[Ricky]

I have an E90 (325i - 2006) with regular lights and I wish to replace them with HID (6000K) or with Xenon ligths. What do you recommend?

I know HID are cheaper than Xenon but they will function correct without any light error on the panel.

[TTG]

Welcome to E90 Post. I see that it is your 1st post.

I think you need to learn a bit more about the subject and do some research and educate yourself. HID's are also referred as Xenons. So in this case you are talking about the same thing and therefore your questions does not make any sense.

May be try to explain a bit what you are trying to accomplish?

[Ricky]

if the HID and Xenon means the same, why Xenon lights cost thousands and HID cost hundreds??

[Legion5]

Originally Posted by Ricky

if the HID and Xenon means the same, why Xenon lights cost thousands and HID cost hundreds??

Because manufacturers like to appeal to people who know how to understand complex words and have a deep lexicon for use. After market sellers on the other hand like to appeal to fanboys who spend time on e90post and use lots of abbreviations.

The terms actually interchange though so you'll see both occasionally but only rarely.

The difference in price is accounted for because 90% of non manufacturer HID's sold come without important safety shielding which costs hundreds of dollars to make. OEM lighting solutions take the equivalent of a normal lamp and replace the shade and the bulb. After market ones often only replace the bulb, which in the analogy would quickly cause the shade to catch fire among other things.

The problem of not surrounding the bulb correctly with the right materials and shapes is deeper than that, but at it's base you can find out about the issue by searching for the words "melted" and "HID" in the search box.

Some after market HID bulbs come "partially shielded" and many smaller manufacturers claim this is enough to make their HIDs work. They are lying and this will only reduce the problem not solve it.

In addition to replacing the shade and socket in our analogy almost all modern upgraded lighting solutions for car makers replace the "socket" of the lamp in our analogy. This is done so you can have high and low beams in HID's instead of just one beam. The method of creating a high and a low beam in a halogen light does not work with an HID light exactly, which is why a halogen designed socket system has to also be replaced when switching from halegen to HID.

The term for HID's which function in both high and low beam modes correctly is "Bi-Xenon", it is a brand name that was developed by a company called Hella which is based in Scandinavia. Initially people could not figure out how to use HID's for high beams as this wasn't an easy thing to figure out, so what they did was the only thing they thought of, use a HID for low beams, and a Halogen light for high beams. That's why Bi-Xenons were an important invention.

Anyway the problems with after market HID's are overblown here, they may occur with 30%% of people in a minor sense, and much less in the more severe sense. So they can work but the way after market HIDs are made are an unacceptable solution for auto manufacturers, besides the fact that most US and foreign departments of transportation have banned improperly implemented HIDs. So that's not to say they won't work.

The big reason why many after market HID sellers sell incomplete kits is because it requires thousands of hours of testing and a lab to properly design an HID system for a given car. In fact car manufactures don't even do it themselves. There are only 2 companies in the world or less that design HID's. Lots of times what resellers will do to get a working HID system into a car that doesn't have one is they will take the entire HID assembly out of a car like a Mercedes SLK and put it into another car like a Toyota Celica. Sometimes what they can do is take only the working parts of a HID kit from older models and then bore out a hole in an existing headlight set and then they sell that as a HID retrofit once it's glued together. These look more stock than you would think. With BMW there is little point in doing a retrofit because BMW already paid to have HID's put into their car. Anyway...


If you want to find HID's that are properly designed just search for "Bi-Xenon" though.

[GregL]

Originally Posted by Ricky

if the HID and Xenon means the same, why Xenon lights cost thousands and HID cost hundreds??

My guess is you're referring to a retrofit xenon HID kit to replace your existing halogen bulbs with new bulbs, ballasts, ignitors, etc... vs replacing the entire headlight assemblies with oem xenon units. In which case I think it would be safe to say that most everyone here would go with the headlight replacement route, installing a third party kit into the halogen casing is a seriously bad idea; provided they even work, your light output is going to cause total havoc with every other driver on the road as the reflector design was not made for xenon lights. If you were to drop a couple grand on oem headlight assemblies, then the general consensus here is to buy the European versions which don't have the orange reflectors built-in.

[Legion5]

Originally Posted by GregL

My guess is you're referring to a retrofit xenon HID kit to replace your existing halogen bulbs with new bulbs, ballasts, ignitors, etc... vs replacing the entire headlight assemblies with oem xenon units. In which case I think it would be safe to say that most everyone here would go with the headlight replacement route, installing a third party kit into the halogen casing is a seriously bad idea; provided they even work, your light output is going to cause total havoc with every other driver on the road as the reflector design was not made for xenon lights. If you were to drop a couple grand on oem headlight assemblies, then the general consensus here is to buy the European versions which don't have the orange reflectors built-in.

Actually the glare issue is because the HID filament sits at a different distance from the center of the reflector so this will consistently raise the height of your low beams on the road, however that's easily fixed with a simple adjustment screw. The bigger problem is going to be an uneven light pattern that looks like a deep pie crust shape. This makes it so that a smaller portion of the road is going to be lit, so if you look at the same light right after an HID install it's not going to look to you like your lights are blinding at all. Even if you noticed most people prefer to have headlights that shine further which is uncool. The downside is that you can either have glare or not get the full performance of HID's by having to adjust them which is a bad trait of the cheep after market HIDs as you could be not getting the full experience of HIDs.

So the problem is not glare as all lights have a built in adjustment for that, it's a little more complicated that. Mostly it's people not adjusting their lights.

[LACA335i]

Originally Posted by Ricky

if the HID and Xenon means the same, why Xenon lights cost thousands and HID cost hundreds??

xenon used it xenon gas . HID is the same thing.

[urnone]

just get a hid conversion kit for like $200 usd.... my friend did it to his 08 Nissan Altima coupe and I did it to my Fog lights.... cheaper and same effect more or less

[SV Concepts III]

As mentioned above, these are different terms for the same basic lighting technology.

You can retrofit just an HID kit into your existing headlights but I don't recommend it because the stock reflector based halogens were not designed for the 3x light output of a xenon setup. If you retrofit an HID kit into those housings, you will get glare and uneven light dispersion on the road.

For this reason, I recommend going with our Projector90 kit which is a complete headlight replacement that swaps out the entire assembly for projector based xenons with built in angel eyes. These are projector based units that offer a cut off to prevent glare and are better suited for a xenon setup than your stock housings. While this is the more expensive route, it is a more complete solution that will upgrade your entire lighting setup to a well performing xenon output.

[vadim]

Originally Posted by Legion5

Actually the glare issue is because the HID filament sits at a different distance from the center of the reflector ...

HID (a.k.a. Xenon) bulbs do not have a filament. In such bulbs light is produced by an electric discharge occurring between two closely gapped electrodes.

BTW, HID stands for High Intensity Discharge.

[Saintor]

Originally Posted by Ricky

if the HID and Xenon means the same, why Xenon lights cost thousands and HID cost hundreds??

I think that high-end systems are projector type, that will focus more the light. So far, BMW's own looks 10x better than others IMO.