oh one point i have found about my lights, the slightest bit of dirt makes them much dimmer and less focused so just keeping them clean will be far more use than better bulbs, esp this time of year with the muck on the roads

I replaced my standard lamps (when one blew) with Philips Extreme's. Excellent lamps & are a straight replacement so you can change them yourself. Think they cost £32.

Keep them clean, and put high brightness bulbs in, safe & legal then. You can of course put mildly illegal bulbs in, some people do, I havent but I do upgrade the bulbs.

Fitted Osram Night Breaker bulbs in my Fabia. Loads brighter than standard bulbs and look like HID, as they are bluey white! Cost about £17 off ebay with free blue side light bulbs...

Nightbreakers in my vRS as well - and YES, there is a difference. Such a difference that you can see that the beam is whiter and sharper than other cars with standard bulbs. Concerning HID's, the Fabia I drove with them as standard fitment had very blue-white beams, but sadly blue-white light is not very good for depth perception or picking out brown animals against the road, so I for one am pleased to have incandescent headlights:).

TH

.........Concerning HID's, the Fabia I drove with them as standard fitment had very blue-white beams, but sadly blue-white light is not very good for depth perception or picking out brown animals against the road, so I for one am pleased to have incandescent headlights:).

TH

Seems a little strange.... obviously all xenon equipped cars have a slightly whiter/bluer light than halogens but i'm sure i read somewhere that the light they cast on the road surface is the closest to natural light. :confused:

I've never had any complaints myself over the last 5 or 6 years of driving xenon equipped cars and around half if not more of my approx 10-12k of motorway driving is done at night.

Cheers

Dave.

Cannot wait until I have Xenons again personally, but they need to be adjusted correctly

Well, all our eyes are different, and that may be why some prefer HID's to tungsten filament lamps.

I am a bit of a dab hand with lighting, and have a few modified torches - Maglights with HID conversion, with a 120 Watt projector lamps and also LED's. What I have found is that when you compare a incandescent lamp with HID or LED, the lamp looks yellower. This is because the colour temperature is lower, however filament lamps are much better for picking out earthy colours than HID or LED, and not so good at lighting up dry roads or in housing estates etc. Whilst the 'cool blue' look of HID is very pleasing, we should not discount incandescent lamps purely due to the different colour temperature. Where the blame lies more often than not is with the reflector. Manufacturers have put style before function im making headlights look like cats eyes - slinky, sure, but not very practical. My Estelle 105 has rectangular headlights with no style, but wow, the light is great for actually driving.

Don't discount tungten lamps just because they are 'old tech', but look at the reflector assembly as a whole and how the beam is distributed on the road (test drive).

I could go on (this subject is my forte) but go with what actually works the best - don't be swayed by colour temperature.

TH

PS. Don't get me started on the colour temperature of 'white' on your monitors!