Best aftermarket bulbs for projector headlights?

Recently purchased LED’s for my projectors.. but they’re not great for distance.. Should I go back to halogens, & what would be the best?

 

Check out the stickied thread in the 3rd gen subforum. There's close to 300 pages of discussion, but start with posts #1,2 and 3.

 

I went through that page, after buying my LEDs, and kind of regretted it. But anything was better than Spyder headlights. I even swapped to the halogen H11s, which I thought would be better, but they weren't. I ended up going back to my 1st lights from Amazon, which overall, not only "looks" brighter, it illuminates better (IMO).

These are the ones I got

 

See the 3rd Gen headlight thread, and check out posts #2 and #3:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-hid-vs-led-vs-halogen-h11-projector-headlights.589465/

LEDs reduce focus, increase foreground light and reduce distance projection. Some are better than others, but none can match a performance halogen.

1) Best performance option is a Philips H9 swap into the low beam, which involves trimming an internal plastic tab on the bulb with a small knife that takes less than a minute. If wanting slightly whiter light, the Hella 2.0 Performance H9s are close to the Philips while being a little whiter without taking significant output losses from dark coatings.
2) Tungsram (formerly GE) Nighthawk Xenon +120 are the best performing plug and play bulb. The Tungsram Megalight +130 is not far behind and a bit cheaper and whiter.
3) The best performing replacement LEDs by far are the Hikari Ultras covered in this post, and the Morimoto 2stroke 3.0s covered here. Both outperform stock bulbs, but cannot match performance halogens.

 

Curious which of these two do you recommend? And, do you think the Diode Dynamics SL1 is beaten by them?

 

The Morimoto 2stroke 3.0 is better quality with a fully enclosed cooling system that will fair better in a vehicle engine bay, and also has better focus for more accurate mimicking of a halogen bulb leading to a better hot spot. The Morimoto is the best designed most advanced replacement LED on the market. The Hikaris a little higher in output intensity though.

The SL1 is not recommended, it did not exceed the performance of a stock bulb.
See the review posted here.

 

Got it, appreciate the in-depth reviews and the resources you've put together!