Arty101

Maybe yours came with auto leveling vs load leveling?

biglexfan

Thanks for sharing the images. Is it a good match to the DRL colour temperature? Couldn't quite see from your photos.

TechNut

It's not bad but if I were to guess, I would bet the DLRs are more like 6000K. These new lights at 6500K look just slightly more towards blue than the DLRs. They are much closer than the factory halogens and you have to study them a bit to really pick out any difference. I consider myself to be very picky, and to my eyes they are close enough that I don't think most people would see a difference.

GeoNJ77

Excellent thread, and quite informative! I have a 2014 300h, and I was never quite pleased with the halogen light's color clashing with the LED DRLs. I then went to Lexus to look into retrofitting an OEM HID kit, and they said that it was only an option at the point of purchase... then looked into aftermarket - too much of a hassle, and last, almost settled on the "ultra bright" Sylvania halogens, though they'd have decreased my depth of view. I'm glad that these LEDs get the job done, and by what I understand from your post, it's a plug-and-play kit, including the relays. I will be getting these soon!

On a similar note, have you considered upgrading the fog lights to LED as well?

TechNut

Yes, plug and play. You just need to tie down the relays so they are secure.

I have seen several discussions about converting foglights, but haven't really thought a lot about it. There is a part of me that would like to update them to LED but the reason seems silly to me. My reason is purely cosmetic. I very rarely use the fogs because they seem to be virtually useless. The only reason for me would be so they match the DLRs from the front, but I can't imagine I would actually use them any more. Of course, now they really look yellow - but wait, perhaps yellow is good for fog lights?

The other thing that now bugs me a bit are the high beams. They also look really yellow, but again I almost never use them. The traffic where I live is dense enough that we rarely use them, so I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. I don't know how much it would reallly help in the extremely rare instances I'm able to use them. Anyway, if I had to prioritize, I think the high beams would be more valuable to upgrade based on my use than the fogs. If I lived in an area that had a lot of fog I might feel differently.

TechNut

Just wanted to provide an update after a week of using these new LED headlights, I have to say they are terrific. I did feel I needed to tweak the aim up just a bit. There is a dial in the top center (rear of course) of the headlight module. You have to use a small straight edge screwdriver and I ran it about 15 notches clockwise total after several adjustments. I was trying to adjust slowly to make sure I wasn't causing any issues for oncoming traffic. No issues so far. This truly solved my dissatisfaction with the factory halogens and they may even surpass the HID lights.

lesz

By coincidence, a few days ago, I came across the vehicle ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety web site, and I was reading about their headlight ratings for various vehicles.

I was surprised to see that, with some level of consistency, LED headlights were getting lower ratings than their halogen counterparts. They have 4 possible ratings for headlights--Good, Acceptable, Marginal, and Poor. For the 2017 ES, for example, the standard LED low beam/halogen projector high beam lights got, at least, an Acceptable Rating, but the optional (and expensive) LED low beam/LED high beam lights only got a Marginal Rating. Similarly, the triple (LED) beam optional lights for the RX and NX only got marginal ratings, while the standard choices with halogen lights got higher ratings. In each case, the LED lights were lighting up smaller areas, both ahead of the vehicle and to the sides than their halogen counterparts.

Here is the page for the ES, but you also easily go to other vehicles from that page.

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/veh...0-4-door-sedan

My 2013 ES had the HID low beam option and halogen high beams. My 2017 ES has the Bi-LED option. When I was driving the 2017 ES home from the dealership after buying it and when I got onto country roads, it seemed that I wasn't getting the same level of light from the 2017's LED high beams that I was used to with the halogen high beams on the 2013, but I thought, at the time, that I must have just been imagining that that was the case. Now, I realize that it wasn't just my imagination.

The performance of the LEDs probably doesn't make much difference for those who primarily drive in well-lit urban areas, but, for those of us whose driving is mainly on unlit and unmarked roads away from urban areas and where we have to be continuously alert for deer and other wildlife jumping out onto the road without notice, headlight performance is more important. While the halogen lights don't have the "cool factor" of the LED lights, evidently, in terms of performance and safety, the halogen lights do better.

I found all of this to be especially disappointing.

TechNut

Interesting post. I'm somewhat surprised by this. I can say without question that I can see better than I could with factory halogens, especially on the edges of the road. This leaves me wondering about their testing methodology. This is especially true with respect to the NX. I had read that LEDs didn't tend to project in the distance as well as other lighting technologies. I wonder how much the high beams factor into these ratings. I need to spend more time exploring that site to see if they have an answer to that question.

Edit: after spending some time on the referenced link and trying to understand how the scored the lights, I have to wonder if the factory headlight aim is part of the reason for the poor score. They are measuring the distance the lights illuminate, which was precisely the reason we tweaked the aim up after installing. They test edge illumination on left and right curves and a range of tests that include both high and low beams. We have found the aim on Lexus to be fairly conservative. Our first RX needed the HID lights to be adjusted up as well, and according to our dealer this was a common complaint. Anyway, regardless of these types of ratings, I can say without question that we can see considerably better after installing the LED lighting kit than we could with the factory halogens.

lesz

I can add a bit to the comparison that I talked about above between my 2013 ES and my 2017 ES. Besides the differences in the type of headlights on each vehicle, there is also a difference in the fog lights. The 2013 ES had halogen fog lights. The 2017 has LED fog lights. And, just like with the headlights, the performance of the 2013 halogen fog lights was noticeably better than that of the 2017 LED fog lights.

I've read, in a number of posts on this board, that have said that, when there are conversions from the halogen fog lights to LED fog lights, such conversions are mainly for looks and that the converted LED fog lights don't provide as much illumination as the factory halogen fog lights. I had assumed that the poorer performance of the LEDs was just related to the fact that those LEDs were a conversion and not factory fog lights, but, after seeing that the factory LED fog lights on the 2017 ES don't illuminate as well as the factory halogen fog lights on the 2013 ES did, I'm now thinking that the difference is related to the capabilities of the LEDs compared to the halogens.

While the LED fog lights on my 2017 ES do have the "cool factor", they are really worthless with regard to providing illumination on the dark country roads that I drive on.

chromedome

Is the load resistor there to fool the ECU into thinking the bulbs aren't blown? Those LEDs would have less resistance than halogen bulbs. You have to use a similar resistor if you use LEDs for the indicators to stop them from hyperflashing.

As for LED foglights, I've got stock ones on my 300h and they're useless in rain and fog. They're too dim and the bluish white light doesn't go far. You need big super-yellow Hella rally lights if you want to see anything in fog.

TechNut

Yes, I've seen many conversions done for the sake of appearance. My motivation was driveability at night, which is why I wasn't planning to mess with the fogs. Now my opinion of the factory halogen fogs on the 2015 MY is that the are virtually worthless for anything other than close up. They do seem to offer some lighting along the edge of the road however, but only that area close to the car. I don't generally bother with them and we rarely have fog. They are certainly worthless as running lights as they do nothing to really enhance visibility in my opinion. I know they aren't the right color for proper "fog" lights, but cosmetically they practically look yellow now when comparing them at night against the new lights.

GeoNJ77

Meant to ask on my earlier post, is there any flickering with the LED kit, and/or did you need a relay kit or harness to regulate the current to the bulbs, as we would use in an HID retrofit kit?

TechNut

No flickering at all. The kit came with an included little black box in the cable of each light that needs to be tied down, I think someone on here called it a load resistor. It is about 1.5 inches long by 1 inch wide and perhaps 5/8ths of an inch thick. The advantage of the LED kits is that they are completely plug and play, you don't have to run wires to the battery as required for the HID kits, which is a bit of a nuisance in the 300h as the 12v battery is in the trunk.

Brent1944

I only had resisters with my HIDs and didnt even need those on my Honda Pilot..

TechNut

Interesting. The kits I looked at required an additional power and ground lead to the battery. Good to know there are alternatives that are more "plug & play."