Hey guys, Andrew Esquivel back wih another review and today I’m going to be reviewing
the Xtreme Vision LED headlight conversion kit to convert your halogen headlights in
your vehicle over to LEDs. Now, first off let’s go over the specs really quick. We
are once again working with the infamous 9007 socket which is known for having compatibility
issues with aftermarket products. We’ll explain it in a minute why that is. Now, each
bulb produces 8,000 lumens and pulls 36 watts. They have a color temperature of 6,500 Kelvin
and have an estimated lifetime of 30,000 plus hours.
Now that we got the specs out of the way let’s look at the bulb itself. You’ll see we have
one that’s already assembled and ready to go and just like with all 9007 socket headlights
we have a circular retainer lock that needs to be in place in order for this to keep the
bulb from falling out of the socket. Now this is where we have a lot of problems with aftermarket
products is, generally, we have an issue with getting it in there because, well, we have
to remove the gasket. On top of that, there has to be enough clearance in between this
gasket and the heat sink to allow the circular retainer lock to fit, because if we take one
of the retainer locks, you’ll see, we have several millimeters of gap that comes standard.
Now, in some cases, you would file them down but thankfully, in this case, there is no
modification to the retainer lock necessary. So how do we get them on? Well, normally there’s
a clever little way of getting them on like twisting the gasket and pushing up. Generally,
that seems to be with most LEDs go for but in this particular case, they’ve gone for
a more secure design which is also with a less convenience. This is a little screw.
This is the only screw that you need to undo, it is undone by really tiny Allen wrench which
they actually kindly provide. Basically, we need to remove this screw. Okay
so we got the little screw out and I just want to give a fair warning that thing is
super tiny and I’ve already dropped these screws before
and they are a pain to find on the floor so be careful about that. Now, as we undo the
screw we see that there are multiple holes on this gasket and that’s because the bulb
can only fit into the socket of the headlight assembly one way. In order to make the beam
pattern more accurate, you’re able to twist ¼ rotation wise so that in relation to the
gasket the bulb has actually turned. You want to experiment with what pattern looks best
before you just decide that you’re going to stick with one particular position.
Other LEDs have come up with much more simple ways of adjusting like this instead of having
to use a screw but they decided to go for secure. That’s what we’re going to do
I guess. Honestly, this thing held in with friction pretty well. So you can adjust it
at your leisure and then once you find the right pattern, then screw it in. But for right
now, let’s show you how everything gets assembled in the rest of the way.
So we got the circular retainer lock on and in place. Next, all we got to do is put the
gasket back down and like I said, there’s a lot of friction that holds this thing in.
It’s actually more of a two-hand job. With it down and in place, all you would do at
this point is screw it in, although like I said before, perhaps we’re screwing it in
right now is not the best thing to do because we can adjust the beam pattern by twisting
it once you put it inside of the headlight unit. So let’s do that. What I will be showing
in the video will be after I have adjusted it. So I’m not going to show you, me adjusting
it because that’s going to take a while, but I will do the rest of the review like
I said already adjusted. Let’s go ahead and do that.
All right, so we are outside and these are the low beams projected onto my garage. Now,
looking at it from here personally it looks relatively, decently diffused. It’s hard
to say. Let’s go ahead and turn to the high beams. The high beams, I mean they’re a
little brighter. Low. High. Well, this is just the door test. Now let’s actually go
see what it looks like on the road in real life.
All right. So I’m on the same stretch of road that I test all my LED headlight conversion
kits on and we are just sitting here with the low beams on. Let’s talk about what
the light looks like in real life down a stretch of road. First off, I want to say I’m actually
somewhat impressed with the light diffusion. I would say it’s almost as good as the four-sided
LED lights that I’ve tried and there’s a good reason for that and I’ll explain
in a minute but as far as patchiness or scatteredness, it’s spot on [laughs]. There’s no dark
spots or patchy spots, it’s actually doing really well.
So let’s try our high beams. High beams leave a little to be desired. They don’t
throw distance very far and not sure why that is. But anywho [sic] let’s go ahead and
take them out on a drive and see just how well they actually do.
So what we are going to do is drive down the same route that I test every single pair of
headlights that I try. Now, right here is just a general road, good stretch, goes down
for quite some ways with some rather dim streetlights but what we’re going to do is go to an area
where there is zero assisted lights, meaning there is no streetlights, and we’ll be able
to see just a pure performance of these LEDs without any other light sources interfering
with the test. Just keep on going and we are almost there.
We’re going to be coming up on a turn in a just a few seconds and from here well we’ll
be able to see just how good these just can do on their own. Okay. We are on this dark
stretch of road with no lights, right? These are the low beams and as far as visibility
goes the throw distance is actually pretty good. Usable, actually. A good 50-60 feet
out. Now, this is low beam, if I turn on high beam
it’s making it a little brighter on the left and right kind lightening the beam angle,
but it really isn’t assisting the throw distance. Which is kind of disappointing,
when you put on a high beam just because you want to see farther down the road, not necessarily
more to your left and right. What we’re going to do is keep it on the high beams down
this dark road and we’re going to go down and turn on another road and what I’m going
to do on that road is turn the lights from high beam to low beam back and forth and I’ll
narrate as I do and so you know which mode that it’s on, so you can gauge for yourself
the difference between the two. So we are now going to take a right. The street
road we are looking for is just down this road. Believe it or not, I have to watch out
for possums right now because there’s a bunch of possums out at the moment. I don’t
normally get possums. Anywho [sic], I’m coming up on the area. I mean as I drive along
I feel really comfortable with these lights on the low beam. It’s just high beam doesn’t
really seem to do much of anything and yes, I’ve adjusted for a high beam to make a
throw as far as it goes. Okay, so anywho[sic], we are on the road where
I'm going to switch back and forth. So this is low beam, high beam. Low beam. High beam.
Low beam. High beam. Low beam. High beam. Low beam. High beam. Low beam. High beam.
Low beam. High beam. Low beam. High beam. Go back to low beam, okay. Now we're back
on low beam. All right, so that is the drive around and now is when I give my final thoughts
on the whole thing here. I'm delightfully surprised to see how well
the light is diffused with these. I was not expecting a triangular design to do this well.
But there is a reason why designs like this do much better in a reflector headlight unit
rather than those two-sided LEDs that try and mimic something like this. So when we
have a reflector unit, it's generally designed to work with a halogen light bulb. Now halogen
light bulbs produce light in all directions from its center meaning it's a whole 360 degrees
of light that it puts out. LEDs rely on diodes which are for the most part very, very directional.
Now in order to try and mimic a halogen headlight, this means you'd have to have diodes in a
variety of positions to try and push out light in all the directions that a halogen headlight
would. This is why in reflector units like mine, bulbs that try and mimic halogens rather
than doing their own thing perform the best. Now this is the first three-sided LED that
has actually worked very well. I have seen other three-sided LEDs out there but they
were not equilateral triangular designs, they were isosceles. Which ultimately led to dark
spots because it wasn't even distribution of light and that was its downfall.
This pair of headlights actually appears to be in equilateral triangle meaning the angles
on all three corners of the light where the diodes are in relation to each other is the
same angle all around, which means it's trying to produce light as evenly as it can rather
than focusing on doing some other weird kind of thing that the other ones that I have tried
do. Now that being said I have tested four-sided COB lights which is the type of style of LED
that diffuse extremely well. But the problem is the more diodes you have the more power
you have to split between per bulb. With three sides this means that I have to
split the output of power between three sets of diodes. That can severely limit the brightness
because you have to choose at this point between light distribution and diffusion, versus throw
distance and overall brightness. Unfortunately, there is not a perfect design yet. But companies
need to start taking the three and four-sided designs more seriously. There is a ton of
two-sided designs that fail miserably. The thing is, a two-sided LED design could work
if you're using a projector unit. Projectors have a way of focusing the beam in a particular
manner where reflectors, they don't work the same way and because of that we need LEDs
to mimic halogens. These three-sided and four-sided bulbs mimic
halogens really well, it's just we need really efficient diodes on there to be able to put
out more light because in reality these really aren't that bright. However, I will give these
bulbs this, they diffuse really well, they're not using these really large diodes LEDs that
I've seen on some of the COB lights. They're using a bunch of small diodes put together
on each panel for all three panels per bulb. Whatever they've done, they've done it so
that the output of light even on a low beam is very decent, it's very usable, I'm actually
surprised. But that also means the high beams aren't
really going to be any much better than the low beams if the low beams are essentially
just as bright as the high beams, in this case, which is a little disappointing. We
also have the throw distance issue. When you put high beams on it's because you want to
see further down the road and I still have to admit my Sylvania Silver Star halogens
do throw light down the road better than these do, which is unfortunate but this is a serious
contender for your attention. I almost never say that.
I have tested so many LEDs and there's only been two that have been getting my attention.
These ones, in particular, have actually performed better in my opinion than the four-sided COB
light that I tried. Diffusion is just as good but brightness and throw distance is definitely
better. We're starting to get close, we're getting really, really close to the technology
being to where it needs to be. But it needs to be a multi-sided not just two-sided but
three or four-sided type of design in order to achieve what we need.
Do I recommend these? I say give it a try. If you have Amazon Prime, it is available
on Amazon Prime. If you have Prime that means you can get it either same day or two days
shipping and if they don't work you can return it for free. They give you
a return shipping label that will not cost you anything if you are a Prime member.
For that reason, I would say, give these a try. These are really better than I expected
they would be. Yes, there's only two bulbs I've ever said that about. Anywho [sic], thanks
for watching guys, don't forget to comment, rate, subscribe, show your friends, check
out my other videos I got plenty of them and as always I will see you next time. Drive
safe.