hi everyone and welcome back for everyone that's new welcome my name is sergio gabor and i'm a quality engineer in the automotive industry ever since leds and xenons started to get more and more popular for automotive lighting systems there's always been a little light in our headlights that seems to be out of place or better said not quite the right color of course i'm talking about this little guy the w5w bulb also known as the t10 bulb in other markets this is a very common product and it's used in many applications like dome lights license plate lights and many others but as with other lightning products manufacturers offer led retrofits for this bulb and i was quite curious what's the difference between them and which one is better because it seems like the possibilities are endless so in this episode i'll take you along with me to find out which is the best t10 led retrofit we'll first start with a short overview of this bulb after which we'll take a look at the products lined up there are 26 by the way after this we'll measure the light output of each one along with the maximum temperature real wattage and we'll compare the light color side by side so you'll know exactly which one is right for you but that's not all because these products are meant to offer illumination for an extended period of time so we'll also assess their reliability i guess nobody wants to set fire to their car therefore we'll reproduce some extreme operating conditions to find out if these products can take it towards the end of the video we'll sum everything up and will decide which one is the best let's get started the classic incandescent w5w bulb is part of the wedge base bulb class w stands for wedge and 5w represents the bulb wattage a wedge base is a type of electrical connector that doesn't need to be rotated in order to work just plug and play the wattage can vary depending on the application from 2 watts up to 21 watts so now that we know a little more about this bulb let's take a look at the products that we'll test today starting off with osram led driving sl the second most expensive product in this episode at 10 a and four years of warranty it has one diode rated at 0.6 watts and it's available in cold white light as well as warm white light m-tec platinum has a decent price of 2.5 dollars a piece and four leds rated at 2 watts apparently from osrama neolux is another brand under the osram umbrella costing 3.5 dollars a piece and using one led rated at 0.5 watts hella is another well-known brand and is the only product in this episode with warm white light it has a price of 2.5 dollars a piece and is using three leds rated at one watt philips extreme altenew is the most expensive product in this episode at 11 a piece and it has one led narva has a cost of 3.5 dollars and it's using two leds rated at 0.5 watts these have been the more established brands that we'll be looking at and for the rest we'll speed through as there are a lot of products lined up on the side you can see the specifications for each one but don't worry about remembering all this stuff whenever i'll talk about a specific product you'll see it pop out in the corner these products have been selected based on the reviews and the number of orders from amazon aliexpress and others i must mention that having such a wide application range this type of product can work better based on the specific application in general leds offer directional light compared with the class incandescent bulb which is omnidirectional meaning that it spreads light all around for example in a dome light leds that point down are better than leds that have side mounted diodes okay so those are all the products and we'll first start with the can bus warning light test unfortunately none of these products pass this test on my car all of them show warning light in my dash so if your car is manufactured by the volkswagen group there's a high chance that you'll get this warning light too some cars just check if the circuit is open to show warning light but others can also check the resistance in which case you'll get a warning light next let's check if these products offer cross polarity leds usually need to be plugged in the right way to work unlike classic incandescent lights which work both ways as you can see here for example this led can also work both ways just like a classic bulb however this one does not so here are the results and we can see that most established brands do not have cross polarity while some of the chinese products do i'm not exactly sure if this is really beneficial as in most cases it's not the diode that fails in an led light most often is the electronic components in an led driver that kick the bucket so by adding this functionality manufacturers can bring additional failure points to the system you decide moving on let's check how hard these products get and what's the real wattage in order to do so i'll leave each led on for 30 to 40 minutes to reach the maximum operating temperature and will measure this using the thermal vision camera the leds are powered at 14 volts and while doing this we'll also confirm the rail wattage by multiplying the volts with the amps here you can see the data and sure enough the classic lamp is the hottest reaching 138 degrees celsius the hottest led is bulb e at 134 degrees followed by led at 125 and led r at 117 however in my opinion everything that surpasses 100 degrees is not ideal the best results come from neolooks with 51 degrees celsius narva and ledg tied at 56 degrees and osram at 60 degrees but let's not draw any conclusions just yet because there's a second high temperature test that will perform in a few minutes as for the wattage it looks like ledi requires the most power at 2.52 watts followed by led at 2.5 watts and ledp tied with ledt at 2.38 watts that's not bad actually but for some products it's way off their advertised specs for example led is rated at 72 watts yeah for 30 pieces i guess anyway let's go to the color assessment test light color is measured in kelvin and lower values indicate a warmer light color while higher values indicate a colder light as indicated by this chart this value is usually indicated on the packaging so you'll know exactly what you get and most well-known brands offer both cold or warm light options however for the chinese products there are not that many options and the light color can vary a lot for this test we'll compare the products side by side then with a four thousand kelvin ceiling light and finally a six thousand kelvin led light let's see the results this is the light projection on a white surface from all the products compared side by side with the first one being the incandescent lamp if you would like to take a closer look feel free to pause the video as i don't want to linger too much so a few remarks here it looks like mtek and ledj offered the most neutral white color led b and e are the brightest while others i am not sure how they considered this to be white as to my eyes they look blue switching to the headlight view we have the 4000 kelvin xenon will be installed to compare against in this case hella seems to match the color quite well now the same view but with the 6000 kelvin led light instead of the xenon in my opinion if i leave aside hella and blue leds all of them look decent but led j stands out to me before we start the durability tests we still need to measure the light output and we'll do this in two ways first with the leds installed in a headlight and second in a dome light following the same procedure as in previous episodes the headlight will be positioned at 1.5 meters from the projection surface and i'll measure the light output using a lux meter unfortunately as you have seen ldl did not fit in the headlight because of the square design so no results for that one but we'll test it in the dome light coming up next here you can see the results and no wonder ledd has the highest reading at 224 lux that's even more than some daytime running lights in second place is ledb with 124 lux and ledj with 104 lux the incandescent lamp recorded 11 lux and only led q managed to have a lower light output however as we're testing various led designs some are less suitable than others in this application and you really need to take into account the headlight design in order to choose the right led another common use for this bulb is in the interior dome lights let's test that now using the same lux meter i'll measure the light output in the same spot with each led and here you can see the results again led is the brightest at 352 lux that's just stupidly bright in second place is ledb with 202 lux and in third place is lede with 110 lux but there's a big problem with these three leds the first two are too big to fit so fail and lede runs too hot for this application or any other to be honest so unless you're trying to create smoke signals don't use it now let's continue with the reliability tests first in the cold temperature test followed by the high temperature test and finally a mechanical stress test in the cold test the products were left overnight at minus 30 degrees celsius now generally speaking leds are not affected by low temperatures on the contrary these products perform better under these circumstances but other electronic components which make up the led driver are more sensitive to these conditions in this case only ledg failed because it started to flicker now the high temperature test and it's here where things tend to go sideways when it comes to heat leds are underperforming they have decreased lifespan when operated for long periods of time and light output is drastically reduced compared with the previous test where we measured the maximum operating temperature will perform this test for longer with a higher ambient temperature similar to what an led would face when installed in a headlight or dome light on a hot summer day the leds ran for 4 hours at an ambient temperature of 60 degrees celsius let's see the results out of 26 products 7 failed this test either by melting or by flickering and going out you can see here that ledt even lost some leds as the solder melted away in this application silver solder alloys are recommended but from what i'm seeing it's not the case now it's highly unlikely that these products can start a fire at most the leds will melt and produce smoke that will damage your car but in case it does start a fire let's see if the manufacturers use flame retardant materials in these products for this i'll just use a torch to see if the bolts maintain a flame well all sketchy brands which have a plastic construction maintain a flame however the ones using pcbs and silicone are better in this regard the top products are the only ones that use flame retardant plastic construction which is a safety requirement in automotive components and finally let's check how much mechanical stress can these components handle in the past i performed a vibration test but on such a small product this is almost impossible to do while also not affecting the structural integrity of the leds so for this test i'll just try to break them using my hands and that will give us a pretty good idea of how tough they are of the established brands only phillips and neolux somewhat failed i say somewhat because these two have a removable diffuser on top which comes loose if you pull on it as for the chinese products out of 20 12 broke off with very little pressure led see in particular broke while being installed in the light output test not just one but all four products that i ordered and i had to glue them back together to finish this video you can see here just how little glue is used in assembling these products and some of these leds are quite heavy compared to a classic incandescent lamp so those are all the tests done and now it's time for the conclusions and i'll try to keep this short for the established brands all of them get a recommendation from me most of them are available in 6000 or 4000 kelvin and all of them have great reliability and better light output than the classic lamp osram and philips are the most expensive while m-tech runs a little hot but not above the 100 degrees threshold however in the end it all comes down to personal preference and the specific application now for the rest of the products from a to t i'm going to start with what i consider to be acceptable and this is a very short list led r has good results overall good light pattern great light output but runs too hot to recommend led j also runs too hot recommend but has good results overall i really liked the neutral white color offered by this led similar to the m-tec led for specific uses where light is required to shine only in one direction ledp also has good results leaving aside the possible fitment issues if the manufacturer installed a small heatsink on the back of this product it would have definitely earned a recommendation speaking of missed opportunities ledc has great overall results but taking into account that it disintegrates if you sneeze around it i'm not able to recommend it if the manufacturer is watching and i highly doubt it just use better glue that's it you're welcome as for the rest of the products just forget about them they are garbage and i would definitely not use them if i would have to choose the top three products in this test i would say that mtec is in third place osram in second and hella in first place so there you have it my review of some of the most popular t10 leds tests like this one takes weeks to perform correctly so if you liked this video and found this information useful do me a favor and hit that like button i really believe that customers need to know exactly what to expect from a product before they buy it and the only way to know for sure is by testing it just looking at specifications it's not enough maybe i should test other products too anyway that's been it i now need to go and change the chain and sprockets on my bike and also i'll test the most powerful led i've ever bought also on my bike see you soon and until next time thanks for watching and have a great day bye bye
