durallymax - 4/12/2014 14:00

Got some more LED's in and decided to do a test to see ho they compare. Everyone always says HID's outperform them, so I tried doing a fair comparison. 

All pictures were taken with my S4 and everything was switched to manual. I set the ISO to 800 and white balance to fluorescent because it looked the most like what I was seeing with my eyes. The important thing was that the settings were identical for every light. If you leave it on auto it will just adjust the ISO and a 100lumen light can look the same as a 10,000 lumen light. I wish I had a real camera and tripod, as you can see I didn't hold it perfectly the same every time but I tried.  All of the lights were at about 7' for height. The reason I chose this height was because the only HID I had that I could test on its own was the one mounted to the side of the Fendt and that was the height it was at.  The white balance setting I chose when I photographed the HID first so in the pictures it does tend to make the Halogens look a little worse than they are due to their warmer color temp.

The lights I compared were multiple LEDs, two Halogens, and one HID. I'll list the details about them as I go along with the beamshots and pricing. The prices will reflect what you can realistically buy one for.  You can easily get all of the LED's for half of the price listed, but to keep it fair I just put the price any joe schmo could go click and buy one at.

I hooked all of the lights to a battery with 12.5v. I did not angle all of the lights the same, I angled them to the point where they lit up the area near me well and then tried to shine the beam as far as possible from there as this is what you would do in the real world anyways.  I felt the white fence gave a nice visual reference for the range of the lights.


First up the Halogens.


This light is a brand new H3 55w light from a Cat skid steer. I didn't look up the Cat price but these ca be purchased elseware for under $20.



 




This light is a worklight off the rear of an 8940 Magnum. This is one major disadvantage to halogens.  Not only do the housings and reflectors get poor over time but the bulbs loose light output from day one. Its not uncommon for them to loose over 50% of their output before they die.  I priced these lights at CNH and they are $70. Obviously you could find them for under $20 elseware though.



 

 


Next is the lonely HID. Its a 35w one on our Fendt, I made sure to leave it on for a few minutes so it was warmed up. There is a little interference from the "puddle" light that I could not turn off seperately, but that light is a warmer halogen color so you should be able to see the difference. I do not have any 55w HID's but they would perform better I am sure.  I do not know what this light is supposed to be but looking at it I would say its certainly more of a flood beam as well.   Cost for a 35w is around $50.  The color of this light is closest to realistic daylight IMO though. I do like the HIDs on the tractor, just wouldn't buy them over LEDs for a retrofit.






Now for all of the LED's.


Starting with the outdated 4" 27w worklight with 9 3w Epistar chips.  These can be purchased for less than $20 now, but do not perform as well as newer lights. This is a flood beam.





 

 


Next onto the 18w 4" ones with 6 3w Cree chips. These can be purchased for a little over $20. This is the Flood beam 



 

 


This is the spot version. Its a very focused beam so I angled it up to where it would light up past what a flood would light up as that is what you would do with one normally.

 

 




Next is a single 10w Cree chip. These are also $20 and are very compact. The picture shows both spot and flood together and the picture of it on is just one of them I will label the beam shots.

 

 

 Flood beam



spot beam

 


Next is one of the newer ones I got, it uses 4 10w cree chips in a 5" light. This is a flood version, these can be purchased for 60-70 on their own. I'm really liking the looks of these. Using them to replace the four rear work lights on our 8940.

 

 




Next is another new one, this is an 8" 80w light that uses 8 10w Cree chips. I purchased the combination beam style which has a 60* flood in the outside two on each side and an 8* spot for the inside 4. These will be replacing the two roof mounted worklights on the 8940. They will block the amber light so I will rig something else up for that. I like this light the most out of anything I have right now. They are about $100 each.



 

 


The last light will be the 300w 52" lightbar I got last year. It uses 100 3w Epistar chips.  The outside 1/4 on each side is flood while the inside section is spot. The newer versions of these are curved for better light distribution. THey can be purchased for $200-250. Personally I'd never buy another one, I like to use several smaller light bars as its more versatile. But the 52" is a good conversation piece. 

 



 




Added 4-18-14. 60w LED "driving light". Apparently driving light means pencil spot.  Needless to say though this thing has some serious throw.  The camera shots don't do it justice.












So there you have it, a somewhat fair comparison.  The other topics surrounding which is better has been beat to death but I'll briefly list them again.


Halogen: advantage is that they are cheap but thats about it, not really that cheap in the long run anyways. They do not like shock, the light color is not the best for working and has a low CRI, they take enough power to run and overall are very inefficient.

HID: Very high light output, economical price for the light that you get. Downside is the ballasts, they take a lot of power and can interfere with the radio on some machines.  Still the choice of many though, and offered as an upgrade on many tractors from factory. For those wondering about Xenon, its the gas that HID bulbs use. Some OEM's call the Xenon lights instead of HID's which can lead to confusion. HID's do not like shock either.

LED: Newer to the market and sometimes more expensive.  Most of the money is being dumped into research with LED's now as they are proving to be the future of all lighting needs due to how tough and customize able they are. They are also extremely efficient and draw very little power. You can wire up a lot of the stuff with very small wire which makes retrofitting easy. Theres a lot of different stuf out there in the market and no set standard really so you have to be an attentive buyer when researching to notice all of the little things. LED's offer very high light output and can match the performance of HIDs IMO when setup correctly. One issue a lot of people have with them is the non-factory look.   IIRC Case IH was offered LED's but I can't remember if that was true or not. For 2014 they are standard on Fendt.  LED's have replaced nearly every halogen in the trucking industry and are working their way towards being the choice for work lighting as well.  



In the end the choice is yours, the HID folks can argue some and add more info to this thread. Personally I like LED's but I can see why others would chose HID for the time being. One thing we can all agree on is that Halogen sucks.