HID Bulbs vs Halogen Bulbs
If you are looking to replace your current halogen bulb headlights with the bright HID Xenon Bulb headlights that you often see on new luxury type vehicles, hopefully this will help you understand the difference between HID bulbs and Halogen bulbs
What is HID ?
HID, High Intensity Discharge, (also known as Xenon) refers to lighting technology that relies on an electrical charge to ignite xenon gas in sealed bulbs, similar to the lightning phenomenon in the sky. HID lighting does not have a filament but instead creates light by igniting an electrical discharge between two electrodes in an air tight tiny quartz capsule filled with xenon gas. HID lighting are also called Xenon lighting, referring to the gas inside the bulb.
Sometimes Aftermark HID Bulbs are better then OEM Bulbs
I recently purchased XenonDepot’s new Xtreme 5000K HID bulbs for my 2007 IS350 and finally got to install them this past weekend. I wanted to post a review for a two reasons: 1) they’re brand new (just recently added to the website) and I think very few if any CL members have them yet, and 2) I know there’s a demand out there for a 5000K bulb as an alternative to the stock bulbs.
When I bought the car, I didn’t really like the stock bulbs; the look and color was a little too dull and yellowish. The dullness I perceived could have been influenced by the fact that these bulbs had been on the car for 4 years and 60k miles, and so they could have been showing some wear in quality and color of output. I wanted to swap them out, so I started looking on CL and it seemed in every thread I read on the subject, the unanimous recommendation was 6000K bulbs. I saw pictures of them and even in person and while they looked good in some applications, they were too blue for my personal taste.



