While it is true the projectors light shield will provide clean cut offs for glare control, that does not mean that all light sources perform the same in the halogen assembly. A common belief is that the light source does not necessarily matter since the projector housing’s internal light shield will control glare, unlike halogen reflectors found on previous generation Tacomas. The 3rd Gen Tacoma is equipped with factory H11 halogen projectors. Your perception that the stock lights are underwhelming is correct, so what can you do about it? So rather than putting good performing bulbs in which have a reduced life span, the OEMs opt for bulbs with the longest life span, at the expense to output. Many consumers would rather have lower performing lights that last a very long time rather than deal with the inconvenience of more frequent bulb changes. Most vehicle manufactures rather not hassle their customers with more frequent bulb changes, which may also negatively affect the perceived quality of their newly purchased vehicle. When you increase the output of a halogen bulb the life decreases. The obvious question to ask is why?! Low performing ‘standard’ or ‘long life’ bulbs last a very long time, but in doing so trade off for lower output. Toyota and nearly all OEMs intentionally put poor performing halogen bulbs in your stock headlights. Stock bulbs leave a lot to be desired, but this poor performance is actually somewhat by design. Lots of pictures at the end too for those that prefer visuals with graph output comparisons.įirst, lets cover why your headlights are terrible. Warning: There is a lot of educational heavy info in this thread. Left to right: Stock Osram H11, GE +130 H11, Osram H9, XD Pro LED, XD HID, XD Philips HID NOTE: See post #2 and post #3 in this thread for continued halogen and LED performance testing (respectively) with the latest product recommendations. This thread covers upgrading the 3rd gen Tacoma H11 headlights and looking at the differences between HID, LED and Halogen light sources for use in the Tacoma projector. 3rd Gen Tacoma HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights