Hi all, I know I kept some of y'all waiting for a while now, sorry about that, international shipping hasn't been the kindest to me.
Now, a brief introduction of what this "Laser Headlight" is. It is a custom headlight moded from a standard F30 EURO spec LED headlight. The shop fits a 7 series or x7 laser headlight module(full module with HB & LB lens, LEDs PCBs and etc) inside, then paired with custom mount, wiring as well as additional power(my unit at 110-120w per side). The laser modules fully function with HB on. Some ppl are comparing this to a G80 headlight. They are not the same thing, this is non adaptive, with way more power and the laser module can be freely activated with HB on, which OEM BMW laser headlights cannot(they need auto HB on, then a set of conditions must be met in order for the laser to be on). The aforementioned shops can do custom headlights for pretty much any car, Honda civic, Buick, Toyota, even scooters, lol. As far as I know, only shops in China make these things so buying one require some Mandarin skills and patience for international shipping. Here a pic of what they offer for other cars.
I chose to go with this route because the stock F30 LED headlight is really lacking in terms of of the width of the beam pattern and brightness. Here in northern AZ, the roads are not very well lit, and a good set of headlights can give you a lot more confidence driving in the dark. I was originally thinking about the EURO adaptive LEDs but could not justify the price of it. In total I believe I paid around $1300 usd for these laser ones(a set with all modules attached, shipping and pay for that additional passenger side since it was previously destroyed in shipping. This is considerably cheaper than the adaptive ones: around $2500 usd.
For the install, it was painful, I did not figure out that some of screws had factory applied Loctite on it, which ended up seizing inside the mounting alignment nut, had to buy a Dremel and cut them out. The other side I used Brakleen to clean the Loctite, went a lot smoother. Additionally, these headlights require that I run additional wires to the positive terminal, negative terminal and even a fuse to the fuse box. The two headlights are connected by three wires as well, which had to be tucked behind the bumper. Here's some pics.
The headlights themselves IMO look amazing. They look much better than adaptive led and they are indeed brighter. One of biggest highlight of these over the stock led is the beam pattern. Low beam is much wider and consistent with light output now, before I constantly had to use fog lights to compensate for the width, which doesn't work so well. The beam pattern doesn't really show well on pictures so I have some data to back me up (all brightness data were measured the same distance from the wall to the car.) With a lux meter that I bought from Amazon, the standard LED produced brightness of around 1300-2000 lux at LB. A peak of 2693 lux at HB. The modded laser one had 1200-1690 lux at LB(much better beam pattern, meaning more area with higher brightness than stock) and a whopping 5000 lux peak for HB (measured at the center of the laser module beam). Here is a pic proof on the max reading, notice there is a x10.
Around the laser module beam has around 3000 lux. The result is a beam that reaches way further down the road than stock. The most noticeable scenario is highway driving, with HB on the entire highway feels lit up especially with highways with shoulder reflective signs.
Here are some pics of the installed headlights.
Thoughts: Honestly, for the amount of hassle that I've been trough just for these headlights, this is probably not worth it for you. I had to deal with a broken unit due to shipping, many days of figuring stuff out, months of wait. These things are meant for a domestic Chinese buyer to head into one of these shops and have them make it and install. However, if you're really interested, let me know, I can provide some guidance on buying these.
Side note: My headlights were aimed correctly, I made sure of it. My background: Aerospace Engineer or so-called rocket scientist.\
Final pic of Full HB on.
