Personally, I would say the E46 projectors should only be used with Halogen bulbs.
Having run them with a 5000k HID kit, the eye strain on an unlit country road was very noticeable. But dropping down to H7 Halogen bulbs, the eye strain is gone, but you still get very good headlights.
Also, the blue haze around the cut-off was very intense with HID, whereas with Halogen it is still there but nowhere near as intense. I actually think it's great that the cut off is so sharp with the E46 clear lenses, because you can instantly see where the beam height stops.
It's been mentioned before, but brighter headlights does not always mean better visibility, it's more so how that light is distributed onto the road. For example, with a HID kit, I was constantly having to put my main beams on along country lanes at night because my eyes couldn't adjust to the intense difference above/below the cut off... whereas now I'm only running halogens I can drive country lanes at night, in the rain, without needing to use main beams.
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