Headlights Hella or OEM Volvo

I put in 7 inch hella ipf style lights with h4 bulbs, work great, cost a bit more than Chinese knockoffs, but not $200.

My favorites are the Hellas as they have the best balance of range and shadow-free pattern. Bosch also lack shadows, but have slightly less range. The Cibié have the best range, but do have a less even spread of light, especially on high beam.

I would get some Hella or Bosch smilies and order the euro connectors and wires, then splice into the harness. More expensive but well worth having the genuine lights.

oem Hella is really the only way to go for quality. if you plan to order them, do it asap. They take quite a while to arrive and may have several delays, but the quality is worth the wait. When I ordered my Hellas I think I waited about 5-6 months. My depo brand ecodes went right on my garage shelf and have stayed there since.

I did the Hella H1/H4 upgrade versus going Euro lights years ago, mostly because of cost. I ran them as stock for a long time, then relayed them with a relay setup out of a car my buddy was parting out. The Hellas are awesome, serious light and the top cutoff is very well defined.

I recently upgraded the terrible stock headlights on my XJ to Hella e-codes, and they also sold me a wire harness and relays they assembled themselves. Works great.

Hi! I tried several variants of headlights and stopped on Hella. It's used, but enlightens the way much better than new Autopal, Neolite and all this...

Hella offers headlights that function the same as OE but without the BMW stamp and perhaps slightly less bright.

Volvo S40 Headlights are not bright - I have recently changed them and its still not much better.

But the more-serious problem was the narrowness of the beams, particularly to the sides. Made it scary going around corners in the neighborhood -- my wife noticed the same problem. Plus there was a huge dark area directly in front of the car, short of where the projector beams started.