I have a set of these available to me to try any time. A friend of mine owns a lighting company and has imported some of the HI/LO H4 LED set ups. I havent taken the time to try out the set up yet. But, I doubt it will "out shine" a HI/LO HID H4 conversion kit.
I doubt they will outshine the H4 halogens.
Yes, LEDs are efficient light producers. That just means they put out more lumens per watt of power input. But how many watts are going into these retrofit LED units? How many lumens and at what beam pattern. I'm interested but dubious.
Comparing one looser with the other looser, the HIDs. Neither one will shine when installed in a stock Halogen reflector. They both have the capability to be great lights and significantly more efficient than a Halogen, but they *must* be in a reflector that is designed for that individual type of light.
I'll have to disagree about the HIDs being
losers, this from my own, first hand experiences on the FJR.
The HID lamps are an omnidirectional light source just like the halogen filament bulbs. The telescopic retrofit units that most people use produce exactly what you would expect, a brighter, whiter light with the same exact beam patterns as the halogen lamps do. They only
need to be used in a specialized headlamp bucket by law, and that is because of the concern of the much greater light source having adequate low beam cutoff. On the FJR the low beam cutoff is quite good, much better than many other DOT headlamp buckets that have a not well defined cutoff.
The high beam pattern inadequacy seen in the FJR headlamps with HID retrofit is also present with the standard H4 bulbs installed, and that is only lack of foreground coverage. The lack of foreground light is more apparent with the HIDs only because the light intensity is so much brighter in the broadcasted beam, but the pattern is the same. Either way, an aux light that is tied to the high beams and fills the foreground is the answer.
The low beam performance with the HID retrofit in an FJR is far superior to the halogen bulbs. For those people that ride at night in urban areas and have to depend on their low beams it is a worthwhile upgrade. The only downside of the HIDs is that the capsules generate more heat inside the headlamp bucket and over time will erode the reflective plastic surface above each capsule. That surface is what casts the bottom half of the reflected beam, so it is counterproductive to the low beam performance over time. That is the main reason that I have opted not to re-install my HIDs in my (3rd!!) headlamp bucket when it was replaced last year for an entirely different reason.
