Head lights on Passat are useless

[Sloanie]

On my 2012 Passat my head lights on are useless. I can barely see anything at night. I definitely miss having xenon lights that my other Passats had. What options are there to upgrade them either with new headlights or bulbs etc?

[Lucas_R]

Most halogen headlights are pretty garbage, and once you have had xenons its hard to go back to halogens. Simply replacing the bulbs with a good quality (Philips or Osram) high output bulb will make a decent difference and will be <$100. Avoid the cheaper no-name bulbs on ebay etc as they are not only crap quality but the blue coating is much too thick and the light output is poor.

Here is an example - note that im not sure if the Passat uses a H7 bulb as per the link below, although a lot of VW/Audi's do.

OSRAM Night Breaker Laser (Next Generation) H7 | PowerBulbs AU (up to 150% brighter than your current bulbs)

Philips X-tremeVision Pro150 H7 | Twin Headlight Bulbs | PowerBulbs AU (up to 150% brighter than your current bulbs)

Philips RacingVision GT200 H7 | Twin Car Headlight Bulbs | PowerBulbs AU (up to 200% brighter than your current bulbs)

Philips WhiteVision Ultra H7 | Twin Headlight Bulbs | PowerBulbs AU (these ones are a combination of brighter than standard + a whiter crisper light)

The other more expensive option would be to retrofit a xenon kit to your factory headlights. There are places that specialise in these headlight conversions. Expect to pay around $1000 for a good quality xenon kit (like Morimoto) and the installation into your factory headlights.

[Sloanie]

Thank you very much. You have been a great help. Ideally I would love to retrofit a xenon kit but getting new bulbs will suffice.

[Lucas_R]

Thank you very much. You have been a great help. Ideally I would love to retrofit a xenon kit but getting new bulbs will suffice.

Try the new bulbs first as they are very cheap in comparison to the next option. Headlight performance is a common topic on this forum and the majority of people are happy with the better quality replacement bulbs.

If your Passat has foglights, then dont forget to upgrade the bulbs in those also.