MarkRosegold said:the projectors create ungodly amounts of foreground illumination , so it's easy to see how people fool themselves.
I will say that's my one complaint with the projectors I've got. The foreground is a little too bright (and definitely a bit brighter than the stock projectors), although I've seen worse from some OEM setups. But the light thrown a couple hundred feet down the road is also much better than the stock projectors. If I can figure out a good way to reduce the foreground on these things, it'll be high on my list. These projectors weren't my first pick to use, but of all the Bi-Xenons I found, they had the closest form factor to the existing low beam only projectors, so I didn't have to modify the lights to make them fit, retained stock auto-leveling, etc. Realistically, the low beams were good enough before and they're good enough now, but the high beams are a lot better with the projectors + 9011 HIR in reflectors compared to just the halogen high beams previously. They throw further, but the projectors also add a good bit more width, which is a good thing on deer infested roads.
I still don't believe the charts for the distant lighting intensity though, as I've driven several of the vehicles in those charts and they absolutely put less light down the road than just about any non-halogen projectors I've seen short of some of the really cheap knock offs. Some of the early Morimoto stuff (particularly the early Mini H1s) wasn't very good at all. And the cheap knock offs of it are usually worse. But the MH1 7.0s are surprisingly good for what they cost. The cutoff step is a little bigger than ideal and they could do with a dimmer foreground, but other than that, they're at least on par with some of the OE projectors out there, but not up to the standard of some of the really good OE projectors (of course, they're also cheaper and smaller, so that's expected). Installing the upgraded bulb holders offered for them did make a significant difference though. Before that, one was pretty good, the other was mediocre, as the bulb positioning with the stock clips isn't great. With the new holders, the mediocre one got a lot better light distribution and the other one got slightly better, making them both equal as far as my eyes can tell. If it matters, I'm using the matching Morimoto XB bulbs in the projectors and the ballasts are the stock Hella Gen 3 ballasts that came with the car, so not cheap ballasts of questionable quality and output.
As far as color temperature, anything above the 4300 - 4500k range used by most stock HIDs is awful for seeing. I've been debating swapping the 4500k bulbs in my projectors for the 3800k ones to see if it's a noticeable improvement (even though the warmer color temp bulbs put out slightly less light). I haven't given any of the newer LED projector stuff more than a quick glance based on this, as it all seems to be 6000k+ color temperature.
I do love the color rendering of halogens, but unfortunately, packaging enough light output with halogens is a challenge on most cars. I managed on the Jeep, but that's with 80w low beams and the high beams + driving lights totals up to 600 watts. And the whole front end is lights, pretty much. In the BMW, power draw would be an issue, but trying to stay within the form factor of the stock lights, heat would be a bigger issue. I'd be limited to significantly less total light output than I've got now, as 2x 65w bulbs (1 being high beam only) per side is about all I could manage without significant electrical changes or heat concerns.
