Ok it’s used (i’m sure LED has surpassed this by now), but the tint is unbearable, it is what I call zombie blue. It’s just not a yucky factor but disturbing to see. It is OEM stuff, though the lamp may have been replaced 1: how can anyone like this, 2: is there a replacement lamp I could use that makes it appear anything lifelike?
Hmm, I’m squinting really hard, and I still can’t quite make out the type of car and the exact colour of the headlights. However, your feelings about the issue are in sharp focus.
If you hate being behind them, imagine what it’s like being in front of them – as in, when you’re the oncoming car on a dark two-lane road, or even on a divided freeway. HIDs and LEDs – I hate 'em both. Both produce an intense blue-white glare that is far more disruptive to vision than any conventional incandescent or halogen lights to such an extent that I find it amazing that they’re even legal.
I’m not just imagining this. I have a pack of cheap small LED flashlights that I bought just to keep in various places around the house for emergencies. They came with a warning not to shine them directly into the eyes, especially at close range, because of intense UV radiation. You can’t see UV of course but that tells you how the frequency curve is skewed in the blue-violet direction. The light quality is very annoying, and this is is exactly the kind of light that HID and LED headlights emit.
what year, make, and model of car? are they factory HIDs or some crap-ass eBay retrofit?
I love the HIDs on my 2008 Mazda 3, but they do have a sharp light cutoff at the top. It goes from bright white to pitch black along that horizontal line. This means if I’m going down a steep hill and around a turn/curve, it’s hard to see where I’m going.
2010 Nissan Rogue, factory HID. Again the factory lamp may have been replaced as can be expected due to the age/milage.
I love the projector halogen lights of my former Subaru Outback. Sharp cut off you could slice you bread with, and a great hue. I suspect 10 % of the light was allows to go above the horizon so up hills were not a problem. It was simply the best headlamp I have ever had, once upgraded to lamps gthat lasgt about 20% shorter life and do up the lumens a bit.
You can just replace the bulbs with warmer ones for more usable (yellow) light. Xenon bulbs are like $10 each now. Just look up some HID spectrum color charts to settle on something.
IIRC, 4300K should be close to halogen colour wise. Zombie Blue sounds like 9k s which suck balls…