Headlight bulbs, which are best?

[Tazz]

http://www.theretrofitsource.com/com...l#.U3f920NPW3Q

Quoted for awesomeness. That website is brilliant.

[bogan]

Quoted for awesomeness. That website is brilliant.

Good service too, I did find the mechanical bits to be a kinda average in the molded parts, but no biggie since it all needs to be covered up anyway.

[FastBikeGear]

Anyone know which is better out of
http://www.powerbulbs.com/product/ph...eadlight-bulbs
http://www.powerbulbs.com/product/os...r-h4-two-bulbs

From experience or second hand?

RiDE Magazine did some pretty comprehensive tests on both those bulbs some time back and found the Philips to be significantly better. I bought some of the Philips X-treme Vision bulbs and found them MUCH brighter than any other halogen light I have tried.

The better bulbs are supposedly getting more light where you want it on the road from the same wattage bulbs, due to a shorter length filament that places more of the light source precisely where the reflector designers assumed it would be. This means that the filaments on these uprated halogen bulbs are shorter than the filaments on other bulbs of the same wattage and they also have a shorter life. I discovered this first hand with the Philips X-treme bulbs - they only lasted about six months.

Philips brought out an updated version of the X-treme Vision bulbs (about 18 months ago) that they claimed had a longer life than the first ones, and I put one of these in my bikes and it worked perfectly until....

...I uprated the entire electrical system on my bike (regulator, wiring loom, relays and some other stuff) and my system now supplies a higher volatage to the headlights than these bulbs can handle so I have had to go back to using the more rugged longer filament bulbs.