Car technology is gradually evolving and one area that has exploded in terms of innovation and technology recently is headlights.
Should you be paying extra to tick the matrix LED headlight option? Or should you go all out and look for a car with laser headlights? We wanted to put each lighting technology to the test and wanted to compare halogen headlights against LED, matrix LED and laser headlight technology.
This is by no means a scientific test and while all brands will have differing levels of headlight technology available, we simply wanted to compare the headlight types, as opposed to the way each brand packages delivers their headlight technology.
For this test we use the 2020 Kia Seltos, 2020 Skoda Superb Scout, 2020 Suzuki Swift Sport SII and the 2020 BMW M8 Competition and BMW X5 M Competition.
Full story: Halogen, LED, matrix LED and laser headlights explained: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/halogen-v-led-v-matrix-led-v-laser:-headlights-compared-and-tested/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=hub-content&utm_term=headlight-comparison&utm_content=&utm_campaign=other-video
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Headlight technology: 00:46
Halogen headlights explained: 00:48
LED headlights explained: 01:55
Matrix LED headlights explained: 02:48
Laser headlights explained: 03:54
Country road headlight test: 05:33
Headlight lux meter test: 09:53
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
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#howto #headlights #technology
Should you be paying extra to tick the matrix LED headlight option? Or should you go all out and look for a car with laser headlights? We wanted to put each lighting technology to the test and wanted to compare halogen headlights against LED, matrix LED and laser headlight technology.
This is by no means a scientific test and while all brands will have differing levels of headlight technology available, we simply wanted to compare the headlight types, as opposed to the way each brand packages delivers their headlight technology.
For this test we use the 2020 Kia Seltos, 2020 Skoda Superb Scout, 2020 Suzuki Swift Sport SII and the 2020 BMW M8 Competition and BMW X5 M Competition.
Full story: Halogen, LED, matrix LED and laser headlights explained: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/halogen-v-led-v-matrix-led-v-laser:-headlights-compared-and-tested/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=hub-content&utm_term=headlight-comparison&utm_content=&utm_campaign=other-video
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Headlight technology: 00:46
Halogen headlights explained: 00:48
LED headlights explained: 01:55
Matrix LED headlights explained: 02:48
Laser headlights explained: 03:54
Country road headlight test: 05:33
Headlight lux meter test: 09:53
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
#howto #headlights #technology
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. Today we're doing a comparison, but it's a different type of comparison because, yes,
00:05 they are four very random cars to have together. We're doing a headlight comparison. Often in our reviews
00:10 I'll complain about the headlights in some cars and how bad they are,
00:13 especially if you're out in the country doing driving at night. There's lots of animals hiding away that you can't see.
00:19 So today we want to see what types of different headlight technology there are on the market.
00:24 We'll compare each of them, figure out the pros and cons,
00:26 and then find out which you should be picking for your next new car. Now,
00:30 if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review,
00:32 you can use the time codes up on the screen there, or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down and you can use the
00:36 chapters below if you haven't done so already.
00:39 I'd love it if you could subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon as well, because that'll tell you every single time we
00:44 get four random cars together.
00:46 So let's start here. This is the Kia Seltos. This is what they call a halogen projector light.
00:52 This is the type of light I don't really like on cars and it's often at the lower end of the car range.
00:57 So this being one of the lower level Seltos's gets this type of headlamp. So a halogen projector light,
01:02 what is that? A halogen light is kind of like an incandescent light. An incandescent light is those
01:07 lights you used to have in your house years and years ago. It's very old-school technology.
01:11 You have a filament that sits inside a halogen gas.
01:14 It then has a current pass through it and that causes it to emit light.
01:18 It's then pushed through this projector lens. The projector lens is designed to then get the light out onto the road.
01:23 You can often tell a car has halogen lamps because of that yellowish color.
01:27 It's not a very bright light and it's not the best light to have if you are doing a lot of country driving or driving
01:32 in dark environments. Now, what are the pros of this? Well, the pros are it's very cheap to replace and they're easy to come by as
01:39 well. So doing this yourself isn't too hard. The cons on the other hand is it's inefficient compared to an LED light.
01:45 So you will use a little bit more fuel to run that light. Then on top of that, it doesn't last very long.
01:50 These have to be replaced a whole lot more often than LED lights do. Next up, Suzuki Swift with LED lights.
01:56 What is LED? It's a light emitting diode. This technology has been around for donkey's years.
02:02 It's effectively a semiconductor that emits light when a current passes through it. When it comes to cars though,
02:07 you have LEDs that sit on their own or within a cluster and then you've got this type,
02:11 which is an LED light with a projector lens.
02:14 The LED light then goes through the projector lens and gets shot out onto the road. Now the pros of this system are it's about
02:20 10 times more efficient than a halogen light. That means over the life of the car,
02:24 it's going to save you a few bucks because it doesn't have to work as hard to run that light. And on top of that,
02:29 it also runs much cooler. I can have my hand here in front of it and it's nowhere near as warm as a halogen light.
02:34 But the cons, the cons are that it's harder for a consumer to replace. Yes,
02:38 it lasts much, much longer than a halogen light, but actually getting access to this is a little trickier.
02:43 So as a consumer, you're not going to be able to readily replace this without taking apart a fair bit of that assembly. Next up,
02:48 matrix LEDs. This one's interesting. I did matrices at uni and it was a pain in the butt.
02:55 So what is a matrix? Yes, a fantastic set of movies, but in maths terms,
03:00 it is also a rectangular table full of numbers, expressions or symbols.
03:05 But in this case, matrix LED lights replace those numbers, expressions and symbols and fill them with LED modules.
03:11 And then a computer decides whether it's going to shut down those LED modules and that's where you get matrix LED headlights.
03:19 They give the car the ability to have a high beam on everywhere except an obstacle such as another car in front of you or a
03:25 car that's coming towards you. And the computer can decide whether that LED, the diode, gets 100% of power, 50% of power,
03:32 20% of power. It is an incredibly clever system. The cons are that not all of these systems are the same.
03:39 So for example, the Opel Astra has about 16 LED modules inside its matrix LED light,
03:45 but the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, 84.
03:47 So you're going to see big variations in how well these systems work and how effective they are at not dazzling other drivers.
03:54 Okay, let's talk laser light on the BMW.
03:58 This is space-age technology and I love where we're heading with this and I love that they're able to package everything into this small
04:05 headlight as well. What is laser headlight technology?
04:08 Well, they basically have three blue lasers that go through a set of mirrors.
04:12 They're then fired through a lens that has yellow phosphorus in it. That reacts and it emits a white light that is 10 times brighter
04:19 than LEDs. So that's too bright to have out onto the road and they put it through a diffuser which dims it down a little bit.
04:25 But the end result is lighting that allows you to see 600 metres ahead of the car, which is pretty insane.
04:31 But that doesn't work at city speeds. So during city speeds, this is just regular matrix LED lighting technology.
04:37 In fact, you can see the little modules stuck in there while that headlights on.
04:40 It's only when the car gets to 60 kilometres an hour that it emits that laser beam.
04:45 So this is the future of headlight technology, the pros.
04:48 It's 30% more efficient than LED lighting technology and of course you can see 600 metres ahead of the car.
04:54 But the cons, well this is very expensive technology, which is why you only really see it on more expensive production cars.
05:01 And it also means if you do have a minor car accident, this whole module here is going to cost you a fortune to fix.
05:07 So how are we going to do this? I'm glad you asked.
05:09 I'm going to jump in each one of these cars when it gets dark and we're going to see how the lights work out when it is pitch black.
05:16 And we'll also demo the matrix LED lighting function. Then we'll come back here and use this.
05:21 This is a lux meter, this one's calibrated.
05:24 We'll measure the halogen light to start with and then see how much better each of the lights are relative to the halogen light.
05:30 So we can get an idea of which technology you need to be buying.
05:33 So we've just hit the road in the Seltos and what we're going to do right now in each car is go for a drive in the pitch black
05:40 and just explain what I'm seeing.
05:42 The light colour, whether I'm able to see off the sides of the road.
05:45 These cars, we just randomly selected them. That's what we had in the garage that suited what we were trying to film.
05:50 If you are going to buy any of these cars, keep in mind that some of them may come with different headlight options.
05:55 So the Seltos, for example, you can actually get it with LEDs as well.
05:58 So what am I seeing here? Well, not a great deal to be honest.
06:01 The halogen is a really yellow light and I can barely see ahead of me.
06:06 It's really not that impressive in terms of how much light there is.
06:09 If I then go for the high beam, it does make it marginally better.
06:13 So I'm seeing off to the sides of the road and then I can see a little further as well.
06:17 So that's no high beam.
06:19 High beam.
06:20 So there is a bit of a difference there, but you can see why this is unremarkable.
06:24 It's quite a dull light and it doesn't provide a great deal of clarity.
06:27 So you're not actually seeing the detail in what's going ahead on the road in front of you.
06:31 So we are now in the Suzuki Swift.
06:35 This has LED headlights, bi-LED headlights, which means it's LED for the low beam, LED for the high beam.
06:41 Look, immediately I can see a massive improvement.
06:45 The light is a whole lot whiter instead of that yellow tinge of a halogen.
06:48 It projects out onto the sides of the road as well, so I can see all of those details.
06:52 And it has a really fine cut line along the top of it, so it has a very sort of defined edge.
06:57 Let's try this high beam now.
06:59 That is a massive difference.
07:01 So I notice here with the bi-LED, it loses some of the definition just ahead of the car,
07:06 but I can see way further down the road there.
07:08 I can also see a little off to the side, so if there are animals hiding in the bushes there,
07:13 it's going to catch them out nicely.
07:14 So that's no high beam.
07:16 High beam.
07:17 No high beam.
07:18 High beam.
07:19 So, yeah, big step forward with just basic LED lighting technology.
07:24 Okay, so we're in the Skoda now, and keep in mind that these lights have multiple LED modules.
07:31 So while it's similar technology to the Swift, it is a completely different arrangement of LEDs.
07:36 This also has a matrix LED, which I'll show you in a second,
07:39 but you can see straight away here that it appears to be a wider beam with those extra modules.
07:44 And if I go over to high beam, yeah, we're getting a whole lot more light above that main beam.
07:50 You can see up at the top of the trees there on the left and the right,
07:52 I'm getting a whole lot more visibility across the road.
07:55 So, yes, with multiple LED modules, you're actually getting far better light.
08:00 Let's see what it looks like with matrix LED working.
08:03 Now, I've got my colleague Scott in front of me.
08:06 Right now we're just driving with the headlights on normally,
08:09 and you can see that it's just the normal spread of light that we saw earlier.
08:13 But what I'm able to do now is switch on to a high beam without it affecting his car.
08:18 First, what I'll do is show you what it looks like with just normal high beam on.
08:22 You can see that completely blinds him, he can't see anything.
08:25 But now what I'm able to do by pushing the stalk forward is to put the auto high beam,
08:29 and keep an eye to the left and the right of his car as I flick that on.
08:32 Immediately you can see we've got high beams up at the top of those trees and off to the side of the road.
08:37 I'll show you that again. That's off, and then on again, and then off, and then on again.
08:44 So that is providing full high beam coverage without him having any idea that our high beam lights are on.
08:50 And that's by using all of those LED modules within that lighting chamber.
08:54 Off, on. It's pretty cool technology.
08:58 We've just hit the road in the BMW M8 Competition.
09:02 Now remember that below 60 kilometres an hour this doesn't use the laser function.
09:07 So right now it's just the regular LEDs.
09:10 And then if I manually put the high beam on, you can see everything lights up really nicely.
09:15 So it is an impressive high beam as it is.
09:17 But we're keen to see what it's like with the laser function on.
09:20 So we'll get it above the threshold for laser lighting.
09:24 And I'll put that on right now.
09:26 Okay, so that's on.
09:30 Okay, well look, I can see ages down the road, reflectors are shining back at me. Ages and ages.
09:36 But visually I'm not seeing that big of a difference between this and below 60 kilometres an hour before the lasers actually come on.
09:43 I'll be interested to see when we get the actual light meter out whether there is a difference in the lux reading when the lasers are switched on compared to when they're not.
09:51 So moving on to the next test.
09:54 Now you may have noticed our location has changed.
09:56 And if you look closely, the M8 competition has become an X5M competition.
10:01 Long story short, our calibrated light meter failed.
10:04 So we had to reschedule the test.
10:06 And all the cars are the same except the BMW, but it's still got laser lights.
10:09 Now let me quickly explain how this testing is going to work.
10:12 This is a calibrated lux meter.
10:14 It's a light meter.
10:15 It has a little globe on the back there.
10:18 That's going to measure the amount of lux.
10:20 That's the amount of light that hits this surface right here.
10:23 What we're going to do is have this exactly 50 metres ahead of the cars.
10:26 It'll sit on the ground.
10:28 The actual meter itself sits 60 centimetres above the ground for the low beam test.
10:32 Then for the high beam test, we're going to raise this so that it's one metre off the ground.
10:36 And the whole concept here, this isn't scientific testing.
10:39 We just want to use the halogen car as our base level.
10:42 And then we want to see how much brighter it is for every bit of light technology we go above until we reach the pinnacle, which is laser headlights.
10:49 Now this testing is a little bit boring.
10:50 So I'm going to quickly go and do this now and I'll see you guys back in my living room where we can have a look at the results.
10:56 So first up, it's the Seltos.
10:58 And yes, I'm back in my living room now.
11:01 So the Seltos is our baseline.
11:03 And as we saw when we went for our test drive, it just really doesn't offer much lighting in front of the car.
11:08 So it's not surprising that when we did the test, we came up with a lux rating of 1.9 lux.
11:13 It actually barely registered at a distance of 50 metres, which gives you an idea of how little light coverage you're actually getting out on the road.
11:20 So that is going to be our baseline, which is why we then moved on to the Swift, which is the LED lighting technology.
11:26 When we were out on the test, it was such a white and vibrant light, lit up the sides of the road as well.
11:31 And it meant that you're actually able to see into the distance and any animals and stuff that are hiding off in the bushes.
11:37 So when we put that up against our lux meter, 3.7, which is 95% higher than the halogen light,
11:44 it's almost double the brightness of the halogen, and it shows in the results.
11:48 You can clearly see there's much more coverage out on the road, and it's a much better light to work with, with a better colour as well.
11:54 So we didn't test the Skoda or the BMW in low beam.
11:57 All we were trying to prove was that LED is brighter than halogen.
12:01 And yes, they do have extra modules, but at low beam, it's much of a much.
12:05 And that is high beam where we're going to see the difference with those extra modules.
12:08 Now, speaking of which, how do we go with high beam?
12:11 So the Seltos came out with a reading of 16.3 at high beam.
12:15 So that is our benchmark reading for high beam.
12:18 You can see that the high beam reading really isn't that much higher than low beam in the Seltos.
12:23 And when we were out on our drive, you can also clearly see that when the high beam goes on,
12:27 yes, you do get a little bit more coverage down the road, but it's not a groundbreaking amount.
12:32 So how does that compare to the Swift?
12:34 Now, this literally blew me away when we got the Swift out.
12:36 62 lux, that is 280% higher than the Seltos at high beam.
12:42 And again, throwing back to when we went for our test drive,
12:45 you can clearly see how much extra light a bi-LED setup is providing.
12:49 You can see long down the road, and then it also exposes a bit more of what's going on
12:54 around the sides of the car where the bushes are.
12:56 Now, jumping into the Skoda, this of course has that multi-LED module setup.
13:01 So you've got a whole stack of LEDs in a little cluster,
13:04 and they all fire at the same time to give you coverage down the road.
13:07 And then of course it backs that up with the Matrix LED technology.
13:11 So when we line that up against our light meter, 93 lux, that is 470% higher than a halogen high beam.
13:19 So that gives you an idea of how impressive it is when they put all of those LEDs together in a module,
13:24 and then they're able to fire them simultaneously.
13:26 You get excellent coverage down the road, and we saw that when we went out for our night drive.
13:31 You're able to see up at the top of the trees, long down the road, and also more in front of the car.
13:36 It is well and truly the superior technology, and almost 500% brighter than a standard halogen light.
13:43 Before we jump into laser lighting, when we were out on our test drive earlier,
13:47 we thought to ourselves, the BMW didn't actually look that much brighter than the Skoda.
13:51 So we wanted to put it up against the light meter just to see whether the multiple LED modules in the BMW
13:57 were in fact brighter than the Skoda.
13:59 And we were surprised to see a reading of 47 lux.
14:02 Yes, it's 188% higher than high beam on the Seltos, but it's not quite as bright as the Swift or the Skoda.
14:10 So it shows you that despite the fact the BMW has the laser tech built into it that enables at higher speeds,
14:15 it wasn't quite as bright when it was stationary.
14:18 Okay, so laser, the one we've all been waiting for. How did we do this test?
14:22 So it can't be done stationary, which presented a bit of a problem because obviously our light meter was stationary
14:28 and we had to figure out a way to enable laser but still get a reading.
14:31 So the strategy we came up with was to get the car above 60 km/h with laser lights enabled,
14:37 to then drive it towards the light meter, but to switch the high beam off the second it reaches that 50 meter marker
14:44 where the rest of the cars were positioned.
14:46 And this is the result that we came up with.
14:48 We were surprised to see a reading of 73 lux.
14:51 Now that is, yes, 348% higher than the Seltos, but surprisingly it wasn't quite as bright as the LED lights in the Skoda.
15:00 And we did notice when we were out on the test drive that it was a little perplexing that it didn't really light up
15:05 as much as we thought it would when the lasers were active.
15:08 We've always felt the Skoda was actually brighter and these numbers kind of prove that the LED modules in the Skoda
15:13 are better than the laser lights in the BMW.
15:16 So let me know what you guys think about the results.
15:18 We didn't expect to see such low readings from the laser light.
15:21 We could have done something wrong and that's why I'm keen for your feedback here to tell us what you think of the test.
15:26 What could we have changed?
15:27 Was there something that you would have altered to get a better reading from the BMW's laser lights?
15:32 Let us know in the comments section below.
15:34 Remember this was just a bit of fun, definitely not a scientific test,
15:38 but just to give you a clear indication of what all of these different lighting technologies look like out on the road.
15:43 Now if you did enjoy this video, I'd love it if you could share it on social media with your family, your friends,
15:47 and then also hit the like button, press subscribe and also the bell icon that's going to tell you every single time we publish something new.
15:53 And don't forget to let me know your thoughts down in the comments section below.
15:56 But until next time, take it easy.