GoldWingDocs.com Product Comparison
May 29, 2016
Postby WingAdmin » Sun May 29, 2016 10:53 am
“I installed a set of these headlights on my GL1500 yesterday.
Before I go on, I should note that there is another alternative to these LEDs now on the market, from Electrical connection. The Electrical Connection H4 LED is rated at 4000 lumen light output, over the SoCalMotoGear headlights rating of 2400 lumen. I had the opportunity to view them side by side, and the EC bulb does appear marginally brighter - but definitely not what you would expect from almost double the lumen rating.
However, whereas the light from the SoCalMotoGear is very precise and defined, with well-defined cutoffs, the light from the EC LED is sprayed over a much wider area - so while it may put out slightly more light, the end result of the usable light appears much less, because less of it is going down the road where you need it.
However, this seems to contribute to the spray of light coming out of the assembly - whereas the SoCalMotoGear unit's single point of light creates a sharp, defined cutoff, the array of LEDs on the EC unit can be seen to cause multiple "images" of the cutoff on the projected light.
Drawbacks: aside from the aforementioned spray of light, the EC unit runs considerably hotter that the SoCalMotoGear unit. Perhaps the fact that it is sinking eight LEDs at a time rather than just the one (or two) of the SoCalMotoGear unit is to explain for this. Also, whereas the SoCalMotoGear unit has the low beam LED on at all times, and adds the high beam LED during high beam use, instead the EC unit switches between the sets of low and high beam LEDs. This has the resulting effect of losing some of your low beam light when you switch to high beam. The SoCalMotoGear unit, when switched onto high beam, keeps the existing low beam spread, and adds a tremendous searchlight-like beam of bright light far ahead and up, where you need it.”
NOTE: Although this review was done on a GL1500, our LED lights for the GL1800 are similar in design and light output.