macgyver35

I originally ordered a bi-xenon headlight upgrade from another vendor on here, and I won't go into details, but let's say there were some severe problems that delayed my lights for many months. When I thought I'd never see them at all, another member posted that he had some for sale, so I bought those and installed them. Then about 6 days later the original set I ordered from the first guy showed up. I guess I have a spare set now...

At any rate, these are a review of the housings I bought from Choo_31, who has a sale thread in the Vendor Showcase section. He has just a few sets left at a really good price if you want to upgrade. Note that once these are gone, finding these again may be darn near impossible. I bought some Innovited ballasts and bulbs of Amazon to go with these. Here is my review:

Okay, finally got my good camera back from my brother so that I could take some accurately representative shots of these headlights. I had been running the popular Putco harness upgrade, Autopal housings, and Philips Xtreme H4 bulbs. It was a pretty big improvement over stock. That being said, the bi-xenon upgrade is soooooooo much better!

A couple of "full disclosure" statements before we get to the pics:

• I waited for my good camera so that I would have full control of white balance and exposure. I also shot in RAW and adjusted these photos to the closest representation of what these lights appear to look like in real life that I could get. I actually had to dial down the brightness of the finished shots so that what you see on your screen is close to how the human eye sees them.
• Everyone's screen is different. I have no idea what your screen will do to these shots. I run dual Dell 22" IPS monitors calibrated with a Datacolor DC S3P100 Spyder 3 Pro (I do all my company's web and marketing artwork, if you were wondering). My monitors tend to be set a bit dimmer so that prints look like what is on screen. This may make the shots appear a smidge brighter on your screen, but shouldn't be by much.
• These shots were taken at full dark with a Canon XS DSLR using no flash and a Tamron 18-270 f/3.5-6.3 Di VC lens and no flash.
• Post-shot adjustments were made using Canon Digital Photo Professional software to adjust brightness (downward) and color temperature. No further adjustments were made.
• These housings were set up with 35w ballasts and 4300K bulbs. This is approximately what most OEM HID bulbs run on color temp. Other folks run 5000K or 6000K, but they tend to tinge slightly to obviously blue, and ruin the CRI (color rendering index) which makes colors look odd, and actually gives you less useable light as the human eye doesn't pick up that color spectrum as well, and blue light is the worst for ruining your night vision (take note all you annoying blue-lighters).
• I live in a major city of about 400,000 people, so I didn't have time to drive out to the country where there wasn't a lot of other ambient light around. That being said, the fact that there were other lights around just shows how much light these put out.
• I still have some adjusting to do, I think. I'm guessing the lights might be a bit low.
• All shots are the low beams.

Here's the first shot. Taken from the parking lot of the public library down the street from my house, aimed at a fence line about 70 yards away.




This second shot is also taken from the public library, but in a different direction aimed out across a field, with a berm about 70 yards in the distance.




This is aimed at a brick wall at the school down the street from my house. The wall is about 50 yards away. One thing to make note of... Notice how bright the lights are even when competing with the high-powered pole light that is just on the other side of the wall.



This last one is taken as I was coming back down my street.



I have to say, this may be some of the best money I've spent on my XJ. As good as these lights are, it really lessens the need for much front auxiliary lighting. The money you save on that could easily pay for the bi-xenon upgrade. I have a 2900 lumen LED light bar mounted on the front bumper. But I don't really see me needing it much now that I have these headlights. I'll probably just tilt it up more and use it for spotting stuff in the trees ahead of me.

In summary: They're bright! They're clean white (at 4300K)! They definitely update the look of the XJ. I have ZERO regrets on the upgrade. I finally feel like I can see where I'm going at night. We have a lot of deer, coyotes, bobcats, racoons, possums, etc. that like to dart out into the roads at night, and for the first time I feel like I have a pretty good chance of seeing them in time without resorting to turning on my off-road lights, which is illegal on city roads.

CrawdadSlim

Thanx for the detailed review. Please keep us informed on the lifespan of the bulbs.