Brightest H7 bulb comparisons

I am trying to find the best, brightest H7 bulb for a set of halogen projectors and need some suggestions.

I am currently using the Osram Rallye H7 bulbs, which are rated at 2100 lumens but is a 65w bulb and 300-400 hours.
http://store.candlepower.com/osraulhiouh7.html

But then I noticed these Hella bulbs which are rated at 2250 lumens, 55w but reduced hours at only 200~.
http://www.rallylights.com/hl78119-h7-12v-55w-bulb-xenon-premium-plus-50.html

And then there are the Vosla H7 +100, but I cannot find a lumen rating. Also rated at 55w, cant find hours rating.
http://www.rallylights.com/vosla-h7-bulb-12v-55w-xenon-plus-100-each.html

The Osram Rallye 65w bulb is the best option, by far. That Hella-branded bulb does not produce anything like 2250 lumens, that is (another) piece of made-up fiction on the Rallylights site. A reputable-brand +100/+130 type bulb would be the next step downward from the Osram 65w bulb, but the step down in terms of light output would be fairly large; the maximum amount of light a 55w H7 can produce is 1512 lumens at 12.8 volts.

What are your thoughts on the Philips RacingVision +150? Also, I'll be adding a relay wiring harness soon.

Very short lifespan on the Racing Vision. Wiring harness will shorten any H7 bulb's lifespan much more than it will increase the output.

-Virgil- said:

Wiring harness will shorten any H7 bulb's lifespan much more than it will increase the output.

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Interesting, why would that be?

Connectors said:

Interesting, why would that be?

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Because bulb intensity changes to the power of 3.4 with changes in voltage; life changes to the power of -13 (yes, that's the power of negative-thirteen) with the same changes in voltage.

Alaric Darconville said:

Because bulb intensity changes to the power of 3.4 with changes in voltage; life changes to the power of -13 (yes, that's the power of negative-thirteen) with the same changes in voltage.

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Sorry you've lost me with the tech speak. Could you explain it in simple terms. IE, if the voltage is raised from 12.8volts on standard wiring to 14.4v (modern car voltage) when a relay is used, what does it mean to the life of the bulb, assuming (an arbitrary) 2000 hours bulb life at 12.8v.

"Tech speak"? Er, no, it's just math. Plain old high school-level algebra.

Let's use 1000 lumens and 1000 hours at 12.8v as our "baseline". That will keep the numbers easy to understand and scale.

If you run the bulb at 12.0 volts instead of 12.8 volts, you'll get 803 lumens and 2314 hours (80% output, 2.3x lifespan)

If you run the bulb at 14.4 volts instead of 12.8 volts, you'll get 1493 lumens and 216 hours (1.5x output, 22% lifespan)

Connectors said:

Sorry you've lost me with the tech speak.

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It's not "tech speak", it's math that probably gets taught in a high school freshman math course, and revisited as part of basic "College Algebra" or a course titled something like "Functions and Change".


At the start, we're running at 12.8V, getting the 1000lm and 1000hrs in the above example.

At 13.5V, we're at about 1198lm (a 19.5% gain)-- but we're down to 500hrs of life (a 50% loss). The intensity changes MUCH more slowly than bulb life does.

We can go in the other direction-- wherein this mythical bulb would at 12.5V output 922lm and last 1361hrs-- but that's a very poor economy because bulbs are way cheaper than car accidents, and when you're starving a bulb for voltage like that you're asking for an accident to happen.