Silverstar Ultra New Design

[wirelessF]

So my local OReilly part store got these new design Silverstar Ultras. Packaging looked the same with different fonts (impact font) but didn't look though the gibberish. What I did notice is that there is a clear band around the bulb where the filament is from the bulb coating. Googling Silverstar Ultra didn't show the new design (Sylvania's website is broken also) but it seems like they copied the PIAA Night-tech bulbs.

Just in case I wasn't dreaming I'll go down there and take some pics.

 

[901Memphis]

Must have, Silverstar bandwagon take two!

 

[mrsilv04]

Unless they've figured out a way to dramatically increase the LIFE of the bulb.... forget it.

 

[dparm]

That looks like the European version that wasn't available here for a long time.

 

[Rolla07]

Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
Unless they've figured out a way to dramatically increase the LIFE of the bulb.... forget it.


+1

 

[lyle]

Most likely they are either copying the Osram Nightbreaker design or actually sourcing the Nightbreaker and using Sylvania packaging. Hope it's the latter, the original Silverstar was incredibly underwhelming.

 

[wirelessF]

So here's the new design. Tint appears to be more darker than the old SSU's.

 

[buck91]

Ill stick with my philips.

 

[901Memphis]

They still area gold dipped at the end like previous Ultras.

 

[UG_Passat]

even the H7's now have dark tint bands, where previously they traditionally had light tint (except XSE).

It looks like it mimicks the nightbreaker, but to keep the nightbreaker a step above, use darker tint bands than the nightbreaker

 

[Smokescreen]

Run away.

Sylvannia Xtravision is the only one I would get of that brand. Get some Philips Xtremepower, Narva Range Power, Narva Xtreme Vision, Osram bulbs and stay away from poseur junk. Untinted clear glass bulbs are still the best. HIR is the best if you can get them.

 

[Guitarmageddon]

Lets see, tinted blue bulbs to reduce my visibility? No thanks. I am so happy with my bi-xenon's though and would never buy a vehicle without that option again!

 

[Hokiefyd]

In fairness to the new bulb design, it probably does legitimately give a brighter intensity of light almost everywhere in the beam. There's not much off-axis light that gets emitted from the lamp housing anyway. Bands of tint at the fore and leading edge of the glass envelope are often used to keep a bulb with its legal limitations. How?

A bulb's light output is measured in an integrating sphere, which measures light all around the bulb. Because off-axis light doesn't contribute in a significant way to performance in the lamp housing, a bulb without the tinted bands is "handicapped" in the sense that all that extra light still counts "against" it in terms of maintaining bulb compliance. Using tinted bands as the new SS Ultra apparently does, it can maintain that bright over-driven core of light without being penalized by too much off-axis light. In other words, bands like what are on the SS Ultra and others permit this bulb to have a brighter core and still be within compliance.

I would consider this a legitimate design improvement over the previous bulb, which had a lighter tinting across the whole envelope. The filament live likely is still rather short...but I'd guess that there's a true performance gain with this new design compared with previous.