Funny, no one has flashed me because they thought I had the high beams on with my LED headlights. And the inner two lights come on for low beam. Believe me, they don't want me to flash them back because they'll be blinded by the halogen high beam bulb.

The only time I ever had this issue was on the RX300. There was a smaller light under the low beam headlight, giving the impression the high beams were on.

 

Interesting.

 

I've been flashed a couple of times on the LED headlights and the response high beam definitely made them shut off their high beam quickly.

Anyways, I will say this much:

1. Light output is not as good as the HID. HID has better distribution and visibility on the road. Lesson #1 for the next car, I'm sticking with HID.
2. The beam cut-off in my opinion is harsh. Yes, its the same on HID, but for some reason I feel its harder for me to see anything above the cutoff, real hard to see bicyclists and pedestrians at night with these.
3. There is no replacing the LED from my knowledge. Replacing the LED requires replacing the housing from what I've been told. They better last lifetime! I've been told that'll run $1000+

4. Most importantly, they look Sexy on the car!

 

I actually find the light output comparable to HIDs. I have never had a problem thinking that the LEDs were not sufficient and I never use my high beams either.

 

I currently have BOTH. I have HID in my spouse's 350 and LED in my 450.

Light output - HID is better but not much though, may be 10 vs 9.
Look - LED wins hand down, may be 10 vs 6
Cost - it's subjective. LED cost 2 times more than HID

 

This comparison probably makes more sense than any I've seen yet. Practical versus personal preference. Both have advantages and both are high tech, you just have to decide what's important on a personal basis.

I'm wondering if the number of HID's going into the RX is the reason they're not even an option on the CT due to supply. Hmmm

 

Can you post pics? It would be really helpful, thanks.

 

You meant pics of the light outputs at night?

 

Yeah, pics of the light output of both at night time.... Next to each other is good, I'm just curious as to what it looks like and how the vision differs between the two at night...

 

^Ditto. The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.

 

here are few pics I snapped last night. The single pic is the LED. You can guess which one is LED and which one is HID in the double pics.

 

Thanks for taking the time to post the pics. As for which is which on the pic with the lights on the garage door, the one on the right (my right looking at the screen) is the HID is my guess.

Looks like your aim is also high, have you been flashed yet?

 

No problem at all. Yes, the one on the Right (looking at the garage door) is HID and LED is on the left.

My parking is slightly incline so it seems to aim high but it is NOT, factory specs.

 

Thanks for snapping those pics!

 

Besides the LED light looking cool and being one of the first on the block to have them, one of their advantages over the HID lights are the fact that they draw less electricity. On a normal rx350, that might not matter but on a hybrid where you can drive in "stealth" mode (engine off and running only on electric motors) until your battery draws down to a low level, it helps prolong your "stealth" mode driving.

As far as brightness/lumens, it's my understanding that HID lights are brighter (produce more lumens) than LED and that's why on HID equipped cars, you'll only see one HID light active for each housing on the low beams whereas on LED lights, you'll see multiple LED lights active to achieve the same brightness/lumens.

It's also my understanding that another advantage LED has over HID lights are that LED lights are closer to color temparature to natural (sunlight) light. Both are very close, but it's my understanding that LED lights are just even closer.

Also, LED lights generally produce less heat and so that's why you'll see christmas lights advertise that LED christmas lights are cool to the touch compared to incandescent lights. Might not be good for cold weather folks where the heat can help melt the snow from the headlight assembly but that's a different discussion.

HID lights and their housing also have the ability to better focus the light to where you want it and so from behind the wheel, it might "appear" to be brighter when in fact, it's just better focused. Again, on LED because of the nature of the design, it's a little more difficult to focus the light and so that's why multiple LED lights are used to achieve the same brightness and using multiple LED lights allows the engineers to "focus" the light pattern.