Should You Buy Cheap Off-Road Lighting Kits?

Dangers of Buying Cheap Lights For Your Off-Roader

Occasionally, every once in a while we all buy something that was pretty cheap and turned out to be a decent purchase - it held up for a lot longer than it was probably supposed to, and performed the way it was advertised. But more often than not, the old saying holds true: "Good things aren't cheap, and cheap things aren't good."

A good example of this can be found in the auxiliary lights that we buy for our vehicles, and you might be wondering if you should get the cheapest lights you found on one of the big-box retailers' websites, or if you should save up some money to buy a set from a more expensive - and reputable - brand. We want to help, so come see whether or not you should go cheap or save up a little bit.

Table Of Contents

-Difference Between Cheap and High-Quality Off-Road Lights

-Who Makes The Best High-Quality Headlights?

-What Separates Morimoto From Cheap Light Manufacturers?

-Why are Morimoto Lights So Expensive?

Difference Between Cheap and High-Quality Off-Road Lights

First things first, we're gonna have to find out what exactly makes the difference between cheap off-road lights and the higher quality ones that you'll find from more premium retailers. To do this, we've broken the difference down between three categories: Quality, Performance, and Reliability.

For quality, we look at two different things - how good are the components and products being used and how good is the manufacturing process? Performance may be a bit easier to measure, though, as we can visually see the difference between how well the lights shine or how much they don't.

In terms of reliability, the question we should be asking is: "Are these lights gonna last us for years and years?" and if something does fail, how is the warranty coverage? Does the company have the customer support service to get your lights fixed or replaced in a hassle-free manner? These are just some of the types of things to consider when you're trying to decide which route to go, and what your extra money is actually getting you.

Who Makes The Best High-Quality Headlights?

We bring this up because we recently started stocking off-road lights from Morimoto - more specifically, we were introduced to their brand-new 4Banger LED pods. We were super impressed with them, but we found it a bit of a shock to learn that these lights, well, they aren't cheap.

See, Morimoto says that their lineup of 4Banger LED off-road lighting delivers unparalleled performance through advanced optics and optimal fitment, with a compact footprint and application-specific brackets. Application-specific brackets is an easy enough selling point to comprehend, but let's dive a little deeper into their "unparalleled performance" and "advanced optics."

What Separates Morimoto From Cheap Light Manufacturers?

To really understand what puts Morimoto at the forefront of the off-road lighting market, we should acknowledge first why cheap lights are so cheap, or inexpensive at the least. In most cases, they're built overseas using high volume, mediocre manufacturing, a quality-controlled process, subpar electrical components, and housing materials. Essentially it's a speed vs. quality to equal volume type of production, instead of taking the extra time and investing the extra capital in resources, most cheap light manufacturers just want to make and produce lights as fast as they possibly can.

With Morimoto, though, there are no off-the-shelf guts inside of some fancy housing. Every element of the 4Banger TIR (total integrated reflector, by the way) is proprietary and designed from scratch. They do this by using a highly professional and sophisticated 3D software program called LucidShape, one of the best optical design tools in its class built specifically for automotive engineers. In fact, that light reflection performance is what sets Morimoto so far ahead of the curve.

Why are Morimoto Lights So Expensive?

Light reflection performance is just as important as the actual performance of the LED that's being used in getting the most optimized light output possible. You can have the most perfect, highest-quality, highest-output LED filament in the world, but if the reflector is bad, it's gonna look like you have a cheap light that you can find on a clearance aisle. It takes a combination of high-performing LED reflectors and lenses to maximize the lights' fullest capabilities, and using programs like LucidShape to design the reflector allows Morimoto to do just that. This more than likely a big part of the financial chunk that goes into their lights, but the quality performance and reliability gains make it worth the cash.

To get the best LEDs available to match the performance of the reflector, Morimoto sources these from world-class producers of premium light emitting diodes - Nichia and Osram. Both companies are sought-after companies of choice by major name brands who are looking for the best of the best. To keep the LEDs running at optimal temperatures, Morimoto uses another highly-sophisticated CAD program called SolidWorks. SolidWorks is used to tame the thermal dynamic outputs of each of its lights, keeping them cool and lasting much longer.

Finally, we've got the high quality of the light housing components themselves. Morimoto light housing is made from die-cast aluminum materials, and it's all wrapped up in a package from a company that stands fully behind their products. It adds up pretty fast, but you can easily see how one might want to spend the extra money on a long-lasting set of lights that can last you a long time.

Shop Morimoto Off-Road Lights Online at TrailBuilt

One more thing on Morimoto's 4Banger lighting kits - they come with three beam patterns, so you'll have wide lights, fog lights, spotlights, or any combination of the three to work with. Definitely check them out and snag a set for yourself if you've got the extra money, and we'll see you guys out on the trails!