eye LED Headlights make colors look a little bit too-much blue to the eye... Perfectly amazing for 90%+ of people out there believe me... but I've gotten used to 55W Morimoto's with Osram 5000K CBI bulbs in my civic, and maybe I'm just used to a higher level of color quality and representation at night. Which is weird to say since 'technically' HID bulbs (even OEM ones like my Osram D2S CBI's) have relatively low levels of CRI when compared to a Halogen.
But driving them back-to-back on a daily basis. I Can definitely say the 2016 ILX Jewel Eye LED headlights makes colors at night look a little blue, making colors like RED paint, or white... look a bit blue or faded; especially when compared to the color output my CBI's provide.
you couldn't have said that better. I have noticed the same issue's with these LEDs with the color temps with a non-crisp cut off and splashing light all over! I found that using the OEM led fog lights helps slightly to balance the kelvin to a better color, but just slightly. The leds on the fogs are a touch closer to sunlight.
I also noticed that all 16-17's have the drivers side high beam pointed in the trees. If I park 7-8 meters from a wall and turn on the high beams to check the level it's all out place. Low beam is ok and so you can't independently adjust the high beams. I went to the dealer and complained so the service advisor checked a new 16 and a new 17 on the lot and they all have the same issue. WTF Honda lol you messed up. When the lights where assembled they soldered the led on the board slightly off making the light reflection off thus making the beam off. Right side is off a touch but not too bad, I could live with that but the left side is very messed up. They where going to order me a new one but he said there no point as it will have the same issue.
It's like the new 16+civic they use the same leds but no projector making the light splash very bad to on coming traffic. It's so bad I can't believe DOT let that slide. Same goes for the corolla but they have since fixed it when remaking the heads lights to the double projectors style
04-08-2016, 07:27 PM
