I can only tell you what I did and why.
I went through a couple iterations of headlights. My originals, although decently clear had failing aluminized reflector background. Nothing could make black plastic brighter.
EBay sold hit or miss/junk and still does. Replacement headlights, sold to auto body shops through a parts distributor servcing the auto body industry, are generally made in Taiwan, not China and are legitimately DOT approved not just 'stamped'. Didn't cost me anymore than EBay, plastic quality is decently higher. Good light but NOT the same beam pattern as stock for whatever reason. Took two sets to get it close. Did not like 'Nite Eyesz' or whatever at all.
Came into a set of factory Sport headlights. Cleaned them up. Built a wiring harness using some heavy Hella relays, solid grounding, 12 ga. stranded wire from old extension cord. Added 100w Hella 9004 highs and NightHawk Platinum 9007 lows. World of difference. Awesome performance. Took the load off of my overheating factory switch. Can post some pics if you like. Once again, Chinnese junk relays with puny wires, no good.
Bought the Wagner factory originals, NOS from EBay I could find. No longer available. Had to buy one aftermarket Sport replacement after hitting deer. NOT the same beam pattern again, but decent.
Current fanboyz of LED/HID aftermarket junk talk 'white light'. Color matters nil. Throwing a lot of light far down the road does. That LED white light is just noise to my eyes at night, unfocused, scattered, like too much treble hash on a cheap stereo. Those blue/colored lights do nothing but dim output, also idiot crap.
I drive a ton of winter, at night, and look at what others are driving. Those LED lights throw a lot of unfocused white hash right on the snow/road 5-25ft off the bumper. Useless/dumb. Tires my eyes and can't react to some thing 25ft away. That's less than .5 sec. I want light 3-6 seconds down the road minimum on low, so 2-450 ft.
Factory lighting engineers spent a lot of time making decent housings/reflectors, they had to. Good body shop replacements with good bulbs are the most economical way to go. LMC used to sell an upgraded front wiring harness. If you can't build your own, getting the full headlight load off of the switch and it's tiny wires will get you a couple more .10s of a volt to the lights and decent grounding. Personally I will never have anything less than factory Sports, heavy wiring harness/relays and superior bulbs. If I could have the current crop of factory HIDs for my Gen II I would certainly try.
