Love Thy Halogen

When HID headlight bulbs were first introduced, we said, "Ah ha! This is the end of halogen bulbs like Beta tapes and cassettes!" Then, years went by, and at this point of the year 2018, our halogen sales are still strong. We are, in a way, an old school where we still do have a love for the halogen bulbs. So, here is our version of a comparison blog about our halogen bulbs, "Love Thy Halogen."

Manufactures like Philips and Osram have come up with a unique and innovative way to reinvent the old halogen bulbs. Philips introduced X-treme Vision and White Vision both in HID bulbs and halogen. Separately, halogen product lines of Racing Vision, X-treme Vision +130%, Crystal Vision and the ever corky, Color Vision in four different colors. The competitor, Osram, went further by introducing Cool Blue Intense, Cool Blue Hyper, and my favorite Cool Blue Boost. Osram Night Breaker Unlimited was extremely popular, but this year, they upgraded the Unlimited line into, "Night Breaker Laser."

However, besides the cool name and packaging design, what da heck is the difference? Are they just pulling out different model names ever so often to rehash the same old halogen bulbs? First of all, it is not possible to make a halogen bulb into a LED or HID bulb brightness. There is a limit to pump in wattage into the filament of the bulb before blowing the bulb. However, you can "mimic" the look of the HID or LED bulbs. In other words, you can color the lamp in such a way that the bulb will dimish the traditional yellow hue of a halogen. As you can see from the picture below, the bulbs are coated with a mix of blue, silver or chrome to make the output of the light look closer to the white hue.

Now, I have had some customers upset saying, "THIS BULB IS NOT LED!!!" Yes. It is not an LED bulb like Osram Night Breaker Laser will not shoot out a laser. It is an unfortunate side effect of marketing genies, but we understand the confusion. Another misleading marketing mishap is the term, "Up to 100%, 150%, 200% Brighter!" This again is written in fine prints. The bulb is 200% brighter than (And here is the fine print) the worst type of halogen bulb out there that are at least meets the standard minimum required brightness. When we tested the bulbs, the range of brightness was about 20% to 30% brighter. In any case, to reduce the confusion, we made another set of graphs (We love graphs) to show you the difference in between Philips and Osram halogen bulbs.