Most people on here get HID kits. More lumens than anything currently available.
On paper, perhaps, but in real life ... not at all true.
I have yet to test any HID kit bulb that has produced more than 2700-2800 lumens. And this is a 4300K HID kit bulb. 5000K and 6000K have even fewer lumens. The reason they don't produce the lumens of an OEM HID bulb is because of the inferior materials used in their construction as compared to OEM and because a typical HID kit ballast rated at 35w is not the same as an OEM ballast rated at 35W. An OEM ballast provides 35W to the bulb. HID kit ballasts consume 35W and generally provide 25-30W to the bulb.
The H9, nominally 2100 lumens, is actually 2800 lumens when supplied with just over 14V as it will be when the engine is running. This is because of the way halogen bulbs respond to increases in voltage. The lumens increase to the power 3.4 as voltage increases linearly.
And that's not the whole story. It really is not very smart to judge a light source by stated lumens alone. What matters is the amount of flux the headlight with a specific light source actually puts out on the road to be used by the driver.
In the case of the H9, with its properly placed filament, there will be more flux than there will with any HID kit bulb because, at best, only half to 75% of the lumens of the HID kit bulb can be positioned where the reflector bowl can actually make use of them.
The upshot is, that silly lumen count aside, the H9 will always provide more usable light than any HID kit bulb will. You may not agree, but it's true. And it's been scientifically proven to be true.
No problems with blinding people with the factory projectors.
And yet there are people who do get blinded by HID kit bulbs in Accord projector headlights. Why? Because people have varying sensitivities to glare and because there are no standards for HID kit bulbs you really can't be sure that the placement of the arc chamber is going to be consistent from bulb to bulb.
