Today, on the road you can find cars equipped with three different types of headlights. Traditional halogen, modern xenon and promising LED technologies. Here we explain which are advantages and disadvantages of each of them.

What are Halogen headlights and how do they work?

Halogen lamp is the oldest type of light on this list, represented by an incandescent bulb with a tungsten filament sealed into a transparent envelope filled with a mixture of an inert gas and a small amount of halogen (iodine or bromine) aimed to extend the life of the filament. 

The halogen lamp is encased inside a quartz envelope because it would melt if it were made from glass. Electricity heats the filament up to about 4,500 degrees F (2,500 degrees Celsius) until it became white hot which results in a spectrum of visible light (the process is called incandescence). Unlike the normal bulbs where the tungsten in the filament evaporates and deposits on the glass, the halogen gas is combining with tungsten atoms when they evaporate and redeposit them on the filament increasing the lifetime of the halogen bulbs.

What are LED headlights and how do they work?

LED (Light Emitting Diode) is a semiconductor source of light that releases light when current flows through it. LED bulbs come in different shapes, are able to release light of different color temperatures and require much less energy, about as much as 10 times less than standard halogen light bulbs. LED headlights are more energy efficient because there is nearly no heat created during the process of lighting. As well they are more efficient at producing light because the intensity of the light produced by LEDs is much stronger, comparable to the space of each diode.

What are LED Matrix lights?
Matrix LED headlights produce the beam of light with tiny light-emitting diodes that are bundled in reflectors. The heart of the matrix LED headlights is a small chip with a big number of micromirrors, each of them having an edge length of a few hundredths of a millimeter. The mirrors’ position determines what happens to the light generated by the LEDs. A lens system directs the majority of the light onto the street; when a particular area should be dimmed, the necessary light is directed to an absorber that swallows it up.

What are Xenon headlights and how do they work?

Xenon lamp, like halogen lamp, is named because of the gas used inside the bulb. But here is one fundamental difference - the gas is essential in the production of light, rather than just extending the life of the filament as in the halogen bulb. Xenon bulbs use an electric arc between tungsten electrodes, instead of a filament, to produce light that is easy to recognise thanks to the light blue tone. When the gas is excited by the electrical charge inside the glass envelope, it amplifies the brightness of the light which helps it quickly reach the temperature required to emit a high-intensity beam.