GTR full LED headlight replacements MY14-20

Anyone tried these or have thoughts on how good they might be?

https://www.gtrlighting.com/Carbide-LED-Headlights-2014-4Runner?quantity=1

 

Other headlights like this have come up before. Just the "latest & greatest" garbage from Alibaba with some flashy marketing making it seem revolutionary.

IMHO, If you are going to spend a decent amount of money on headlights, buy a pair of OEM LEDs or Morimotos if you are really wanting to go aftermarket. Either way you know that they meet a certain quality and light output standard, and are backed by a known manufacturer.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-det...offerlist.normal_offer.d_title.f3473d19Hh1vXS

 

I’d happily install the Toyota OEM LED headlights that have been spec’d since the 2021 model year. But no matter how much research I do or the number of times I’ve asked on the forum, I can’t figure out if they’d be plug and play on my MY 2020. My dealer also won’t respond to my inquiries about it.

Thus my interest in aftermarket possibilities. Morimoto has gotten mixed reviews — at best — on this forum. GTR meanwhile is not Alibaba and is known to make high quality stuff (I have some). But of course their drop in bulbs won’t work great due to the position of the LEDs within the projector housing.

Thus my interest in this product, since they presumably designed the LEDs and lenses to work together.

Actually helpful responses would be appreciated.

 

Buy them and tell us how they are.

 

Wow

 

Here you go, 43 pages. Start on page 15: The 2020-22MY LED low beam, halogen hi beam, or Led Low/Hi beam headlights are all easily retrofittable. All you have to do is swap a connector housing either on the vehicle harness side, or on the headlight side. You will get LED low with both styles, but retain the factory halogen high beam/DRL combo unless you wire in an additional relay to activate the LED hi beam housed in the low beam projector.

Here's the connectors you can order from Toyota to swap over

4 Pin Bi-LED headlight housing :90980-10942 female connector housing
2-Bin Low LED headlight housing: 90980-11254 male connector housing

As someone that has done this, that's about as plug and play as it gets.

 

Sweet, thanks Red I’ll check it out!

 

Yeah no problem. Just trying to help a fellow 4R enthusiast out.

 

Is what I said outlandish? I'm very active on multiple forums, specifically in regards to lighting. I haven't seen anyone try the lights you posted. Why not be the first?

 

lol ok, point of my post was researching these lights before spending time and money on them. I'll look further into the OEM option. I'd prefer that route if it's plug and play and not too expensive. I'm not trying to make my rig unique, just get better illumination down road.

 

Here's a video which compares2021 OE LED, Morimoto XB gen2, GTR something rathers, Alpharex wizzle wuzzles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kItoEHPgn98

 

the GTR lighting ones are an old VLAND design which they appeared to have bought the rights to(?).

VLAND usually makes visually appealing head/tail lights. but they do sacrifice performance at the cost of cosmetics. that's confirmed in the Lightwerkz video linked above. i was hoping GTR would upgrade the components inside to be more competitive, but it doesnt seem to be the case. unfortunate.

since we're on the topic, the performance on the alpharex units are disappointing. for the price they ask, you would think the performance would be competitive to the Morimoto. they look good but that's where it stops.

Morimoto still takes the cake in my opinion.

if you have a pre-2021 headlight, the H9 bulb upgrade still is the best bang for buck, if you don't care about the color temp as much.

 

Thank you for pretty much confirming my prior post. More reboxed headlights with no actual lighting engineering/improvement behind them.

Also, that is a great comparison video. That should be stickied in the 5th gen subform for people to watch when they consider headlight assemblies.

 

Very helpful vid, thx. Would like to also see the results at more distance —and vitally how wide the pattern is — but seems clear the GTR and Alpharex are pretty lame. As a recall from user tests, Morimoto produced a very narrow pattern, with inadequate illumination off to the side. Headlights are complicated, thus my inclination to better trust OEM unless another option has really proven itself in all respects.

 

I know this thread was started to discuss the GTR branded lights.

So my appologies, but I have some more info about Morimoto XB lights that I'd like to share with anyone who is researching them.

First off, I ordered some recently and so far I'm very happy with em!

Through my pre-purchase research I found the actual manufacturer is a company called COPLUS in Taiwan. Up until the last few days, their site had product pages for their headlights and taillights for gen5 4Runners. Now i get 404s when I try to load the pages. Quite a coincidence since I just went to their site to grab the link... Anyhow, here's a waybackmachine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210414224056/https://www.coplus.com.tw/headlights-4runner

Also, here's a youtube video showing their gen 2 headlights and tail lights for 5th gen 4Runners: Both products are branded and sold as Morimoto XB in North America.
https://youtu.be/D-uJySlUrEg

Here's an older video showing the gen 1 headlights (the tell is lowbeams activate only 2 of 3 LEDs per side):
https://youtu.be/2rREeDtV9FM

Before purchasing my lights, I emailed COPLUS to see about buying directly from them. They simply replied asking about my location. I replied with "Canada"; then they replied with 2 links to morimotos site (a link to the white drl version and another link to the amber drl version). This confirms they are the same product and it seems that Morimoto definately has exclusive rights to these for North America.

My personsal observations: COPLUS seems to care about quality. The Morimoto XB gen 2 units I received seem to be of reasonably high quality. There is a bit of excess butyl on a few edges, but I figured that might be typical for aftermarket lights. I would say one area that could be improved is the plastic used for the mounting arms, it seems like lesser quality than the plastic used on the OE units.

Regarding light output: I haven't adjusted my lights yet, they are aimed low. But from what I can see so far, they seem brighter than my 2018 OE housings with Xenon Depot 4300 Philips HID bulbs. I make this claim becuase I can distinctly see the Morimoto XB headlight output while I also have my Baja Designs Squadron Sport / Wide Cornering fogs on. With the HID setup, fog lights totally overpowered them.

These claims were related to the initial Morimoto XB headlights, which only used 2 of the LEDs per side for low beams. They took the feedback and quickly (as in less than 1 year) revised them to use all 3 LEDs per sided for low beams. This seems to have a wider throw. They also resolved an issue with part of the DRL strip flickered (top corners).

Here's a video comparing the Morimoto XB gen 1 to gen 2. The video creator does a great job of describing the revisions and showing on-road, night time driving with both versions.
https://youtu.be/aJlNcq2QW90

I hope this helps anyone looking at these lights!

 

I have a set of Morimoto Gen2’s just waiting to be installed! I am definitely looking forward to seeing how they perform against my current 21 BiLed lights for both low and high beam performance.

 

Cool! Please let us know!

 

Got any feedback yet? I am looking at getting the XBs and the tail lights too. Some first hand feedback is nice before dropping 2 grand on lights! Lmao I know some folks bought Alpharex and were very displeased.