So I've watched many threads passing by, with people asking whether or not the LEDs are worth it over Xenons.
Those threads always derailed with arguments that one is better than the other, but none backed up their claims.
Anyway, my car was in the shop (following an accident - then again following dealer fuckery) and I got it back today.
In the mean time I was given a 320xi with Xenons.
Here are some picture comparisons between the loaner's Xenons and my LEDs (both adaptive lights)
First of all:
- pictures were taken at the same distance, with the same camera and lens (Sony A7 with the Zeiss 55mm F/1.8)
- all picture had the
exact same exposure : 1/5 seconds
- all picture had the
exact same F stop : F/5.6
- all picture had the
exact same ISO : 100
- the only processing that I did was to convert Sony ARW to 16bit tiff
- for the numerical analysis I converted all the pictures to B&W
- garage in front was @ around 5-7m
- I can provide the RAW files from my camera if anyone's interested. If not I got the jpegs on flickr
Xenon Low beams vs LED Low beams
In this comparison I noticed that the LEDs are brighter. One can see this in the amount of light that falls on the door itself and the floor.
I've did some very simple numerical analysis on these photos (converted in B&W). These are 16bit photos, so max numerical values go to 65535.
Xenon: pixel average* for whole photo:
5578
LED: pixel average for whole photo:
7162
*by pixel average I mean, the average value of all the pixels in the image.
Xenon: pixel average for the dark* part of photo:
1978
LED: pixel average for the dark* part of photo:
1857
* dark part = top region, not illuminated by the headlights. Basically used to measure ambient light in the garage.
Xenon: pixel average for the lit* part of photo:
11542
LED: pixel average for the lit* part of photo:
15958
*lit part = bottom region, illuminated by the headlights. Gives a measure of the strength of the low beams
By these numbers alone: LEDs low beam gives 38% more light
Xenon High beams vs LED High beams
Here, the first thing you'll notice is that the illuminating pattern is different.
I don't know how that would translate in real life visibility though. I wasn't inspired, at the time, to take photos of targets illuminated at 100-200m ahead...
If we get to the business of power output, here again I say that the LEDs win out.
You can definitely see the two beam centers which just "light" up with the LEDs.
And here are some numbers to back up the claims:
Xenon: pixel average for whole photo:
12981
LED: pixel average for whole photo:
15312
Xenon: pixel average for the dark* part of photo:
2197
LED: pixel average for the dark* part of photo:
2094
* dark part = top region, not illuminated by the headlights. Basically used to measure ambient light in the garage.
Xenon: pixel average for the lit* part of photo:
19714
LED: pixel average for the lit* part of photo:
25822
*lit part = bottom region, illuminated by the headlights. Gives a measure of the strength of the high beams
By these numbers alone: LEDs high beam gives 30%** more light. Here, I included the dark middle region of the Xenons, so that number is probably closer to 20%.
Here's my Flickr account for the full size photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stormlv/