lumbee1
Native American
After driving in a rainstorm on a moonless night with oncoming traffic on a two lane country road, I realized my headlights were overdue for an upgrade. I seriously couldn't see s**t. I checked with the CFO before making a purchase. Once approved I checked ebay for Depo headlights. Neondials is offering his typical Depo headlight assemblies with H1 and H4 bulbs with adapters. The Depo assemblies seem to be an incredibly popular upgrade even with halogen bulbs, however projector conversions are the bees knees and come with a similar price tag.
With the wide range of LED bulbs on the market, surely there must be something that works well in the Depo reflectors. I did a ton of searching on Amazon, ebay, and youtube trying to find the best ones. My budget was more than $30 and less than $50. The amazon reviews were just about worthless. Youtube was better but folks made videos with their phone in auto mode and most of the lights looked very similar. Not only that, each housing is different and what looks great in one reflector might look like a disco ball in another reflector.
Several brand names continued to pop up in my search. Bevinsee, Auxito, Alla, Beamtech, Boslla, Hikari. The Depo low beam is H4 and high beam is H1. I wanted to concentrate on just low beam replacement bulbs for now but I will say that during my testing that the H1 halogen bulbs put out a tremendous amount of heat through the front of the glass and I will be searching for H1 replacements very soon.
A good LED replacement bulb should match the halogen bulb's filament spacing from the back of the mount. A filament is a coil of tungsten inside of a glass globe. LED's are mounted on a PCB and cannot provide that floating in air light source like a halogen filament but the thinner the PCB the better. I won't cover heat soak or cooling, internal vs external driver, or activating the high beam on the H4.
Testing:
Canon 80D with 24-70mm 2.8L MKII
4 LED bulbs with links to each.
Photos were necessary to gauge how much light spill was present above the cutoff. The cutoff with all of these bulbs was a mess but there were some surprises.
BEAMTECH H4 LED Headlight Bulb, 50W 6500K 8000Lumens Extremely Brigh (9003 Hi/Lo) CSP Chips Conversion Kit
$38.99
Exposure -2.0. Contrast -100
AUXITO H4 9003 LED Headlight Bulbs, 12000LM Per Set 6500K Xenon White for High and Low Beam Hi/Lo Plug and Play, Pack of 2
$49.99
Exposure -2.0. Contrast -100
With the wide range of LED bulbs on the market, surely there must be something that works well in the Depo reflectors. I did a ton of searching on Amazon, ebay, and youtube trying to find the best ones. My budget was more than $30 and less than $50. The amazon reviews were just about worthless. Youtube was better but folks made videos with their phone in auto mode and most of the lights looked very similar. Not only that, each housing is different and what looks great in one reflector might look like a disco ball in another reflector.
Several brand names continued to pop up in my search. Bevinsee, Auxito, Alla, Beamtech, Boslla, Hikari. The Depo low beam is H4 and high beam is H1. I wanted to concentrate on just low beam replacement bulbs for now but I will say that during my testing that the H1 halogen bulbs put out a tremendous amount of heat through the front of the glass and I will be searching for H1 replacements very soon.
A good LED replacement bulb should match the halogen bulb's filament spacing from the back of the mount. A filament is a coil of tungsten inside of a glass globe. LED's are mounted on a PCB and cannot provide that floating in air light source like a halogen filament but the thinner the PCB the better. I won't cover heat soak or cooling, internal vs external driver, or activating the high beam on the H4.
Testing:
Canon 80D with 24-70mm 2.8L MKII
- Aperture f/6.3
- Shutter 1/15 sec
- ISO 400
- Exposure 0
- Focal length 24mm
- While balance 5000K
4 LED bulbs with links to each.
Photos were necessary to gauge how much light spill was present above the cutoff. The cutoff with all of these bulbs was a mess but there were some surprises.
BEAMTECH H4 LED Headlight Bulb, 50W 6500K 8000Lumens Extremely Brigh (9003 Hi/Lo) CSP Chips Conversion Kit
$38.99
Exposure -2.0. Contrast -100
AUXITO H4 9003 LED Headlight Bulbs, 12000LM Per Set 6500K Xenon White for High and Low Beam Hi/Lo Plug and Play, Pack of 2
$49.99
Exposure -2.0. Contrast -100
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