Quote:
Originally Posted by chadrandom
Somewhat shocked at how many 2016s there are with halogens. I'm starting to think that BMW did their customers a disservice as seemingly most cars from all manufactures, not just luxury brands, have been poring out xenon and LED lights for the past few years.
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I own two 2016 X3 vehicles and they both have Xenon headlights. I made a conscious decision at the time of purchase to only consider BMWs with Xenon lights.
BMW offered halogen headlights in the base 2016 X3 28i, but the Xenon lights were an option in the 28i and standard in the 35i. I suspect many owners buying or leasing the 2016 X3 paid more attention to the cost or monthly payment than the headlight type.
Having paid several hundred dollars to repair a Xenon headlight on another car, there are valid reasons that some cost conscious people may favor halogen lights. I do not blame BMW for offering halogen headlights as the standard option in the lower cost 2016 X3 28i. This was the case in many competing vehicles at the time, including the Mercedes GLK.
Xenon lights are considerably more complicated than the standard halogen lights. Because of the brightness of the Xenon lights, it is critical that these be designed and operated to avoid blinding on-coming drivers. Cheap aftermarket lights often lack the proper design and certainly are not plug and play in the BMW X3.