Headlamp bulbs

[Moondust70]

The old bulb chestnut !.............


Let us try to put some numbers in here to try and quantify the better bulbs……………

To say a bulb lasts 2 years is meaningless as it will depend on annual mileage which in turn will relate to the bulb life in hours.

Most well known bulb manufacturers will quote bulb life in hours ……… for an H7 this is usually quoted as 1500 – 2000 hours .

If you do a lot of M way driving then take 30 mph as an average and that will give a life of between 45K – 60K miles.

If you do a lot of city / mixed driving then take 15 mph as average and that gives 23k – 30k miles.

For folks that do not have DRL’s then bulb life is not an issue.

I come into the M-way driving category (40K per annum) and the last two sets of Halfords +90 % bulbs (one set bought and a further set under warranty !) lasted between 6K – 8K miles. At a 30mph average, that is a bulb life of about 250 hours which is only 10% of the expected norm………….if the price was 10% of the norm then I guess it would be acceptable !

My son has Phillips high brightness bulbs (S40) and using the above guidelines they lasted reasonably well at 800 – 1000 hours, although this is still only 50% of the average quoted bulb life figures

Like Bill I now have Standard Osram bulbs in there and will monitor their progress.

I guess I have too much time on my hands !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bill_56]

Some interesting number-crunching there, Moondust.

Just one point I'd clarify... the Osram bulbs I've used are 'ultra-life', which Osram claim to have a longer life and so suited to DRLs. They don't quote any actual MTBF that I can find, just the claim of 'up to' three times longer, and the 3 year replacement warranty. Yes, I know' 'up to' doesn't mean a thing, so I'm highly sceptical, and the warranty doesn't mean much either.

I bought my car when it was under a year old, and both hedlamps needed replaced within the following year, so the original Volvo bulbs (reputed to also be long-life Osrams) certainly didn't last 3 years. My daily commute to work is about 3 hours round trip, so I guess they really are working overtime.

Time will tell...

[daphantom]

Ive just replaced mine with Halfords own. £16.50 a pair was steep i thought. It was Osram ones that came out of it -hardly the originals after 95k miles surely?

[terrorcrane]

I've used the Phillips and the Osram. I can safely say that from my experience the Osram lasted longer and gave a better light at night