There's no real objection to legitimate HID headlamps. "Legitimate" is the key word.
You're right that there's nothing magical about H4 bulbs, or H1 bulbs, or halogen bulbs in general, or the lamps that take them. But of the legitimate options, they are usually the most cost-effective kind of upgrade for a car that came with sealed beams.
Here's the important thing: halogen lamps
must use halogen bulbs or they don't (can't, won't) work effectively, safely, or legally.
"HID kits" in halogen-bulb headlamps or fog/auxiliary lamps (any kit, any lamp, any vehicle no matter whether it's a car, truck, motorcycle, etc.) do not work safely or effectively, which is why they are illegal. Learn the detailed info
here.
Same goes for the "LED bulbs" now flooding the market, claiming to convert halogen headlamps to LED—they are all fraudulent, no matter whose name is on them or what the vendor claims. They are not capable of producing the right amounts of light, nor producing it in the right pattern for a halogen lamp's optics to work. Learn details
here .
Nutshell version: this is not like trying out different bulbs in the kitchen or living room or garage, where all it has to do is light up in a way you find adequate and pleasing. Headlamps aren't just flood or spot lights; they are precision optical instruments (yes, even a cheap and minimal headlamp counts as a precision optical instrument) that have a complex, difficult job to do in terms of simultaneously putting light where it's needed, keeping it away from where it's harmful, and controlling the amounts of light at numerous locations within the beam to appropriate levels (too much light in certain areas is just as dangerous as not enough). Headlamps cannot just spray out a random blob of light, and that's what they do with anything other than the intended correct kind of light source.
There is
one legitimate HID (BiXenon) headlamp in the large round 7" size. Excellent performance and quality, but bug-eyed appearance to go along with the eye-popping price tag.
There are two versions of the
one legitimate LED headlamp in the small round 5.75" size; all the rest of the many claimed LED headlamps in this size are worthless trinkets. good ones are
this (no daytime running light or turn signal built in) and
this (with integral LED parking light, daytime running light, and turn signal -- all functions safety-approved; this is not greasy kid stuff). These are thoroughly outstanding headlamps, very well made in America. They cost a lot of money, and the car's headlamp mount cups need their central holes enlarged to clear the rear body of these lamps.
That's about right for the legitimate LED headlamps; legitimate HIDs are around 4200K (though the "HID kit" trinkets are available in all kinds of color temperatures. High color temperature (blue-white light) is an "advantage" only from the standpoint of marketing/fashion; it is not actually "whiter" or "closer to natural daylight" or better for seeing.
No, "lumens/ft" is not a real unit of measurement of anything. Headlight performance can be measured as illuminance (in lux), or as intensity (in candela at angular positions), or as flux (in lumens, but we have to be careful to keep track of the difference between
source lumens coming from the light bulb/HID burner/LEDs and
road lumens coming out the front of the headlamp and actually making it onto the road). These measurements are not interchangeable; what measurement to use depends on exactly what we want to describe and quantify.
Probably the biggest problem is that vehicle lighting, especially effective headlighting, is a whole lot more complex than it
seems. Unscrupulous pushers (vendors of fraudulent products) know this and exploit it: put up a website or a post or a shelf display tossing around a few technical terms, get the consumer thinking they've been educated and know what they're talking about, then the cash register rings and the consumer gets on the internet to spread what they think of as their knowledge. I certainly don't mean to slam the consumer here; they're just trying to see better at night. Most of them have no interest or desire in becoming experts, they just want to see better at night, and that desire, plus knowledge that only
feels correct and sufficient, plus the false "I know what I can see" effect I described in an earlier post in this thread leads them to make bad decisions that make their cars into rolling safety hazards—to themselves, everyone else in the car, and everyone sharing road space with them.
If you're buying fraudulent, unsafe trinkets, sure. If you're buying legitimate lamps, HIDs cost a
lot more than that.
Vehicle lights are life-safety equipment. It's important to pick them based on actual, real safety performance, not on fashion or style or bogus claims—and there are a lot of bogus claims out there.
(I'm Chief Editor of the global vehicle lighting and driver assistance industry's technical journal of record; my ability to keep a roof over my head and food in my fridge depends on being right about this stuff and keeping my knowledge up to date)
