There are two downsides to LED technology. One issue is that the LED headlights do not produce heat to melt snow and ice (which I will cover later) and they have the potential to produce severe amounts of glare if not properly designed.

The light output of these lights are actually very good considering their modest price which makes these our pick for “Best Bang For Buck”.

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Excessive foreground light is actually a bad thing. Your pupils will dilate to adjust to the brightest light source, so when the brightest area is 10″ in front of your rig, that’s where your eyes are focused to. This makes your down road visibility compromised, it also makes it so you stare just past your hood if you end up in fog or snow or when meeting morning rush hour traffic.

If we look at the light output pictures (Fig A + Fig B), you can see that dead center, just under the cutoff line we have a large, intense area of light. Along the cutoff line from left to right is an intense band of light. Anything below that band of light is foreground light and you can see the light intensity is slightly gradient, increasing in intensity as you get farther from the vehicle (higher in the pictures)

The next time you are driving with your high beams on, take your hand and cover the lower part of your beam patter (where your low beam illuminates) for a few seconds while your eyes re adjust to the further light your high beam is producing. You will notice that you are now extra focused way down road, showing you what I mean. Now remove your hand and watch it become harder (blurrier) to focus far down road as your pupils re-adjust to the intense light right in front of you. This is known science and is the reason companies like Volvo turned off the low beam when you switched to high beam in their VNL series trucks. Unfortunately Volvo must not have discussed this with actual truckers because their execution was horrible and left massive black spots on your sides.

If you are reading this, you may be in the market for a new set of lights and may be asking yourself what the best 4×6 LED headlight is. You are curious to know which brands are worth your money. You are wondering if a high priced name brand set are actually any better than the nameless Amazon specials you see everyone running.

JW Speaker has designed what many would consider to be “the perfect light”. The 8800 is the brightest option, fresh out of the box and comes with a heated lens option to fight mother natures worst. The beam pattern is nice, with a very big focus on foreground lighting (directly in front of you).

When built correctly, an LED headlight can be life changing- making every day on the road much more enjoyable but if poorly designed, it can create white knuckle experiences every time you hit bad weather.

I will start by saying that no, there is not one light that emerges victorious among all others. There are personal preferences to consider and a few surprises that may change the choice you make.

This is where the Morimoto Sealed4 really shine. Fresh out of the box, the JW Speaker 8800 low beam is brighter, quite a bit brighter actually. The Morimoto Sealed4 low beam is much brighter and the high beam is superior to that of the 8800.

While most LED headlights are made by low cost Chinese factories, the Sealed4 are made in an OEM quality facility in Taiwan, using Japanese Nichia LED chips to give you the most beautiful light output imaginable. For those who are not absolute lighting nerds, Taiwan is where many of the worlds OEM lighting companies are headquartered including TYC who makes the OE headlights for Freightliner and Western Star.

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Most other options are just an LED chip, behind a projector bubble to put light on the road. The result ends up being a decent light output with most of the light being in your foreground with no noticeable hotspot (intense area).

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Morimoto’s Sealed4 have what I would consider to be the best designed beam pattern out of any option we’ve tested. The sealed 4 is almost made using very high quality components (as with the 8800) which set these lights apart from the hundreds of other options on the market.

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Available in a Chrome or Black (Smoked) Chrome, these lights feature a sharp looking running light that will make your rig stand out.

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The Holley RetroBright are a “Period Correct” sealed beam LED headlight that looks original. These are great for those who want a modern output but want to keep the classic look of their vehicle. The Retrobright are also available in a Modern White or Classic White output colors and are built to be a direct fit for shallow bucket classics.

In this article, I will walk you through a couple of my “Top Picks” and explain what’s better about each of the options and why it matters that you consider your specific needs when choosing. There is no “One size fits all”.

The JW Speaker 8800 offers a “Smart Heat” option which makes these lights a winter annihilator! The sensor on the side of the lens senses when the temperature is right for ice build up and turns the defroster on to keep the headlights clear of ice and snow.

A sealed beam headlight is a headlight that is a sealed unit, these come factory in many older cars, trucks, and even modern big rigs and fire trucks.

The Bi-LED capabilities of the Morimoto Sealed4 make it so you can use a plug and play quad adapter (shown above) to make it so all 4 lights are on low beam and all 4 lights are on high beam. This setup will absolutely walk all over the JW Speaker 8800 in every aspect. brighter, wider, better beam pattern etc.

I am going to focus most of the attention to what I believe is the best 2 options, but I will give a few honorable mentions. It is worth noting that these 2 I have chosen are not for any reason other than performance and reliability. I have not chosen them because they are our brand or because they are a light we sell. In fact, any light we find that is worthy of our customers will be added to our sales page.

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OE headlights have the brightest spot in the beam pattern further down the road to keep your eyes focused down road at all times, this is a large safety issue that many overlook.

A LED sealed beam headlight uses LED (Light Emitting Diode) chips, opposed to a tungsten filament found in a halogen light. The LED chips, combined with reflector or projector optics can produce massive amounts of light.

The JW Speaker 8800 has a dedicated low beam bulb and a dedicated high beam bulb whereas the Sealed4 are a Bi-LED design, meaning there is just one that does both positions. Fresh out of the box, all 4 lights switch to high beam with the Morimoto whereas the JW Speaker just have 2 turn on high. It is worth noting that other Bi-LED options on the market would not get the same recommendations from us. The Morimoto Sealed4 have a very well defined and sharp cutoff line which makes it so you will not blind other drivers, other options on the market we’ve tested fall very short in this regard.

The Starr LED4656 & LED4651 are a hidden gem in the 4×6 world. They are built to a very high standard in a well known Taiwan factory but have gotten little exposer as of yet.

This ability to melt snow and ice is among the top reasons why the trucking community has embraced these lights with such passion. Any time we mention a new LED headlight to any trucking group, you can guarantee than you will be asked “are they heated” more than any other question.

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If you absolutely need the best heated LED headlights then the JW Speaker 8800 is your absolute best option but if you are looking for the absolute best led headlights available to you, the Morimoto Sealed4 with the optional quad adapters are what you need!

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The typical 4656/4651 halogen headlight is a weak, dingy yellowish color with severely poor performance. These are the type of headlights you could drive with your high beam and not actually bother others.

While JW Speaker typically advertises around 6000k light output, our opinion is that they lean more towards the 4800k to 5500k mark. The Kelvin Scale is purely a measurement of the color of a light and is not a measurement of how bright a light is, in fact, the best output will be achieved between 4300k to 5000k.

One unique feature of the JW Speaker 8800 is that they use a slightly warmer colored LED chip than any other option we have seen. The reason for this is that bright white light will wash out in a snow storm, whereas a slightly warmer color will contrast snow and fog to avoid “snow blindness”.

The Vision X LED Headlights are a high quality reflector style headlight that have very good light output and a unique look.

While there are performance halogen sealed beam upgrades from companies such as Philips or Osram (to name a couple), the light output is minimally better and tends to be more of an aesthetics upgrade with a slightly whiter color.

The JW Speaker 8800 is the industry leader in 4×6 LED headlights. Quite literally, the benchmark which all others try to follow. In trucking, if you ask 100 truckers what the best headlights are, 75 of them will say the heated JW Speaker.

This amazing designed beam pattern is an absolute marvel of optical engineering and does not get the credit it deserves. Why? you might ask, because the average consumer has no idea that these features are even needed or lacking in other lights.