Lights are life safety equipment, very important. The top of the line is J.W. Speaker. Period. That being said, our low budget 1992 S-10 Blazer currently has Hella H4 lights. When I can afford well over $300 per light, I’ll upgrade.
The #1 problem with nearly all headlights is aiming. Best done with an optical aimer, but even most dealer personnel give you a “deer in the headlights“ look when you ask about one.
If you are careful, you CAN do a fair job with the “25 feet to a wall” method, but you need a flat level floor for 25 feet plus a vehicle length and it has to extend to the wall so you can accurately measure centerline headlamp height and mark it on the wall. For four decades, I did this inside a hydroelectric powerhouse and marked centerline height on the truck door with electrical tape. Now that I’ve retired, I have to be more creative.
if you have a level stretch of rural road with no traffic, no street lights, and no big shiny signs, and you are willing to spend a lot of time on trial and error, you can eventually achieve something marginally acceptable, but this is the LEAST desirable method.
CandlepowerForums is primarily about flashlights, but drill down to Transportation Lighting, then to Automotive including Motorcycles. A couple of true industry experts hang out there and you can learn a lot. You will NOT learn on this subject from jeep/car/truck/offroad/motorcycle forums because nearly everyone there is afflicted with “I bought it so it is the best” syndrome and 99% of what you hear is misinformation.
I try to apply Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is crap”) to everything in life (it’s not supposed to discourage you, just make you look for the other 10%) and maintain a well tuned BS detector, but when it comes to automotive lighting I think Theodore Sturgeon may have been a bit optimistic.
Good luck. Be safe.
