I know LED headlight bulbs are still a new technology but has it caught up to HIDs yet in terms of quality, brightness and longevity?

 

The OEM ones... yes. Aftermarket ones, both HID and LED are all crap. If your came with halogens, that's what they should always have.

 

Mine came with halogens and I switched to HID's and have never looked back. Same with the Tib when I had it. If you get a good quality kit, HID's are a million times better than halogen bulbs. I'm not sure yet about LED bulbs. I was thinking about getting a set for the truck but when I looked more into the technology, I saw that they use a fan to keep them cool. I dont want any any moving parts around my headlight bulbs, so I'm passing on them and getting a set of HID's instead.

 

I have LEDs for both the Tib and the frontier. Here are my thoughts.



For driving lights, they are great. Point them down just a touch more, cause they are bright! I did that to not blind anyone heading my direction. As for your high beams, it depends on your housing. In the Tib, they are way better then the halogens I had in. Yet, the lows were not as great as my Zantec HIDs. For the frontier, the halogen high beams were the better choice as well.



I ended up keeping them in the frontier. I like the look and the visibility is still good on the high beams, they just don't seem to penetrate as far as the OEM halogens.



For the Tib I retained my HID kit in my low beams and replaced the high wattage halogens I was running with the LED headlights. They also worked great in my fog light housing!



One really sweet feature of the LEDs is the ballast they use to control the heat fans is very small compared to my HID ballasts. The ballast actually fit in the Tib headlight housing! Something my Zantec ballasts didn't have a chance doing and needed an entire area to take up and hang out in.



And.....the caveat to this..... the LED must have a fan to cool it properly. This makes the back of the bulb quite big! At least this generation of LED headlights. So, the bulb is bigger. I could see these not fitting the housings of many cars. I lucked out and they fit the Tib and frontier. But just barely!



All that said, I like the LED tech so far and will keep an eye out for the next gen LEDs to come out.

 

There's a reason it's illegal to run HID's in a halogen housing. It's not "the man" keeping you down, either. It's not safe for other drivers. They're blinding.

 

If you have projector lights then HID's (4,300K to 5000K) would be my choice for driving visibility. Using HID's in reflector housings both blinds oncoming drivers from scattered light and is illegal.

I don't think LED's have quite caught up yet as most reports are limited reach of the beam.