Best Brand for Interior LED Lights?

[GM Guy]

Hey all,

I have been wanting to upgrade a few of the interior lights, mostly the dome and footwell lights, to LED.

I was curious if anyone had any recommendations as far as brand? quality is important, price is a factor, but not the most important.

I see that a few local vendors offer Sylvania with a lifetime warranty. Are these any good? I did buy a pair of 194s and a 211-2 to try out, but if there is better out there, let me know.

LEDs are more vibration resistant, correct? I was thinking on the higher trim level door panel with the light in the door, with the constant opening and closing, LEDs might last longer.

Finally, does having a LED in the Dome screw a guy up when trying to read a map at night? (I am old school, no GPS. ) if it has horrible glare, I might forgo that idea.

I know that LED is supposed to take less juice to run, but on the back of these new bulbs it says that it will read correctly on a can-bus system, so that seems to me that means there is a resistor built in to increase the load to keep the can-bus happy? If so, then that really negates the entire purpose of LEDs, doesnt it?

Any advice appreciated,
Thanks!

 

[SnowDrift]

I haven't purchased LEDs yet, but plan to. There are vendors on Ebay selling them in kits for specific vehicles. While this works for me since I have a Suburban full of piss-poor lighting, it may not work well for someone that has just a regular cab.

In terms of quality - I doubt any are better than another - they're all made in china, as far as I know. Sylvania, though, has had bulbs (incandescent) made in the USA for a while. GE is heavily in bed with china. Can't say on the others

 

[boatist]

I bought a bag of 20 or so 194 LEDs for $9CAD from Amazon. They have been in the dash for a couple months now, no issues. I have a LED dome light as well, the cool 6500K colour takes some getting used to. I'll try and take a picture tonight. Can't really comment on the can-buss system, I think they are the same wattage as a 194 you just get more light output. I had some more expensive 194s in the dash prior to the amazon ones, but the chips came loose after a while and they began to flicker.

 

[WarWagon]

I can't recommend any specific brands, but, quality is something you can find for example CREE branded things have a hint of assembled in USA. The most important thing is color selection. Alien Autopsy, aka daylight white, vs. Warm White that is close to the incandescent it replaces with less blinding blue is the number one decision. Red LED's for night map reading is something to think about vs. the way brighter blue blinding white 'daylight' LED's. Red LED's that are too bright also mess with your eyes as I found with a superbright red light LED flashlight.

Lumens are another blinding factor to look at as LED's tend to go insane overkill sometimes giving you 2x or more brightness regardless if you need it or not. Here is a Lumen reference to the lamps you are replacing: https://www.jwspeaker.com/resources/reference-sheet-bulb-specs/

For example a low life 194 is rated at 25 Lumens. They may be brighter till they quickly dim to the design Lumen numbers from several normal reasons like glass envelope filament metal deposits, etc. LED's use marketing numbers and I doubt if any of the cheap made in Communist China stuff has actually ever been tested in an integrating sphere because that's an expensive test to get an honest Lumen number.

At the end of the day buy a few LED's you can return NQA and try them out. Some will be too white despite their Warm White claims, others too blindingly glaringly bright, and last some have a driver flicker on DC. Offhand GM's chronically undersized wire will flicker incandescent dome lights from the gasoline fuel injectors firing. Some LED's can steady this out while others could flick off. For example hitting the starter can shut down LED's completely from low voltage. Nothing like a side by side of LED vs. Incandescent in my RV: when I hit the starter for the genset the LED's left me surprised in the dark with a few dimmed Incandescent lights on. Yes, I found a failing ground to the battery at the main bus connection rather than a bad battery like I first suspected.

The LED's I got for my RV: the color sucks as in too white, they glare from being too bright, and I question the power savings and not melting the fixtures down advantages vs. not liking the light quality at all. It's expensive to drop $50-100 to try 6 LED bulbs out. Incandescent bulbs are not exactly cheap anymore either...

 

[JayTheCPA]

Here is a quickie:
> Skip any ads that state just color, you want the actual temperature as measured in Kelvin or K.
> 5K is a very nice sharp white light. Above that and you get into the blue territory which (as noted) takes some getting used to due to the blue-alienish color.
> 2,700 - 3K is about the same color as the filament bulb, so if you want the vintage look this is the temperature to go for.

In my RV, I have 2,700K bulbs in the interior and they look great. I use 5K for the exterior.

In the Burb, I have 5K bulbs and they look great.

For suppliers, take a look at V-leds <dot>. They are on the more expensive range, but experience with the quality and customer support is good. If you are getting one of the dual filament bulbs (ex: 1157, 3157, etc), definitely stick with ones from v-leds as they make sure there is a good lighting difference between the 'marker' display and the 'flasher' display.

In terms of eBay supplied bulbs, JDM Astar (or something like that) seems like a good supplier and I have a bunch of bulbs from them with good results so far.

Toward the types of bulbs, as noted, there are many different beam patterns and shapes, so just look for the right one for the application (ex: a 'spot' type of pattern in the reading light and floor light).

 

[boatist]

1:Incandescent 2:LED 3: LED bulb 4: LED bulb whole interior.

 

[GM Guy]

awesome info, thank you very much everyone!