mr72

My daughter got me these headlights for Christmas from Amazon along with their anti-flicker harnesses:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018JKIUF4
They are essentially Trucklite-style LED headlights at a lower price. They are DOT approved and are advertised to bolt in without modification.

tl;dr They work great, far better in light distribution, color and brightness compared with the stock headlights, but did not install without some minor modification. Aiming was critical.

• Hardest part of the installation is removing the grille. It's made harder on my JK because of my bumper. Once the grille is off then it's four Torx screws to remove each headlight. Installation of the driver's side was a no-brainer, it snapped right into place. The H13 adapter and the anti-flicker harness was a bit bulky to cram in there for both sides, and I think I'll eventually zip-tie the connectors together because I'm a little paranoid that they will come loose. On the passenger side, the light would not fit, the alignment tabs did not fit directly into the slots for them on the headlight bucket. I should note that the passenger side headlight bucket was different than the driver's side on my JK, dunno how common this is. I wound up shaving off a little bit of the plastic on the upper two alignment slots on the plastic headlight bucket until the light would fit.
• First thing I noticed was that the new light protrudes about 1/2" further beyond the bezel compared with the stock lights. This gives the lights a bit of a "bug out" look since they sit proud of the grille on the upper edge by nearly 1/2". Hard to classify this as a problem but it's just unexpected.
• YOU MUST AIM THESE LIGHTS!!! When I first installed them I went for a drive in the dark without aiming them, just guessing their point of aim was the same as the stock lights... well it's not. Not even close. The initial impression I had was that these lights are brighter much further down the road than the stock lights with a noticeable dark spot immediately in front of the Jeep... it's just because they are not aimed correctly. They must be adjusted to aim much lower than the stock lights to achieve the same cutoff position. One I adjusted the aim of the lights, the performance of the low beams was much more similar in terms of lighted area to the stock headlights.
• The light is remarkably brighter and much more consistent than the stock lights. Also the side-lighting distribution of light is way, way better. Of course everyone knows the benefits of LED lighting in a JK. The light appears "bluish" when turned on in the daytime and compared with other headlights, that is when you look at the Jeep. But on the road the color of the light at night is daylight-white, if not just a hair cooler than daylight.
• BTW one advantage of this type of light is the "high beam" includes both low+hi. One disadvantage of this type of upper/lower half LED light is as DRL (which I don't use) they only illuminate the top half with low beams on so they are really somewhat less visible in the daylight vs. ordinary stock halogens. Also the cooler color blends in with daylight much more than the warm halogen light color so I think as DRL actually the stock lights may make your Jeep more visible.

In all I think these lights are a tremendous value and a worthwhile upgrade considering they are only a little bit more expensive than a good set of replacement H13 bulbs for the stock lights, and of course they won't burn out. I've had a nearly identical light on my motorcycle for a year now and it gets much more abuse than car headlights, considering it's on hi-beam all the time and it vibrates a lot more, and it has held up just fine. I think one big question for these so-called "Chinese knock-off" LED headlights is durability/longevity, which I think is a perfectly valid concern that may be mitigated by the low cost of these particular lights. Time will tell.

Eandras

Great write up. I purchased a set off Amazon that are DOT approved with the fog lights. You are correct. They need to be aimed. Prior to removing my stock lights and used my white fence and marked the low beam and high beam and tuned the LED lights in with no issue. The LED lights provide a better cleaner light and increases vissability in all weather and at night

kejtar

I've been looking for replacement lights for a while now and I keep going back and forth regarding the LED's. From your description it seems that you are happy with them and I am tempted to pick up the same set but I'm wondering about the performance - you stated that it's similar to stock when it comes to the lighted area? My problem is that the stock lights are kind of bad regarding the way they light up the road in front of me.... so same but better as in brighter?

Eandras

mr72

I don't know what you mean by "kind of bad", but light distribution and cutoff is rather strictly controlled on DOT headlights. Basically in order to prevent blinding other drivers the lights are built to have a specific illumination pattern. In the case of these LED lights that I linked to, the pattern is essentially the same as stock but the big differences are:
- it's far more uniformly bright from the edges of the pattern across in every direction .. side effect is this makes you really notice the edges since they are very well defined rather than being a blur/fade like the stock lights
- it's not that they are brighter in toto, it's that the entire illuminated area is as bright as the brightest spot, and that's at least as bright as the brightest spot in the stock lights, if not somewhat more so.
- the light is very white, not sort of yellow like halogen lights
- the high beams are spectacular

You're not going to get any lights that illuminate a wider/taller area than stock lights unless they have "off-road-only" beam pattern. But with these LEDs at least you can get as much light as legally allowed in the prescribed pattern.