I had to replace a headlight bulb on my son's 2020 Fit. I had a Sylvania left over from by 1997 Civic when it had 210,053 miles on it. It's the same 9003/HB2 - H4. Now, I want to buy more bulbs to keep in reserve. I don't want LEDs, just good, bright, long-lasting bulbs. Yes, I know that the brighter they are, the sooner they fail.

Opinions gladly accepted.

EDITED: If you've converted to LEDs with success, I'd be glad to hear about that.

EDITED AGAIN: I'm leaning toward these, top-rated on a testing site.

Good Chart: https://bulbfacts.com/halogen-bulbs/chart/

 

Your posted Amazon link doesn't work for me.

 

If you want bright usable light, stay away from the blue-coated bulbs (especially the cheap ones) and avoid the bulbs that promise "100%" more light than their regular bulbs. They typically do that by overdriving the voltage to the bulb, which works for a short time and then it doesn't (and that's usually at night when it's well below freezing outside).

One up from the standard halogen has worked best for me as a compromise between brightness and replacing bulbs every few months. So much of it depends on the design of the reflector and headlamp itself. Even a good bulb isn't going to do much for a bad dispersion pattern.

I've had good experiences with Osram bulbs when they were imported from eastern Europe (many years ago). Philips' X-Treme Vision model was good bright light for a long time. ime Sylvania bulbs are okay so long as you avoid the super high output ones and the really blue ones. You can almost time the life of those with a stopwatch. Wagners were okay but, again, avoid the blue bulbs. At the price you're likely to find them, you might as well go for Philips or Osram bulbs.

 

Available at your local Autozone.

I run with LED's.

Alot brighter and use less power than Halogen bulbs.

 

I've been happy user of Osram, Bosch, Philips and G&E bulbs. But only standard clear glass, no blue or yellow ones.

 

Or they're simply a higher wattage bulb. Unfortunately, something like 80% of an incandescent bulb's energy goes into producing heat, so higher wattage can permanently damage the headlight reflector or melt plastic bulb connectors.

The lux ratings on the linked chart are highly subjective. They will depend on the headlight housing being used for the test, and even the specific manufacturing tolerances of that housing and the bulb being tested. Lumens are a much more consistent measure of light output. Ignore lux, it's chart filler and an excuse to create some mysterious "brightness score". After all, if you drop those first 3 columns, you're left with lumens, color temperature, longevity and ordering information, which makes for a pretty boring chart.

When I went through this process (maybe on the Insight forum?) a year or so ago, I came to the same conclusion I did decades ago when searching for headlight bulbs for my CRX (9006 & 9005). That is, Sylvania XtraVision is the best choice when you want to maximize light output without reduced service life, filtered (blue) glass or higher wattage. The bump in light output is modest (5-13% over standard bulbs) but it's a buy-and-forget upgrade with a 4.5 year service life rating that fits right in with the standard bulbs lineup. They're also relatively affordable.

 

Just upgrade to H4 LED Lights.


You'll never go back to Halogen lights.

 

Good 1:1 LED's are a game changer. There are some that go on sale on Amazon a really cheap prices. Here is what I've been running for 6 months now. They light up very well and have the proper cut off.

https://amzn.to/4qSM2kf

 

There's a number of challenges with LED retrofits, thanks to all the officially-banned-therefore-unregulated products out there.
Market demand has done a pretty good job of driving designs toward filament-sized-and-positioned LED emitters, which maintain the proper beam pattern. Still, make sure the product mentions it. A huge LED will make a glare-y mess out of the beam pattern.
The market is flooded with high color temperature LEDs, generally 6500K, going for the HID look. Bad ones will make yellow signs look puke green, and orange/red stuff downright dim. In my experience, 4000-5500K is the sweet spot, a nice neutral white (lower numbers looking more yellow, higher numbers looking more blue). What's more important is color accuracy, or Color Rendering Index. 5000K with a 90+ CRI can look downright pretty.
Light output (lumens) and heat (wattage) go hand in hand. LEDs can be driven harder to get more light, but they become progressively less efficient so a larger and larger portion of the power becomes waste heat. Heat kills LEDs, or at least shortens their service life and can wreck their color output. That's why every LED retrofit has some kind of cooling solution like a heatsink and fan. That cooling can get in the way of the filament-size-and-position thing, so creative engineering (or lack thereof) shows up here. Nearly all available LED retrofits have higher than DOT/ECE/whatever specified brightness (lumens), and are engineered to fail after a few years. Those two issues have the same solution: reduce the wattage. Lower wattage will bring the brightness closer to halogen bulb spec while greatly reducing heat output and extending service life (from years to decades). With current LED tech, 10-15 watts is the place to be here. Reducing the wattage usually means replacing a resistor on the driver circuit board, though some have multiple resistors in parallel which let you just break one of the resistors to get the desired effect.

 

These lights are a direct fit for a Honda Fit.

No fussing about wiring or aiming the lights.

These lights fit in just like the halogen lights.

Just install and drive.

 

I ordered the Osem bulbs a week ago from Amazon, and they haven't been shipped yet. I won't make that mistake again. The local stores don't have them, so I might cancel the order and buy Sylvanias.

Cancelled!

 

I run these for headlights, and these for fog lights. They're both relatively easy to install, and have an integrated fan to keep them cool. Both work like a charm, though a bit expensive.

 

Thanks, but I'm going to avoid LEDs because I hate to see them approaching me, day or night.

I ordered Sylvania Xtravision - basically standard bulbs. They have a life expectancy of 375 hours vs 250 for the Ultra bulbs.

 

LED Lights use less power than Halogen Lights. Last as long if not longer than Halogen Lights.

I'm never going back to Halogen Lights again.

LEDs transmit more lighting and visibility for driving at night.

And you still retain your Daytime Driving Lights.

 

Not just less. 20-25% of the power a Halogen bulb uses to produce the same amount of light. That is, a halogen bulb uses 4-5x the power.
A properly engineered LED retrofit should last 10,000+ hours, 4-10x longer than a standard or long-life Halogen bulb. There's really no wear-and-tear on LEDs, where the filament in tungsten bulbs (which includes Halogen bulbs) slowly evaporates over time. The chemistry of Halogen bulbs helps deal with that fact by picking up the lost metal and re-depositing it on the filament during operation. This lets Halogen bulbs run hotter to produce brighter, whiter light while maintaining the standard 1000-ish hour life span.

Our previous 2013 Fit turned on the DRL warning lamp with LED retrofits. It could probably be fixed with "CANbus Decoder" (a complete BS name by the way, they do no such thing) resistors. On the other hand, the DRL lamp then acts as an indicator - your DRLs are on, not your headlights.

 

The next generation doesn't have that DRL warning light. The only indicator tells of parking or headlights are on.

The advertised lifespan of LEDs is 250 - 350 hours, from what I've seen posted.

 

Odd. Bulb failure detection seems like a useful and important feature. I could understand adjusting the test criteria down to account for the popularity of *clutches pearls* illegal LED retrofits... But, huh. Now I want to go unplug a headlight to see what happens.

 

nice. That’s a game changer for me because DRLs are a legal requirement for roadworthiness in Canada.

 

Get LED Lights that have the 3 tab installation inserts like the halogen lights you already have in your Fit.

These Lights require no aiming or complicated installation. Just install, plug in directly to the stock light power socket, Done.

LED Lights like the GTR Lighting and other LED Lights with a fan attached will require more intensive install and proper aiming of the lights.

 

No LED bulb-replacements are DOT road-legal for headlights. None. That means there's no legal framework, standards, or requirements that guide or limit the construction of such LED units. It's a engineering wild-west that escapes scrutiny by labeling the products as "For Off-road Use Only" or "For Fog Lights Only".
Checking your headlight aim is the least you can do after installing such a product. You don't even need to be precise about it. Find a nice flat parking lot at night, turn your headlights on, low beam. Lay a towel over/in front of the headlight you're not testing to block its light. Find the center of the headlight lens (the reflector portion that does the actual headlight-ing), stand right next to the headlight and find that center spot on your thigh, put your fingers there to mark your leg like a ruler. Walk ~15 feet out in front of the car and use your body as a screen to find that headlight's hot spot - where the headlight beam is brightest. The hot spot should have a well-defined upper edge. Follow the hot-spot-beam out to about 50 feet and compare its upper edge to your leg-ruler. The upper edge of the hot spot should always be at or below your headlight-lens-center measurement. Road surface flatness of your testing area is very important for proper results, so re-position the car and test again if you have any doubt. If the beam is too high (shining in other drivers' eyes) or too low (not shining as far down-road as it should), it can be adjusted with a cross-head (Phillips) screwdriver. Swap your towel over from the other headlight and repeat.