Why Some LED bulbs have fans.

[Stanglover]

While researching LED headlight bulbs suitable for use in Hella Vision Plus or similar headlights on our Mustangs in conjunction with my Direct Fit headlight water shields, I came across this interesting article from Sealight LED headlights. I was surprised by how much heat is generated and why they all have heat sinks at the least. One would think that LED's would be cooler, but 70% of the energy is heat.
My feeling is we do not need fan cooled LED headlights unless a lot of night driving is done and the lights are on for long periods of time.

https://sealight-led.com/blog/why-d...ulbs,necessary to ensure optimal performance.

 

[Big Red Mach 1]

The fanless ones I purchased with the Hella globes for the Mustang have been fine. I've hardly used them though. But when I have they have been great. I have LED's with fans on my F150 daily driver, and they have been fine too, and they see a lot fo work, but the fans get louder and louder with age. Seems like the fans will probably fail before the bulb does. I'm sure they are engineered to depend upon that fan though, so if the fan goes, I'd expect to see the bulb go fairly shortly afterward.

 

[Stanglover]

The fanless ones I purchased with the Hella globes for the Mustang have been fine. I've hardly used them though. But when I have they have been great. I have LED's with fans on my F150 daily driver, and they have been fine too, and they see a lot fo work, but the fans get louder and louder with age. Seems like the fans will probably fail before the bulb does. I'm sure they are engineered to depend upon that fan though, so if the fan goes, I'd expect to see the bulb go fairly shortly afterward.

Yes I agree, fanless will be fine on occasional drivers. I think that if fanless bulbs don't last long in our cars, then an upgrade to fan type bulbs might be in order. Noise is the one thing that the article mentions and you're probably right, the fans will pack up before the LED's.
I'm looking at upgrading the lights on my 2017 Passat and that's partly why I started researching and came across that web post.