A certain amount of hotspotting exists by design, particularly in halogen reflectors - all bulbs are going to have some hotspotting and some peripheral flooding, but there are various minimum and maximum intensities specified at a large number of points and zones within the beam pattern. Without that, it's not a functional headlight beam, it's spray of light that resembles a headlight beam. In the case of the LEDs posted, the hotspotting is much more intense within a much narrower beam pattern than on even the bad stock halogens.
And again - the factory bulbs are total trash and the optics aren't great either, I agree with you, absolutely no question. The entire point of this thread could be summed up as how to mitigate that cheaply - inexpensive, good quality, totally legal halogen bulbs that require no modification to the vehicle. It's weird that I'm getting so much pushback on this and that y'all want to spend more money on something that, according to all existing studies and what we (ie people who know much more than me and do this for a living) understand about physics, doesn't work as well and sometimes requires modification to the headlamp assembly. I can't think of another situation in which someone has spent so much time telling car guys "hey, this thing is cheap, it's reversible, and it works the best" and the response so overwhelmingly being "actually this more expensive thing that isn't as good is better," but that's always the case with automotive lighting discussions, an oddly contentious topic for how boring the issue is.
Nothin' personal, we're all friends here - and I apologize if I came off harsh, my serious voice comes off a little gruff in writing sometimes - it's just a very strange thing for me to experience.
Dan and I have talked about this - though I'd have to buy another set of the god-awful stock halogens - but the problem is that there's no way to objectively measure which one is better, or rather, there's no way to do it that's accessible to the layman. Visual tests and photos aren't sufficient due to the issues outlined in the original post, and such equipment or testing is cost prohibitive. Trust me, if there was a way to easily and accurately do it, I'd have bought Dan a beer about it already. I do have some photos that show the difference between the stock halogens and the Philips Xtremevision +90s that I have in my car, but again, photos aren't much of a test.
And again - the factory bulbs are total trash and the optics aren't great either, I agree with you, absolutely no question. The entire point of this thread could be summed up as how to mitigate that cheaply - inexpensive, good quality, totally legal halogen bulbs that require no modification to the vehicle. It's weird that I'm getting so much pushback on this and that y'all want to spend more money on something that, according to all existing studies and what we (ie people who know much more than me and do this for a living) understand about physics, doesn't work as well and sometimes requires modification to the headlamp assembly. I can't think of another situation in which someone has spent so much time telling car guys "hey, this thing is cheap, it's reversible, and it works the best" and the response so overwhelmingly being "actually this more expensive thing that isn't as good is better," but that's always the case with automotive lighting discussions, an oddly contentious topic for how boring the issue is.
Nothin' personal, we're all friends here - and I apologize if I came off harsh, my serious voice comes off a little gruff in writing sometimes - it's just a very strange thing for me to experience.
Dan and I have talked about this - though I'd have to buy another set of the god-awful stock halogens - but the problem is that there's no way to objectively measure which one is better, or rather, there's no way to do it that's accessible to the layman. Visual tests and photos aren't sufficient due to the issues outlined in the original post, and such equipment or testing is cost prohibitive. Trust me, if there was a way to easily and accurately do it, I'd have bought Dan a beer about it already. I do have some photos that show the difference between the stock halogens and the Philips Xtremevision +90s that I have in my car, but again, photos aren't much of a test.