Hey guys, yes I know the best bet is to spend top money on name brand quality headlights, but if one were to look into the realm of non-branded Chinese made products, what headlights would you recommend for the best beam pattern/ light dispersal?
I run Ether Photoelectronic's. They claim to be one of the bigger company's in China. DOT compliant and a 3 year warranty (might be 5?) Cost is around $300-$350 for a set.
Beam has a left hand pattern meaning oncoming drivers dont get blinded . They also have one of the sharpest cut off's I've seen in a LED.
What are you looking to spend when you're buying the off brands?
From what I've seen, many of them start about $300-$350. For not that much more you can step into one of the so-called named brands or even go with something from one of our WF vendors.
I really like these. These have a equal or maybe better pattern than the Ethers. I have ran about 12 different types of the china brands including a set of trucklites ,KC ,and the Quads.
I'm not bashing trucklite, KC, or quadratecs they make a nice product as does JW Speaker. I'm speaking from hands on experience with sunpie, Lantsun ,Loyo, Ether, wukmu, oppo and a couple other companies I have delt with. Keep in mind quadratecs,inspired engineering and raxiom all are made in China as well just sold by a good company in America. Well the raxiom and Quads are I have never delt with inspired engineering hands on so I'm just assuming they are a good company since there a vendor on the forum.
Ether,Lantsun,and wukmu stand by there products better than any of the others. They only ask for a few details of the problem and send you a replacement. I'm not going to say their products are flawless but they all have a nice beam pattern and decent cutoff. Ether and Lantsun being the best of the two and the one I deal with more than the others. The worst is sunpies. Worst experience I have had with any of them. Terrible customer service and you really have to go out of your way to get a replacement light from them. I would avoid them at all cost. With that being said here are the ones I'm speaking about. I got these about 4 weeks ago and these are the first of any I have ran that have made me not want anything else. These have a sharp cutoff equal to ether and are the closes to my wife's BMW that I have saw.
They make these to shine more to the right as well to avoid blinding on coming traffic.
Just so you know that's a sunpie. Winpower is the seller and the company is Winunite which is the manufacturer of the sunpies. They sell sunpies for cheaper than the Winpower ones, they do this to make it seem like there is competition and make you feel like your getting a better product. Either way they make money. Personally I wouldn't deal with them. They have done me wrong on quite a few sets of lights.
I'll just chime in to say that I've installed these on both my Jeeps. Great output, sharp cutoff, and the halos set it apart from most others. I've gotten a lot of positive comments on them.
I have the halos wired in with the ignition switch. Engine on = halos on.
I bought them off Alibaba, for $107 per pair. That breaks down to $68 for the lights, and $39 for air freight. They arrived in about 10 days.
Been on wife's Jeep for 6 months with no issues. Been on my Jeep for about a month. Also no issues.
The lenses do have the DOT/SAE mark on them, FWIW.
I like the halos on wife's Jeep, because they kind of match with the grille inserts.
Good thing I saw this video. I have JW Speaker on my Harley. I was thinking of ordering Nightsun4x4 and was very interested in the light because of the price point of $200-$225 until this video showed the light pattern wasn't very good.
I will agree those nightsun lights are probably the worst beam pattern lights I have ever had on my jeep. I only ran them for 4 days because the beam was so bad, it was like driving in a tunnel. Here some shots of those and the beam pattern
Not sure what's up with the DOT up top. I tried to adjust them but you can see how they throw light all over the place
On road beam pattern
It still amazes me even after I show some people these pictures they still insist on wanting them. Just for reference Lantsun makes a actual DOT approved Headlight similar to this one with a little better beam pattern.
Speaking of dot approval I got pulled over by the chp last night and told my jw speaker evo j's were illegal and too bright. They claimed despite having the dot label any led headlight/fog light were illegal in the state of California. Luckily I had the box in the back and they looked at it for maybe five minutes and wrote a bunch of stuff down then let me go. But they're adjusted properly so I'm at a loss as to what to do.
Here you go I looked them up from the other thread. If you guys don't want to pay $280 then you can buy them from here and wait until December, it looks like that's when they will start having them, and $450
Yeah if you buy them six at a time and that's before shipping. Plus who knows about how the warranty works on those. I'll be buying mine from a reliable source.
I love these headlights, I paid 110 on ebay and they lit the roads up like driving in the day. They came equipped with everything you need to plug and play. Took about 15 minutes to wire in the running lights.
This conversation is very similar to the debates last night. Lots of talk with no facts to back it up. Until somebody actually gets an optical power meter and maps the irradiance pattern at various distances all this about "hot spots" and this is one is brighter is subjective. The spectrum also would need to be measured in the lab. The eye is a poor photometer. It is very inaccurate at judging the absolute level of brightness. For starters, when visually looking at a target to compare light levels, it must have the same spectral reflectivity at every angle for the comparison to mean anything. The best targets are Lambertian.
My professional career is optical engineering and have a great deal of experience with measurements on various types of light sources. I have the equipment to do this measurement, but honestly, to do it right is going to take a great deal of time, and since I am not getting paid to do it, I could care less.
Pick some lights that appeal to you and move on. Warranty and ease of returns is a big factor for me and I will sacrifice some performance as a trade-off. I know of one vendor on the forum that I have seen in action handling a return 2 years down the road. This is a documented case with hard facts. That vendor gets my vote (and it's not JW Speaker).
I've watched that video before and I'm not sold on the accuracy of some their readings. My buddy who had JW Speaker J style on his rig, The Best low beam had what appeared to be about the same distance as the JW but the best had a much wider spread on it. The high beam wasn't even close, the best blew it away on high beam, now that's judging by 4 people sitting in the jeep and all coming to the same conclusion that a barrel off in the distance could be seen plainly with the Best LTD ones on bright and was barely noticeable with the JW on bright. Not saying at all that JW isn't a quality product because it is. All I'm saying is the Best LTD ones are some of the best I've seen. I've ran the trucklites and I'm now running the knock-off JW style ones. Neither the trucklites or the knockoffs are as a good as the JWs. But what I have saw personally from the Best Headlight makes me want a set. I mean that beam pattern speaks volumes, I haven't seen any that good other than a $600 or more HID setup.
I'd like to measure the light in a consistent way against other lights. I use a meter that's a little better than what HR uses --- and I'd measure at 50 yards not 25 feet. I like to take a measurement across the entire arc.
I give crap when I get blinded on the highway by people who don't know how to set up their lights and run stuff that is brighter then legally allowed. It's bad enough when Halogens aren't set up but now have folks with crappy (illegal) HID and so many versions of bad LEDs floating around.
So if these LED lights are so good then there shouldn't be any issue getting them certified.
Dude did you not see the cutoff line on that headlight, it's right hand left hand specific so it's design to not blind on coming traffic. I didn't say all lights with DOT stamping are fit for the road, I'm talking about the Best LTD ones. I've road past my buddy, your not going to be blinded, but you want to be specific about blinding , he didn't adjust his JW Speakers right when he first got them and was getting flashed by every car passing him so having a DOT stamped and being registered still doesn't mean you can't blind on coming traffic. These are fit for road.
This is what you get for 80watts a light or 160 watts a pair, DOT/SAE registered and certified to pass safety checks anywhere in Canada or the US. But they are not cheap.
I'm getting the same light with the exact
same certificates for $280 ship, that's pretty cheap for a quality Light
ECE and DOT approved
I also talked to Ryan who runs the 4 wheel parts in Charlotte NC, who pretty much told me that they were getting their pro comp ones from the same source when we I saw him over the weekend at Buffalo wild wings. Here is their rebranded version
You saw the cutoff above, that's not going to be illegal to run and it's going pass inspection where ever you go because one it has the stamp on it and two it's a clean no artifact cutoff that even if you measured it they would still pass.
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