Pros And Cons When Going To LED Headlights In Your Toyota Prius

From the photo in the article , it looks like there have been advances in reducing the electric heat dissipation of LEDs, The swap-it-for-ordinary-halogen LED kits that were common even six months ago often came with large multiple fin heat sinks or even fans on the back of the lamp assembly. In a lot of cars there isn’t a whole lot of free space right behind then headlamp assembly. It is wise to know what you’re buying and not to opt for whatever is least expensive, though price is not always tied to quality on sketchy import parts.

Depending on how anal retentive vehicle inspections are where you live, you could run into issues with a no-name import LEDs that break the DOT certification of your headlamps. Be wary of parts marked for off road use only.

Finally, just because you can put insanely bright lights in your car, doesn’t necessarily it is a fantastic idea. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stuck at a red traffic signal in my Honda Insight with a Jeep driver behind me with super bright LED headlamps and fog lights switched on to boot, lighting up the inside of my car like an operating theater.

I think the quality of LED bulbs various a lot more than HID bulbs. A lot of times the throw of LED bulbs is not as good as HID. Sure, LED saves a bit more power the HID but not that much.

I have a 08 prius that had HIDs and i put LEDs in. Had to take the whole front clip off and re wire the new lights in. But paying $100 for the set with lifetime warranty and a few hours was more beneficial then replacing the HIDs that kept shutting off!

I swapped the halogen bulbs out on my Yarsi (shares many components with the Prius). I had to aim my headlights much lower to avoid so many irritated drivers from sending messages to me. Lowering the aim also improved the high beams. LED bulbs do not give the proper light pattern and even then some drivers are going to be bothered, but getting that aim adjusted helps a lot. I sure wish for a better option, but I'm afraid I won't get it until I buy a new vehicle (probably a Prius).

Did you have your headlights realigned.? They may be aimed too high.

They should ban your LED lights. Get a clue. If others are flashing their brights at you it's because your lights are blinding them.

Con 4: it's illegal to install LEDs in housings not meant for them.

Don't be a douchebag and put LED bulb in none projector housing. You'll be blinding everyone on the road. People are flashing their lights at you for a reason.

I have a 2013 Prius. My headlight problem is that the passenger headlight got a crack it it and the reflector got oxidized and darkened. Seems the only cure is a new assembly. Any ideas out there?

I run led headlight in my prius & they are great. Almost a bight as 35 Watts HID headlights. If you are getting people flashing you at is because your lights are misaimed. I do not have that problem. From your photo the do appear to bed aimed too high. Such high aiming puts the high beam in the trees. Proper aiming puts half the high beam on the road & half above. This puts the hottest part of beam parallel to road. This will give you the best high beam distance viewing. The low beam with automatically fall to where it should & not blind other drivers.

If other drivers are flashing their lights at you, it is because you are blinding them. That is dangerous and SHOULD bother you quite a bit more than it apparently does. Driving with your high beams on is illegal because it is dangerous. It really doesn't matter what position the switch in your car is in, you have rigged your regular lights to function as high beams and are driving around as if that is perfectly fine because blinding other drivers while they are operating heavy machinery doesn't inconvenience you enough. You are going to cause an accident. If you can't or won't adjust the angle on your headlamps to avoid shooting bright light right into the eyes of other drivers, then you SHOULD go back to regular lamps. It is asinine that you seriously think other drivers signaling that your brights are on is only a problem if it bothers YOU. How self-absorbed.

Looking at then bulbs in question they should have produced the correct beam pattern for an H4 bulb in the prius headlight housings. The bulbs you chose are likely not a bright as claimed due to limited cooling. There is every few fins & the fan vents inside the housing. While the fan venting inside the headlight housings has a side benefit of potentially melting snow off the headlights the potentially major drawback could be vastly reduced bulb life if they were truly a bright as claimed. Higher claimed than real brightness is the norm for most LED headlights. The color temperature of the light contributes a lot to the impression of being much brighter than stock. The are brighter but not the full claimed brightness in most cases.

I agree with previous poster that if your are blinding other with your lights you need to aim them better and make sure that lenses are not clouded at all as this will scatter the light. If you don't do this then remove the LED lights because your are blinding others.

The toyota prius headlights respond well to using LEDs if proper aiming is done with a clear clean lense. In that condition they do not blind others.

I know this somewhat of an older article, I just wanted to add my thoughts as I currently have the same 2005 Toyota Prius and have experienced a few LED upgrades that might help future Googlers.

The first pair I got off Amazon worked great, and I would say I got about the same experience you did in this article. It drove me nuts blinding oncoming traffic as I get blinded all the time so I hated being the blinder for once, and I wanted to find a fix.

I first tried angling my lights differently instead of 90° which did work, although it left me at a disadvantage of not being able to see the best - I did get flashed a lot less. I then decided to order a more expensive and "upgraded" version of the LED lights I got off Amazon, and this actually fixed all the problems I had before! Not one single person flashed me and I had even BETTER brightness in the dark, it was a win/win. Also, if you submit the warranty for LED lights on Amazon you'll usually get a full rebate if you submit a review for them.

Currently the only problem I still had with LED lights were seeing the road in the rain or when it snows or when its foggy but I recently got a new pair of LED headlights that allows you to change the colour temperature from white to yellow (resembling the halogen lights) making it INSANELY easier to see in all conditions. The ones I got were on a Kickstarter named Boslla Chameleon but I'm sure there might be alternatives out there, just a worthy mention this technology just seems to keep getting better 👍

tl;dr: Try different types of LED lights for your car, you'll eventually stumble on the perfect pair.

Thanks 🫠