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A sad truth. I wouldve thought the ricer-bulbs on my Z when i first got it were the brightest halogens ever, if I hadnt driven it an realized it was just a VERY white color and only light up about 5 feet in front of the car even after being adjusted.

They LOOK brighter, and so you THINK they light more, but they don't.

I'll need to get a picture from my coworker, he took a shot of Ultras vs zXes vs HIDs as perceived by other drivers in our parking lot a few nights back as we were warming up our cars, maybe he got the reflection off the ground.

Pictures show very little apart from beam pattern ( and don't show much about that either ).

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200 feet further than the original bulbs? Assuming it's not ricer-blue, okay, that's fine. But then you get a housing that's actually properly designed and suddenly that 200 foot difference looks completely irrelevant.

You're making a case where you shouldn't. Or rather, your opinions on what products are good are based on an incredibly limited frame of reference.

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If youre reading signs an extra 2/3rds a football field further down the road it sounds to me like someone has mis-aligned headlights

This post has been edited by sideways on Apr 18 2012, 10:38 PM

Feet, sideways. Not yards.

200 feet. 300 feet in a foot ball field. 2/3s a foot ball field

Never realized a football field was so short. Guess target shooting skews your sense of distance.

Anyone else here have experience with Phillips Xtreme power besides me?

I rarely use my highbeams but Im thinking about upgrading them too.

I blame the 1337 sniper skills . Its all perspective

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Ah that sounds better. If youre ever in doubt just park a buddies car in front of yours at night a few car lengths and just check to see if youre being an ass-hat behind people or not. Adjust accordingly

Least that method worked nicely for me when I was installing/adjusting HIDs into my Z and I wanted to make sure I wasnt being a pain in the rear view mirror.

They don't last a very long amount of time, and I would not bother for high beams.

@Demon Boost : Light bulbs lose output over time. I am betting that the Xtravision was the older of the two.

But I digress...

Road signs 200' further down?

Road signs are highly reflective. They are visible far, far away, even with my LED headlight ( 0.5W I think ) that I have on my bike.

I second the misaligned headlights that was previously posted, while at the same time question the reasoning behind knowing which one of your headlights lit up the sign.

Again, perception is not reality. There are three things I want to mention :

1. The difference in left to right side in added visibility is what I would guess as at least 50 feet when using low beams ( on a car that has good headlights anyway ). Shoulder will be lit up farther away than the road side.
2. Lighting more intense is not always a good thing, which is the reason why one should not run fogs when it is not foggy. More intense light directly in front of the car is actually a bad thing.
3. Better projection is impossible on account of bulbs alone ( provided that the bulbs are of the same type, i.e. 9007, etc ).

The entire Silverstar series ( except maybe for their signal bulbs ) is just a majorly overhyped tinted bulb series. Props to Sylvania for being able to market these bulbs, that are over two times the cost of bulbs that actually outperform and outlast them by a large margin. But I guess style always had its price...

So in summary :

-Any coating on the bulb will just reduce overall light output. One could argue about HIR bulbs being the exception, but most people won't be able to use them anyway since they come in only one ( maybe two? ) bases.
-Any claim that a specific kind of bulb in a given housing gives a better beam pattern than another of the same base is just plain balderdash. The beam pattern is a product of the reflector/projector geometry. If the bulb is of the same base ( i.e. manufactured to the same standard size/shape/etc ), then the only things it can and will affect are luminence and colour temperature. The only way to change the beam pattern of a given housing is to change the bulb base type ( which requires hacking up either the bulb or the headlight ). And even then, the only thing that will change will be that the filament of the bulb will no longer be in the proper focal point of the headlight, which will result in worse, not better, performance.
-The brightest bulbs that are of a halogen type for a given wattage will always be yellowish. It is possible to have a cool, almost bluish white that is brighter than your standard yellowish halogen, but that will need to be an ( illegal ) overwattage bulb such as an XR5. These bulbs are illegal, most of them are too blue anyway, and one runs the risk of ruining the wire harness.
-Whiter bulbs, such as Silverstars, are actually worse for lighting up the road in rainy and/or wet conditions. The farther towards blue, the worse it is. I have to admit that I don't actually know why this is, but I know I am not alone in this observation.
-In case I did not post this before, any bulb that has a coating of any kind ( except for HIR bulbs ), has always been and will always be a marketing gimmick at best.

I was at Canadian Tire today picking up some Rotella cause it was on sale so I decided to look at bulbs and the ZXE's were $70!!

Mobius: Yea I know one of my Xtreme powers burnt out after a year so I only have 1 left, They are H7's for my low beam, any suggestion what I should replace them with?

xtravisions.

only h7's will fit.

GE NightHawk, a bit cheaper than Xtravision, and same performance.

I get a pretty good discount at Napa and they carry Phillips bulbs.

Im pretty sure I only payed $30 for my Xtreme powers.

Their output is amazing, I wonder if I can find something as good but with a whiter light.

That's the catch, if you want whiter, then you have to go for a tinted bulb.

Which means less light output.

Im guessing I could somewhat get away with something like this since I have a dual bulb setup.

Now that I think about it the day after I bought my old 98 legacy my dad bought me some 9007 silverstars cause he wanted me to be safe

although they were hella brighter then what I had in there when I bought it.

EDIT: Oops should have just eddited my previous post.

AND everyone should read this: http://www.danielsternlighting.com/

Edit by Sideways: Done.

This post has been edited by sideways on Apr 22 2012, 11:05 PM

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You'll melt the pigtail.

Standard H3 bulbs are 55w. On the flip side, it's probably hard to melt a metal pigtail, so I can be ignored.