I hate compact flourescent bulbs. I know they’re eco-friendly, but the light they give off is cold and impersonal. They take a while to warm up to full brightness. LED lighting doesn’t have any of these problems. Philips launched a replacement for the normal household bulb last year, but at $40 each they were pretty much out of reach for everyone. The price is much lower now, but still too expensive to consider replacing: $27 at Home Depot. However, I was curious about their design and wanted to test them side-by-side against an incandesent. The two pictures below are taken with incandescent then LED.

Actually I lied, the top is LED and the bottom is incandescent. Did you notice an appreciable difference? The incandescent are slightly brighter, but the effect is enhanced a bit with the camera. From a performance perspective, they perform just like incandescent: instant-on, warm lighting. They are quite heavy compared to normal bulbs and still ridiculously expensive. They do use only 12W compared to 60W so they do save quite a bit of electricity.

After a really frustrating call with BMW, I decided to fix a broken light bulb on my own. The service advisor at BMW Toronto was adamant that replacing the a single light bulb required the removal of my front bumper. This is even after clarifying it was the halogen daytime running light, and not the HID “bixenon” lamp.

On the Internet are some great resources for shadetree mechanics. On Bimmerpost I found the type of bulb I needed (H8 Halogen) and links to a video of someone else doing the same install. The video shows both cornering lamp and DRL replacements: