[daktah]

I want to upgrade my brake and turn LEDs with brighter ones (my current ones seem dim during the day but amazing at night) and I couldnt find any information regarding if bulbs with projectors are better/neutral/worse than those without. What do you know/think?

With projectors

Without projectors

Also, the internet is divided between using clear bulbs in colored housing vs colored bulbs. What do you guys think?

 

[14cruze1.4]

I would think you wouldnt need the projector lenses for turns and brakes. just get some that have a higher intensity. I bought white back up lights for cruze and they arent very good but low intensity. so i bought a set that have a higher intensity and projector lenses so i will take some before and after pictures and post them this weekend when they come in to give you an idea. I plan to change over all my turns and brake lights to led too once I get some more motivation lol

 

[McNeo]

Depends on where you're putting it.

In most cases I find the LEDs without the "projector" housing work better since A) they have more LEDs and B) where you're putting it is already made to reflect light the right way.

 

[daktah]

I was considering the 2 pictured above and theyre *advertised* to be pretty much the same aside from the lens, so thats why I was curious if the lens would matter.

 

[Chevyderek72]

I think my brake lights are the projector style in red, they look great. From those pictures it looks like the projector ones are much brighter than the other.

From what I've read using the same color as the lens makes the color pop more and makes for a deeper color. And white dulls the color. For example the side markers, an amber led will make a super bright amber, very amber. And I've seen white in them and it makes a very light amber color that's also bright. This is because the lens filters out colors, a red lens will have to filter out all but red, a amber will filter out all but amber. So I always read its best to match the color of the bulb to the lens. Sorry, rush job on this response.

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[daktah]

Ok, the ones In my car have projecters too but they don't have many side leds so it's dimmer than I expected, and it taught me the importance of side leds. Apparently the "plasma" style (the style in my example pics) are much brighter because they can use much higher power leds because they're heatsinked to the housing. I didn't know if ones without lenses would let the light spread more and reflect better or something.

 

[evo77]

There is NO debate - red LEDs should always be paired behind red lenses. If you use white LEDs a lot of light will be filtered out. You can search the web for a better technical explanation.

For the tail lights there are simply NO current LED bulbs on the market (except for two) that perform better than incandescent. Projectors included. This has to do with the reflector optics. Forward facing LEDs only shoot the light ahead in a very narrow beam (like a flashlight). But you need a wider spread for better (SAFER) visibility. And although these narrow beams can be very bright and intense, as I stated, the spread is not wide enough to be safe.

Currently the king of the hill for retrofit stop/tail and indicator bulbs is the VLEDS V3 Triton. Using 3 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs mounted under a properly designed acrylic optic lense, its super intense light reflects backwards towards the lamp reflector with much more illumination than an incandescent bulb.

The new retrofit bulb I just discovered yesterday in fact comes from Philips themselves dubbed the Philips X-treme Vision LED. With only a limited amount of bulb applications currently there is a 7440 that can be used for our front and rear turn signals. It utilizes a Luxeon Rebel LED in a rear facing fashion (the red stop/tail application has 2 LEDs). And based on some of the youtube videos they appear to be as bright, if not slightly brighter than incandescent.

 

[evo77]

Lets not forget the Osram Joule LED which technically speaking is an OEM bulb and does take some extra effort to retrofit. It too uses a design that projects the light backwards to utilize the reflector. From some of the OE applications I've seen them in such as the Malibu LTZ and some other Ford vehicles, they may not be brighter than the VLEDS V3 Triton but they are as bright as incandescent and better than your ebay LED bulb.

 

[evo77]

Personally I have some amber Cree Q5 + 12 SMD LED turn signal bulbs in my tails. They are ok. In the daylight they seem to get a little washed out (projector dot flash only visible). At night they obviously work better as the LEDs that surround the bulb base fill up the reflector housing. Are they better than the incandescents? Probably not. But they are quite visible to those behind me which is why I left them in for now. I eventually plan to upgrade to the one of the options I listed above.

I would never use these for tail lights.

 

[Chevyderek72]

I have the ones the OP pictuted first, and they are much brighter and easier to see than the stock bulbs. Granted I do have tinted tails, but it is clearly visible.

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[14cruze1.4]

Just to be clear, im not suggesting to use white leds. Im just saying I bought white ones for my back up lights and they werent bright enough and purchased a set WITH the projector lenses but i would imagine for brake lights and turn signals the right color bulb without the projector lense would be plenty bright enough. you should put a similiar color led behind the lenses.

 

[daktah]

thanks for the answers and opinions. i think im going to buy a set of the non projector versions and try them out and see.

 

[Mick]

There is NO debate - red LEDs should always be paired behind red lenses. If you use white LEDs a lot of light will be filtered out. You can search the web for a better technical explanation.

For the tail lights there are simply NO current LED bulbs on the market (except for two) that perform better than incandescent. Projectors included. This has to do with the reflector optics. Forward facing LEDs only shoot the light ahead in a very narrow beam (like a flashlight). But you need a wider spread for better (SAFER) visibility. And although these narrow beams can be very bright and intense, as I stated, the spread is not wide enough to be safe.

Currently the king of the hill for retrofit stop/tail and indicator bulbs is the VLEDS V3 Triton. Using 3 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs mounted under a properly designed acrylic optic lense, its super intense light reflects backwards towards the lamp reflector with much more illumination than an incandescent bulb.

The new retrofit bulb I just discovered yesterday in fact comes from Philips themselves dubbed the Philips X-treme Vision LED. With only a limited amount of bulb applications currently there is a 7440 that can be used for our front and rear turn signals. It utilizes a Luxeon Rebel LED in a rear facing fashion (the red stop/tail application has 2 LEDs). And based on some of the youtube videos they appear to be as bright, if not slightly brighter than incandescent.

$140 for blinkers?! No thank you.

 

[daktah]

ok ladies and gentlemen, the verdict is in (at least preliminarily).
as far as i can tell, projector lenses on led bulbs really don't mean diddly jack and probably hinder performance by focusing all the output to a point instead of letting it spread into a blob like normal.
but, having plenty of leds around the side to fill the reflector makes literally all the difference, and "plasma" bulbs are amazing!
i would go so far as to say they are nearly if not as bright as standard bulbs.

check out these pics (bright midday overcast):

(in all pics, left is new plasma w/o lens, right is old regular w/ lens)

as you can tell, compared to the plasma bulb the other one looks like its not even on!
its hard to tell in the pics but the turn signal was also noticeably brighter.
although the bases are white the leds are colored.
they are over 2x as expensive as my old ones (~$25 a pair vs ~$11 a pair) but with exponentially more light, they are well worth it in my book.
here are the links if you're interested: 7443 yellow 3157 red
to do all 4 turn sigs and the 2 brake and 2 night lights is about $100, which is a bit expensive but for free shipping from california thats not bad. i ordered mine on the 15th and got them today.

 

[7becker7]

I just battled with this for the last month. After trying a couple different leds.
I thought the more leds the better so I bought 82 smd-leds for the brakes and guess what? they were bright but they had hardly any dual luminance when the brake pedal was applied. This meaning cars behind me would not be able to tell if i was applying the brake hardly, other than the third brake light. I ended up sending some back and I went with the Crees (projectors) for the brake and reverse lights and normal smd-leds for the inner tail and turn signals. The crees are a lot better! Spend a little more and get some nice crees.

Also use red leds in the brake lights. White will wash out and look pink/orange. Red will stay true and still be bright.

 

[daktah]

my old ones were crees but they only had 3 side leds so you could only see a single point of light since 3 small lights isnt nearly enough to fill the reflectors during the day as shown in the pics, so i decided it wasnt worth it. ill upload some pics later but i think the plasmas do have a good difference between on/half power/off. i also saw some plasmas with cree front bulbs while i was searching but i decided against it because i wanted to see if there was a difference.