Our Problem with Beam Quality
Why should we care about headlamp beam pattern quality? Nowadays, more and more people use LED headlight bulbs to replace the original halogen bulbs of the car. Because halogen bulbs are too dim, especially in places where there is no road lighting, such as highways and country roads. Halogen bulbs can't see the road clearly, LED headlights are much brighter.

After the replacement, we can feel that our vehicle has been significantly improved in brightness. However, we can see a lot of mixed reviews on the website for the LED headlight kit. Some people say that the light from the LED headlight kit is not concentrated, so the road still looks dark. Even more dangerous is the LED headlight kit that causes scattered light that temporarily blinds the eyes of oncoming drivers. This is very dangerous to driving safety.

Dazzling lights are very dangerous to driving safety

Why? How did it happen? In fact, it is possible to develop LED headlight bulbs with perfect beam patterns. The problem consumers face is simply because most LED headlight factories are not professional. They engineered an inaccurate beam angle for the LED headlight kit.

Next we'll do some tests and comparisons, including halogen bulbs and LED headlight bulbs. And, we share some knowledge about how to identify the quality of headlight beam.

The Standard for Perfect Beam Patterns
OK, how to distinguish headlight beam quality? Let's learn it from the beam pattern of the halogen bulb, because the design of the headlight assembly is based on the light emitting principle of the halogen bulb. The beam pattern quality has the following 3 criteria:

Standardized Beam Patterns for Halogen Bulb Reflectors

1. Check whether the line between the dimming area and the bright area is obvious and continuous. The sharper the lines, the better the beam quality.
2. The line on the left is low and horizontal, which can prevent the drivers on the opposite side from being blinded. The line on the right is taller, ensuring you can see farther away. The whole line resembles a "V" shape, the closer the shape is to the halogen bulb beam, the better the beam quality.
3. The hot spot (brightest point) is located in this area. Generally speaking, the closer the hot spot of the LED headlight bulb is to the hot spot of the halogen bulb, the farther the LED bulb will emit light.

If your replacement HID or LED headlight kit can have a beam quality similar to this one, the bulb's beam quality is excellent. OK, here we take our new Trent TITAN 2.0 (45W) LED headlight bulb as an example for testing. First, we fit it into the low beam reflector, then power it on. See, Trent LED headlights have an almost identical beam pattern to halogen bulbs. The lines are sharp and the "V" shape is also at the same angle as the halogen bulb, which is the hotspot of the area.

Beam pattern in reflector of Trent TITAN 2.0 LED headlight bulb

We also tested another LED headlight bulb purchased online. As we can see, first of all this beam quality is much worse, the lines are very blurry. Secondly, the angle of this "V" shape is wrong, this area always produces very diffuse light, which tends to dazzle people on the opposite side. Third, the hot spot of this LED bulb is here, which is much lower than that of halogen bulbs.

LED headlight kit with poor quality beam pattern with reflector

On the other hand, the beam pattern of most automotive headlamp assemblies is of this type. However, there are still some headlight assemblies with special beam patterns. For example, like the Ford Focus, this is the beam pattern of its halogen bulbs. If we fit a Trent perfect beam LED headlight kit into this assembly it also has almost the same beam as a halogen bulb.

Advertising pitfalls of beam quality
Finally, we would like to remind you that some online sellers like Amazon, who use their LED headlight kits to install into projectors, make advertising videos or pictures. This is to show people how good the beam quality of their product is. However, this is an untrue advertisement. Because almost all LED headlights produce a perfect beam when mounted on a projector, the beam pattern of the projector is always very good. And the beam pattern of the projector is like this, it is easy to identify. Be careful not to fall into this trap.

Luminous performance of LED headlight bulbs with projectors