I’m hoping to get better lighting without annoying other drivers.
Halogen lights are designed to retain almost 100 percent of their initial brightness over time because the filament’s tungsten particles are recycled while the bulb is illuminated. This kind of bulb is pressurized with halogen gas, which makes the tungsten filament in the bulb brighter by default than the same filament used in old vacuum bulbs. But these factors can affect the brightness of halogen bulbs as they age, and so it’s not a bad idea to change out halogen bulbs in pairs for optimum lighting.
Just make sure to choose a high-quality bulb and, again, always replace headlight bulbs in pairs for an even shine on both sides.
Phillips CrystalVision Ultra headlight bulbs are easy to install and produce a whiter light akin to daylight, but depending on the bulbs they’re replacing, they may or may not offer a significant difference in brightness.
These Phillips headlamp bulbs are tinted blue to create a whiter light that enables the bulb to produce illumination that is closer to natural daylight. The blue coating on the bulb filters out some of the yellow light from the halogen gas inside.
The bulbs in my Explorer were in the headlight assemblies I installed nearly 3 years ago, so it seemed good to install these Phillips bulbs over the existing Sylvania bulbs as an upgrade.
Like any replacement headlamp bulb, these had the same “wings” for removing and installing the bulb from the headlamp assembly and the connectors were a perfect match. And like other halogen bulbs, don’t touch the capsule with bare fingers or the bulb could fail sooner due to skin oil transferred to the bulb. Be careful handling halogen bulbs due to gas pressure inside the bulb.
Headlight bulb installation varies from vehicle to vehicle but the process was quite simple on the 2006 Ford Explorer. You do have to remove the headlamp assemblies to access the bulbs, but with a 10mm socket and an extension, it’s simply done.
To be honest, just looking at these lamps in the shade when turned on after replacing just one bulb, there didn’t appear to be much difference in the color or brightness compared to the Sylvania bulbs, which had a white capsule instead of the blue tinted Phillips bulb. This seemed rather surprising. While these headlight assemblies are nearly 3 years old, the lenses aren’t yet smoked up like older yellowed light assemblies that might skew the results.
These headlight bulbs were not the upgrade I expected. Again, I was rather surprised that these bulbs were practically the same color and intensity as the Sylvania bulbs that came with the headlamp assemblies.
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