There are lots of post on standard and xenon lights and driving lights as ornaments. Will anyone share their opinion on what they feel is the best set up for night driving. How much do driving lights (Factory) help?
I have an 06 and the low beams are not effective enough (maybe just too low). I am buying an 08 and want enough light.

 

Go with xenons if you want more light. They work very well in the correct housings.

Then again I saw a MINI yesterday with 4 PIAA or HELLA driving lights up front. I'm pretty sure that would like up the road.

 

Very good question and good you have an '06 as a baseline because in the end it is a personal issue. I have friends who swear by Xenons and those who don't like them at all...but it's more about the characteristics of their personal vision than anything else. If you have trouble seeing w/ your standard lighting in your '06, then I'd think Xenons would be a pretty safe bet.

 

Zenons. After adjusting the factory aim, they were a little too low.

I will never buy a new car without them.

 

I find the Halogens fine, but the high beam setting is kinda lame. I added driving lights and it's a good combo.

 

I like the xenons on my '08. I don't personally feel they are too low. With the bi-xenon bulbs they have, high beams are also hid, which is pretty bright.

 

Xenons (properly adjusted) FTW.

I haven't tried the factory driving lights... but I love my PIAAs... they'll be lighting up the Dragon a couple of nights this week...

 

Xenons. There is no substitute. They are superior in every objective and subjective way.

/thread

 

I like the Xenons in my car as well. The factory driving lights really fill in the side areas of the road too. This helps when looking for deer and other animals on the shoulders.

 

This tends to be a somewhat hotly debated topic on this forum, and since I have yet to receive my Mini I don't have an opinion. However, I would PM Robin Casady, or search for Robin's opinion on lights, because her MCS has Xenons however apparently she's been underwhelmed and recommends the standard lights, as well as a bit of research to back up her opinion...just a thought.

 

BTW, Robin's a he! You're gonna get almost as many opinions here as there are eyeglasses prescriptions and hearing loss assessments (see audio forum) amongst our forum regulars. I love my xenons but I also love my wife's halogens on her Mazda3. They seem very similar to my lights to be honest with you.

 

Pish tosh.
Rig yourself some XMitters. Think outside the box. LED's are here!

 

Dang, I apologize Robin! Another example of how wrong it is to assume.

 

Big Newt, I put some an inexpensive hid bulb/ballast kit in my Mazda 3 and it worked out great. The projector lenses the Mazda 3 has even for halogen produce good results.

 

I guess I've been pretty vocal about this.

I live in a part of the country where light pollution at night is minimal. You can still see the Milky Way at at new moon, and a full moon makes a big difference as to how dark it is. There are no street lights on most roads here. So, headlights are important. Due to moderate oncoming traffic, much of the night driving has to be done at low beam and the roads are typically driven at 50-60 mph.

My previous car was an Acura Integra with halogens. I got Xenons in a package with my 2007 MCS. I've been very disappointed in them for low-beam driving. They are very bright, with a sharp cutoff. The result is that your eyes adjust to the bright area close to your car, making the anything beyond the cutoff pitch black.

With halogens, you have less light in the illuminated areas and your eyes adjust to that. They also scatter more than the Xenons, so there is some light illuminating the distance. As a result, I have better long distance visibility in the Integra than I do in the MINI.

People think that Xenons provide better visibility because they are brighter. I don't think that's true. I agree with Daniel Stern in his essay on the Disadvantages of HID. Xenons create a false sense of security by brightly illuminating the foreground, when it is distance vision that matters when driving. IMO, people are fooled into thinking Xenons are better, when they are not.

If you only drive with the high beams on, Xenons are pretty effective, but they are so bright that when you drop to low beams, your eyes aren't able to penetrate the darkness well. For those of you who say you should never drive faster than the reach of your headlights allows, I hope you enjoy driving the highways at 30 mph, and don't get rear-ended by an SUV going 60. If you factor in human reaction time and the car's stopping power, you need to be going pretty slow to be safe.

 

Good for you, or good for oncoming drivers?

Xenons need to have a blinder system to cut the light at low beams to keep from blinding other drivers.

 

I said it because they are a good fit for that particular car, in my opinion. They have projector lenses. They have the sharp cutoff that you complain about. I have not gotten flashed by on coming drivers. That is my experience on that car.

 

The oem halogens in the Mazda3 do seem to reach "out there" farther than the xenons in my Mini, as Robin has alluded to. Maybe that's why some xenon owners have wanted to aim them slightly upwards. With mine the reach of the light depends on the attitude of the car. Most of the time mine is just right but sometimes they point a tad low. I won't change their aim myself, but I can see why some want to.

 

I am extremely pleased with the light output of my Bi-Xenon headlights.

I had a choice between 2 '08 MCS's which were identically priced but one had the Bi-Xenon headlights where the other had the hi-fi system and auto a/c.

The auto a/c and hi-fi system are great options but I wanted the Bi-Xenon headlights more.