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Picking the right set of lights for your motorcycle: A detailed guide

14th April 2025, 17:08 by Ananth Iyer

Bulbs that do not have a proper shield design lead to glare and no cut-off beam pattern.

BHPian advstreak recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

After posting similar information across various WhatsApp groups, I have finally decided to distill my experience in this post to help others choose the correct type of aux lights.

Now, let's start with why stock headlights generally do not work that well.

AIS 10 Part 1 governs the headlight performance requirements, which can be downloaded from here: https://www.araiindia.com/downloads

Page 21 gives the measurement points for the lux values, which need to be as per page 12.

Zone III, which is above the cut-off line, should have less than 0.7 lux while point B 50R, which will point towards the oncoming traffic, should be less than 0.4 lux.

For reference, 0.4 lux is a tad brighter than a full moon on a clear night.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux#cite_note-6

There is also a minimum brightness requirement for points 75L and 50L to be 6 lux.

This requirement ensures that there is some minimum brightness of the lamp, but still, it will be restricted by the less than 20 lux requirement in Zone I.

Now, coming to mods:

H4 Halogen Headlight

One of the defining features of the H4 Standard bulb is the shield. This shield helps in maintaining the cut-off line in the low beam. Also, the headlight reflector is designed to use the shield to maintain the beam pattern.

I did experiment a lot with different types of LED bulbs on the Hornet 160.

Bulbs that do not have a proper shield design lead to glare and no cut-off beam pattern.

If one wants to replace the H4 Halogen bulb with an LED bulb, then get one that has a shield design.

Novsight N35 is one such bulb.

I had it installed on my KTM ADV 250.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motor...ml#post5463450

Here is the stock headlight beam pattern.

And here is the N35 beam pattern.

As one can see, there is still a decent amount of cut-off in the beam pattern.

I then installed it on my friend's Himalayan 411, which can be seen here:
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motor...ml#post5810670

Now, if one does not like the 6000K temperature, then some options have the shield available in 4300K as well as tricolor options.

https://autobahntechnologies.com/aut...a_bulb-size=h4

If one cares about the proper cut-off pattern, then one can use a mini projector bulb.

I have one installed currently in my ADV 250 now:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motor...ml#post5460751

Here is the low beam pattern of the mini projector H4 Bulb

Here is the high beam pattern

One of the issues with the system is that it used the headlight reflector for the high beam. Hence, in the above image, you can see the high beam points towards the sky as I have adjusted so that the low beam cut-off is proper.

Now, the evolution of this design is to integrate the high beam in the projector setup.

Notice the two different lens shapes.

This is the low beam pattern.

Here is the high beam pattern

The high beam is a circular spot in perfect alignment with the low beam cut-off line. This makes it a good option for people looking to replace Halogen with H4 LED. But the issue with this is that it is designed for Right-hand driving, and hence, the cut-off line is higher on the right-hand side half of the beam pattern.

Round Headlight Replacement

In case one has a 7-inch round headlight unit, there are full replacement headlight units available from various brands.

The better ones out there are the Vaishnu headlights.

https://vaishnu.com/headlights-for-b...ltXrSMJsYNOFre

They seem to be available for almost every round headlight, be it 7-inch or other size. The best part I like about them is that they are tri-color with the same cut-off level. One downside could be that the spread is not that wide and maybe does not light up corners in fixed-headlight bikes in ghat sections.

There are others like HJG and Monster Vision, but they only seem to have 6000K white lights.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mJFi0Dx_8u0

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9RMGGOEQlPU

There are more options available here:
https://hjgstore.com/collections/hjg...ssembly-7-inch

One tip will be to avoid the half-reflector-based design and get the projector one ( more on the distinction later in the post)

Here is the beam pattern of the half-reflector-based design.

https://hjgstore.com/products/hjg-7-...e-without-ring

As you can see, the cut-off is not that sharp, while the spread is also limited.

The cut-off and spread are much better in a projector-based setup like this.

https://hjgstore.com/products/hjg-7-...eep-thar-gypsy

What one must truly avoid is lights with only reflectors without any lenses unless one wants to use them as floodlights or for blinding oncoming traffic.

https://hjgstore.com/products/hjg-7-...vidson-diamond

AUX LIGHTS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfRWoWJhcfM

The above diode dynamics video explains all different LED optics in detail. This is a must to understand one's use case and decide which type of optics one must choose.

Now, based on my experiments and research with the lights as mentioned in these posts:

(https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motor...ml#post5756748
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motor...ml#post5801987)

the generic requirements for road use are:

Sharp cut-off line in low beam

Wide spread to cover corners in ghats

Yellow and White colors at the same level

Good high beam performance

Now, there are very few lights that can meet all of these requirements, especially in the budget segment.

Regarding the yellow and white color requirement, I have observed that I feel that the yellow color has enhanced contrast. This leads to better edge detection and one's understanding of the terrain. The yellow lights also scatter less in rain, offering better visibility. Having both the colors at the same level ensures that one will have to only set up the aux lights and use colors as per the situation.

Let's tackle the high beam performance later and concentrate on the other parameters.

HJG 124 and 125 seem to have good low beam patterns.

Here is 124's low beam and high pattern

https://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...67387728i2XuGI

https://youtu.be/xeX92LhgV1M?t=164

The above video shows the beam pattern and power consumption for the HJG 125 model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uUbLU6CLwk

This video shows the direct comparison between the 124 and 125 models.

Here are the screenshots of the low beam for easier comparison.

125 low beam

124 low beam

As one can see, 124 seems to have a smoother tapering of lux at the sides.
The practical difference can be seen at the end of the video, which does not seem to be that much. The high beam performance does not seem to that much and hence I have not included it.

Now, the evolution of this concept is to turn on both the yellow and white lights to get a warm light color. This is what HJG-17 and Gorilla do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KjDLVMTzWY&t=613s

https://youtu.be/ZFqSw-8YLtM?t=506

The main difference is that the gorilla consumes 20 watts per light in high beam mode, which can lead to it having a better head beam performance.

Here are the beam pattern screenshots of the gorilla light for easier reference.

Now, there are 3-inch projector setups in tri-color like AES double laser, which can give decent high beam performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-xYwizhUas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cj3-9T-gYc

Most of the cheaper lights seem to have limited high-beam power consumption to 20 watts max. Although the actual LUX values will depend upon optics and power efficiency, there is one model that will perform good is the HJG kZ-30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwHnAHQgtvY

I have them installed on my bike, and they can be checked out here:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motor...ml#post5460751

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motor...ml#post5756748

In case one needs high beam performance, then something like aozoom th03 or GNPE GW711 are great options, but they come with single color LEDs only.

https://carconceptsshop.com/products...ghts-y30-2-64w

https://carconceptsshop.com/products...ght-gw711-160w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2HW4eNPrkI

Here are the low beam and high beam patterns.