Thread: Review - 3157 HP48, 3157 HP11, 3156 XP80, 1156 HP48, 194 HP3, 194 HP5 LED's

I recently made a purchase of some various LED's during the Black Friday sale. I have now converted all of the exterior lights to LED's. I did replace the flasher module with the LED EP28 flasher module. All lights work fine. No hyperflash.

Lets start off with the 194 HP3's. I purchased amber to replace the front corner bulb.



Here is a comparison between the incandescent bulb and the LED. The incandescent bulbs I had installed had the chrome coating to have them not appear through the reflector. One thing to note is that the HP3 LED is just a tad longer. So it does hit the housing. It does fit just fine. The LED gives a truer color and it is brighter as well. I'm a fan of the HP3's.



Incandescent bulb



LED



The next bulb I tried is the 3157 HP11 LED. The incandescent bulb I had installed was a 3457 Sylvania Silverstar in amber. The HP11 has LED's on the side and on the top. Pulled from Diode Dynamics

HP11: Four side-firing 1.5W-rated Osram LED chips, and one 5W-rated LED chip on top, which is projected by a lens for maximum effective brightness. The bulb is housed in a machined aluminum casing, which provides superior heat diffusion for long life.

The LED's give a truer amber color. They are much brighter than the silverstars.



Here's a comparison photo. The left side is the Sylvania Silverstar. The right side is the HP11 LED.



Here's a close up comparison.



A day shot to show what they look like in the housing.



These are nice and bright. I ended up installing the HP11's on both sides.





The next bulb I tried was the newest bulb from Diode Dynamics. The 3157 HP48. This is the entry level bulb. I bought these to compare to the HP11's. I was also not sure how the HP11's would reflect off the chrome housing on the black corners I have.

Pulled from their site

HP48: This bulb is non-polar, CK compatible, with 48 Epistar 3014 LED chips. Thanks to the cap on the top, the light from this High Power Bulb is shined backwards and away from the bulb, not straight out. This means the output is excellent, because it uses the vehicle's housing completely, which then shines the light much more uniformly.

It does give off a nice uniform light. Although not as bright as the HP11's, these are still a great bulb. They are also budget friendly. These would look great in clear corners as they have more chrome in the housing to reflect the light.



Comparison between the Sylvania Silverstar and the HP48 LED.



Comparison between LEDs in both corners. HP48 on the passenger side and HP11 on the drivers side.



The next bulb that was replaced was the back up bulbs. I went with the XP80's. These are very bright. They are very well built. Pulled from their site.

XP80: Each of the four sides of this bulb contains three 5W-rated chips, and the top is fitted with four more under a projector lens. This is the brightest self-contained automotive LED bulb on the market, and is housed in an aluminum casing with a textured finish for maximum heatsinking properties.

Comparison between the 3457's I had installed.



LED's on top of the bulb as well as on the side.





Top has the 3457's bulbs and the bottom has the XP80 LED's



Comparison in light color



Light output in the garage



Light output outside in complete darkness





Next was the trunk install. I previously had the LED board from Diode Dynamics which has the 12 LEDs on it. Unfortunately three LED's have gone out and the other three are blinking on and off. They are clearly about to fail as well. I ended up going back to a 921 incandescent bulb. I purchased the 921 HP5 which is brighter than the HP3. What came in was actually a 194 HP5. It does fit fine in the socket. Just letting those know just in case they wonder why it comes as a 194 and not a 921. It is definitely a bright bulb. It has more light than the incandescent. It has good output as well. I will go with an LED strip next time to have more light.



In complete darkness.



The 3rd brake light bulbs were also replaced. I replaced them with the HP48's in red. They come in 1156 and fit fine. The factory bulb is an 1141. The HP48's are brighter. They do come on faster compared to the incandescent bulb. Good bulb for that area. I have not driven the car yet so I can not comment on whether or not the LED's cause issues with the cruise control feature. Once I do I will post back.

EDIT: FYI The cruise control feature does not work with these LED's



Top are the incandescent bulb and the bottom are the LED's.



The one bulb that I did not have photos of are the small 194's in the taillights. I replaced those with a 194 HP3. They are a nice true red color.

All bulbs are great and I do recommend Diode Dynamics when it comes to LED's.

Here are a couple videos during the install process.

HP11's

HP 48's

Comparison videos of the 3rd brake lights. I give the edge to the LED's for them turning on quicker when the peddle is applied.

Halogen

HP48's

Nice write up.

I think I know what I'll be buying next Black Friday! Great write up.

Thanks guys. The black friday deal is the best time to buy as they offer 20% off. Diode Dynamics also makes some great LED's. I have had the cheap Chinese LED's and they all fail quick. The one's from Diode Dynamics last years. They also have a 3 year warranty on their products. That in itself is hard to beat.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a thorough review @TheGuz!

We are really proud of the new HP48s. I'm glad to hear you liked them for your applications

Nick C.

Originally Posted by Paul J McCain

Thank you for taking the time to write such a thorough review @TheGuz!

We are really proud of the new HP48s. I'm glad to hear you liked them for your applications

Nick C.

Thanks Nick. I did find out that the cruise control feature does not work with the HP48's in the third brake light location. It appears that load resistors will be needed to make the cruise control function properly.

I made an edit to my original post about this.

Quick update. For this particular application, I had to install a load resistor across the 3157 bulbs. That solved the issue of the indicators being displayed on the HUD. It also solved the cruise control feature. That is working just fine.

I do have the LED flasher and having the load resistors across the 3157's kind of defeats the purpose of the LED flasher. But it was a simple fix and everything is working just fine.

FYI this is on my 99 Grand Prix.