Difference between Litronics and HID conversion? - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

Like the title reads..I'm thinking of changing my light but saw that the Litronics is way much more compared to the HID conversion. I'm assuming the Litronics has alot to do with quality, but is that justification for 900.00 extra? What really is the main difference between the two? Thanks!

The factory litronics are self-leveling - the headlights adjust to compensate for the nose of the car being up or down. They're the coolest headlights I've ever seen. Blurb: "Optimal Litronic performance requires precise headlight aiming... the system includes an automatic headlight level adjustment. Front and rear sensors signal stepped motors to compensate for any changes in vehicle inclination, such as caused by acceleration or braking. The high beams use H7 halogen bulbs, and the level adjustment system raises them by 1.2 degrees to optimize the combined Litronic/high beam pattern." That's a very long way to say "********************in".

HID bulbs will use the same housings, as posted earlier they can melt the plastic which might be lexan. The litronics will only self level if they are a Porsche factory installation, the kits need manual adjustments.

As cool as the self leveling is, I only think it matters for cars like my 740i, and only then if I have two fat friends in the back seat and all our golf clubs in the trunk. On a car like the Boxster, there just isn't that much fore to aft pitch changes to worry about. If you retrofit Litronics to your car, you should get a small control unit with the kit that will angle the HID low beam up to help the high beams when you engage them. It is basically the same control box as the factory Litronic equipped cars get minus the self leveling. Now, why you do want Litronics over a cheap retrofit install, is beam pattern and lighting efficiency. The halogen assemblies are nothing special, and just use a simple reflector based design, of which the reflector was optimized for a halogen bulb. The HID converted "bulbs" put the light source in a different location than the filament was, and so will produce far more "splash" where you don't want it (which is very often into the eyes of oncoming drivers) while not putting as much light on the road. Also, the heat of the HID can damage the halogen housing. Furthermore, if you care, it's technically not legal do to a retrofit install like this. The Litronics, on the other hand, use an ellipsoid lens to focus the beam pattern, and were designed from the ground up to house a D2S HID light source. They are very efficient at putting light where it is needed, and minimize glare to other drivers. Not to mention, the cosmetic improvement to the car is striking. They're not cheap, but in my opinion, absolutely worth it.

Thank you all for the response. I wanted the Litronics or the HID only for the cool blue white light effect. From what it sounds, I'll stay away from HID kits. I know that litronics will be much better but can I get the cool blue white light with just simply changing my bulb? Likely in a month or so I'll definitely change to Litronics, but for now will changing the bulb in my stock 986 headlights achieved this? If so, any suggestions for bulb changed?

Cool! That's just like my VW hatchback's standard, self-leveling, bi-xenon headlights!

You can get blue coated bulbs, but all this will do is drop your usable light output and make driving at night miserable. Not to mention, it will be obvious you installed "cheap blue coated ricer bulbs" and do not have real HID lights.... Seriously, if you're going to do Litronics, do it, or wait until you can afford it.

OK...I agree. I'll wait. Don't wanna look like an idiot! LOL

What you don't realize is the self-leveling feature is effective when going down slope or going up hill.