3 Important Factors to Consider When Buying Off-Road Lights

If you’re looking through the never-ending list of 4×4 lights available on the internet, you might have a hard time picking the right ones. Even if you know what your intentions when off the road are, you need to ask yourself the right questions to make sure you get the best lighting that meets your specific needs. Otherwise, you’d be spending serious money on something that doesn’t serve the purpose you need it to. This article will hopefully help you narrow down your choices to a select few.

First and foremost, you need to figure out the functionality that you need from the off road 4×4 lights. As far as off road 4×4 lights go, you can pick between forward-looking lights, work lights, fog lights, chase lights, reverse lights, emergency lights, and space lighting. Some of them can shine extremely bright, which means that you won’t be able to use them when driving on the road. But, given the fact that you’ll be driving off-road, you’ll rarely come across oncoming vehicles at high speeds. However, you should still make sure you use DOT compliant lighting.

After you’ve done your research on all the different types of 4×4 lights and have decided which ones you want to go for, the next step is to figure out the light emitting source. The three most popular light emitting sources are halogen lights, HID lights and LED lights. Halogen lights are the cheapest, but they certainly aren’t the most efficient. HID lights are the most efficient ones, and while LEDs are slowly catching up to them, they’re still the brightest lights available on the market. LED lights are slowly becoming the most popular solution, and even though they’re more expensive than the other two types, they’re the best ones and they also come in an array of shapes and sizes.

And lastly, you need to decide on the light housing. Again, you have plenty of options including light bars, square pods, round pods, rectangular housings and round old style housings. Additionally, you need to decide on the mounting option that will best suit your needs. Your mounting options are push bars, replacement bumpers in the front and back, full brush guards, roof racks, headache racks, and custom brackets. Roof racks are one of the most popular places to mount forward placing lights, as well as side or rear mounted work lights. And since most roof racks are made of steel, drilling a few holes in them to mount your lights will be relatively easy.