Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bulbs

As soon as you start talking about car bulbs in a store the salesman is sure to start telling you the virtues of LED lights, xenon headlights and will no doubt be spewing all kinds of other acronyms that mean nothing to you!

Here we're going to cut through the techno-babble and get down to the basics concerning the two car bulb heavyweights, HID and LED bulbs. These two types of bulbs have become the hottest property thanks to their advanced technology and excellent performance in comparison to other older halogen bulbs (which are more similar to the older-style light bulbs that you used to have at home).

But if both are so good then which should you choose? Let's look at them both in more detail:

HID bulbs - These are also known as xenon headlights or by their full name, high intensity charge bulbs. The charge refers to the arc of electricity that is created by firing electricity between two tungsten electrodes in a bulb filled with xenon gas. This basically produces far more light when compared with simply heating up a tungsten element to create light. In fact you can expect around 3000

They operate on a much lower power than halogen bulbs which need a lot to heat up their tungsten element. This is great as it will actually save energy and therefore fuel, as cars will create electrical power from their engine which is of course burning fuel. They also last a long time, up to 2000 hours, because they don't burn away their element like halogen bulbs which can have a low life-span of around just 450 hours. So HID lights are not only bright, but also green!

There are some drawbacks though because HID lights are rather expensive in comparison to other types of light and because they aren't 'bulb shaped' it's difficult or impossible to fit them into older