l3it3r

I took home a new GLC overnight recently and loved the car, but HATED the headlights, and my local dealer still hasn't seen an incoming order w/LEDs... I will hold off my choice on purchasing for a while as the car we're replacing is a VW TDI that falls under the current 'scandal' so we're not sure what the value of the car is, what VW will do for us, etc.. BUT, the GLC is our front runner for the next vehicle so far and we'll probably just end up ordering the one we want.

pamiboy

I'm with the majority here. Don't even go near the halogen C class. Static LED lights are acceptable even though active LED is desirable. I would not buy another car with halogen headlights.
My E class has static LED low beams and halogen high beams. Didn't realize the impact it would have on me when I was buying it. The result is that now I've stopped flashing people (I mean high beams) .

rbrylaw

Clearly I'm in the minority here. While I have the active LED's on my C300 Sport, our GLC came with the standard Halogen's and to be quite honest, they're far better than I would have expected.

dnice-1

VW I think I saw giving a $500 Visa card and another $500 to use at Volkswagen if that not incentive to stay just think 20 years from now your VW will prob be a collector car. I can see it at Barrett Jackson Auction Car number 12053 of the 2015 scandal starting bid $50,000. $50,000! can I get 55 yes to the fella in the front row 60 to the lady in the back! Then Leno and Mayweather get into a bidding war with Leno tapping out at $400,000 Mayweather remains undefeated!

GLO

Im looking for some feedback here.

My daily driver is a W203 with Halogens, and the family car is W251 with Bi-Xenons (self-leveling, turning, even comes with cornering fog lamps) i'm genuinely curious as to the night driving difference the W205 Active LEDs will be.

Appreciate your thoughts and feedback, even video links if any.

Thanks in advance.

gfmohn

The first feature I disliked about my 207 C280 (W203) was the halogen headlights. They lit up the road better than the active LEDs of my 2015 W205 (although I prefer the white light of the LEDs). But the lights of the W203 gave no light to the sides. In one case, I could not see the edges of a small parking lot and drove off on to the grass at the end, instead of on to the exit road. Then, while I was turning sharply to the left to get on to the exit road, I almost hit a large tree stump almost 5' high. The stump was receiving no light whatsoever. In the W205, a side light comes on when the turn signal is activated at low speeds.

The problem with the W205 headlights is that the low beam cutoff is very low and sharp. The lights is also too sensitive to even the very dim streetlights we have in this area. The roads I drive are rolling, with short, but medium-steep hills. So the lights are often kept in low beam by the streetlights. Then neither the headlights nor the streetlights are lighting the road very far ahead (especially when approaching a hill).

On the whole, the lights of the W205 are a worthwhile improvement. The automatic feature is very important to me. It makes a big reduction in driver workload on the narrow, winding, hilly roads I often drive. But if any one knows whether the dealer can adjust the height of the low beam cutoff or the sensitivity of the automatic dipping, please speak up.

jorgetav

You can raise the level of the lights using an allen (hex) key. Pop open the hood an look for the adjustment hole towards the back/top of the headlight unit. Turn one direction to raise it and another to lower it. I believe there was another thread on here discussing this topic.

tron786

Just for interest how do the MB intelligent active LED compare with the Audi's matrix LED?

GLO

Hi,

Has anyone tested the Active LED lights dipping seen in this video? (look at the 2min mark)

Thanks

ManiacGT

Yes I used this only last night. Works as outlined.

StanNH

I opted for the static LED lights on my car, mainly because I didn't really care about the auto-dimming feature. The ability of the lights to move when turning the wheel also wasn't a factor for me personally, since I've had that feature on other cars and really found it to be of limited use in my own rural driving environment.

The basic question is about how good the LED lights are on this car. I find them to be a mixed bag ... really good sometimes, and not so good other times. As others have noted, the low beams do not reach very far out. The high beams are very good, but their real advantage is in lighting up reflective signs and markers. At even far distances, any reflective road sign just sparkles. Overall though, I would rate the LED headlights as very good, but not as good as some other systems. The Xenon lights on my Porsche are brighter and reach further out. My last sedan, a Volvo S60, also had Xenons and they were at least as good as the LED's used by Mercedes.

So, in my mountainous rural environment, where most roads are unlit, I'd say the base LED system is certainly adequate but not really outstanding or "best in class."

gfmohn

The active LED headlights on 2015 C-Class cars sold in the U.S. are NOT the Mercedes LED Intelligent Light System. Unlike the intelligent lights shown in the video in the comment by GLO, they do not swivel with the steering. They do not split their beams to both the left and right of cars ahead (and then dim the left portion when a third car approaches in the oncoming lanes. However, they do cure one problem I really hated with my 2007 W203. Turning on the directional signals at slow speeds (as when approaching a driveway) does turn on a cornering light.

In "low beam," the cutoff of the active LED headlights is so sharp that the effect is as if a mechanical shutter is coming down in front of the beam. As delivered, the cutoff intersects the road a very short distance in front of the car. (StanNH, as they come from the dealer, these lights would have actually been unsafe on your mountain roads!)

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT PROPER DEALER ADJUSTMENT CAN GREATLY IMPROVE THESE ACTIVE LED HEADLIGHTS! The active LED headlights are not user adjustable. So says my service advisor, and I cannot find any hole for a tool. (Perhaps jorgetav is referring to the fixed LED headlights.) So I asked my dealer to adjust my headlights up to the legal limit. I also asked them to reduce the sensitivity to streetlights, if that was a separate setting. (I did not find out if it was.) It turned out that, as delivered, the cutoffs on my "low beam" lights were much lower than the legal limit. That must be the factory setting, because the cutoffs of the "low beam" headlights on a recent loaner 2015 E-Class were even lower and closer.

THE ADJUSTMENT MADE A HUGE DIFFERENCE! I no longer feel as if I am driving under a low-hanging bank of black fog. If my lights dim for a streetlight, it is usually because the streetlight is bright enough to light the road adequately. Then the dimming is seamless; I do not notice it, and I am not distracted. Even if the lights dim for a streetlight that is not bright enough to light the road adequately, the cutoff is a far enough distant that I am not out-driving my headlights.

So far, no driver has blinked his lights at me! When I follow smaller cars, the cutoff is right at the bottom edge of the rear window. So I try to hang back, but the maximum following distance setting of my Distronic Plus seems to be okay.

DBOC205

Sure.. use it all the time. ILS is one of the best features of the car IMO. Go for a drive on the highway because that's where it tends to work best I find. Alternatively you need to find a spot where there's few overhead lights since that seems to keep you beam low. It's fantastic for highway travel, seeing how the beams shape-shift around objects whilst keeping signs and road shoulder brightly illuminated in high beam.

DapperStyle

We have the wonderful archaic rules from NHSTA and the Feds to thank for that. We can't even get the coming home feature which only appears when the car is locked or unlocked and poses no harm to pedestrians or drivers.

Swissrider

Hi I am about to purchase a GLC43 and the model they have is just with the standard LED Headlights, are those still adaptive i.e. turn the beam when you steer into one direction? I care about that and don't really mind about having to adjust the intensity manually if other cars come facing me. Thanks!

ManiacGT

standard LED lamps are fixed and single lensed. ILS is adaptive/turn, have headlight dipping or masked isolation and are dual lensed/much more impressive visually. Blue start up lamps also feature.

this may help: http://www.mbclub.co.uk/forums/mercedes-news/163847-w205-c-class-press-release-3.html

Swissrider

Thank you very much!

grege

Hi folks, well for me there is a very easy adjust screw well labelled and I've just adjusted low beam up a bit as I agree with the very sharp cutoff they are a bit low. I'll do an experiment later tonight when dark with from an opposing driver view to see what I have done.
My comments on NZ driving situation on single carriageway where we are dipping all the time on narrow winding roads:
Auto-dip: really great, as others have said reduces the load and mostly a very quick response time. I have had some situations where the opposing cars dipped lights are so rubbish that they dont trigger the beam detect! Still if they flick to beam mine immediately drop down!
I am finding the speed to return to beam a little slow at high driving speeds and corner coming. I will fill in with a flash of beam if needed as others suggest. But putting up the lows will probably go part way on this.

Split beam and auto ranging and the box of blackness that means the car in front going the same way gets no annoyance but you can shine light actually past their car along the sides of the road (both if nonone coming other way) is nothing short of fabulous. The sharpness of cutoff on these things is staggering, and seeing the box of blackness autosize dynamically as you and the other driver move around the road is both entertaining and very very clever.
This is so much of a game changer in illumination that even if you don't like everything about them, I can guarantee you WILL be glad you chose them.
Even dimming the stupidly big and over-reflective road warnings designed for people who have either no vision or attention to surroundings, is a very handy feature. On my W203 halogens I used to have to go to dip to see around drive around such corners.
The auto range and use of corner direction means at every moment its putting light just where needed and not in the face of other drivers. Some others I've driven (mazda) with cornering function that switched on and off were really distracting, this is very continuous and not distracting. You soon fail to notice its doing it.

Light level / beam: Very bright, event brighter at >130kph (or over 110 with not much steering in the last 1km!) This is actually one of the issues with the low beam height - you have such a high level / vision on beam its a huge contrast on dip. Beam lets you see to the tops of trees / power poles and road reflectors etc as far as they go.

I have had a couple of very unusual situations where the system got carried away with a near railway light it thought was a car tailight, and put the light where I didnt want it for a moment, and also trucks here that light themselves up like a fairground confuse a little its looking for just a couple of tailights. So the dipping to reduce mirror glare sometimes doesnt as soon as would be nice.
I drive 2 x 450km commutes a week, after work and about half to all in the dark. Lots of trucks, opposing vehicles pop up at closing speeds or 200kph (2 x 100) and this ILS is a no brainer for me. If you never drive at night of course its no big deal, but if do a bit I'd thoroughly recommend it.
There must be a huge amount of code and processing going on to do this, and I think they have done a great job. Of course one can always find something that maybe could be better, but for the price its a huge bonus to driving comfort and enjoyment.

gfmohn

The bad news is, I got lucky with the first dealer adjustment. The good news is, the active LED headlights ARE user adjustable! After I had a "minor" fender-bender ("minor" in a Mercedes is anything under $10,000), the collision shop got them too high. I went back, and they made them kinda low, but acceptable. Then, I went to my dealer for a routine "B" service and asked them to raise the lights "a very little." Way too high! Everybody is blinking at me! Even the high beams were distractingly high! (These LEDs are so bright that when they are high, no one can ignore them.)

By now, I am tired of going to the collision shop and the dealer. Both are 25 minutes each way. So I pay my local independent dealer to adjust them. They made them too low. By now, I am bouncing off the walls. I still can't find any pictures in MBWorld showing the location of the adjusters for my model (2015 C300 4MATIC Luxury). However, I notice the appearance of the adjusters for another model and spot the same adjusters in my car. They are white nylon discs with concave tops about 3/8" across. They don't stick up; they are flush with the surface. They take a 5.5 mm. bit or a large regular screw driver.

The passenger side adjuster was easy to find, once I knew what it looked like. It is not on or near the headlight assembly. It is between the headlight assembly and the engine, fairly low down. The driver side adjuster was so hard to find that I had difficulty finding it again, even after I had found it the first time! I had to look straight down on the engine compartment, eyeball the passenger side adjuster, calculate its "latitude and longitude" (relative to the engine compartment), and then say to myself, the driver side adjuster must be HERE!

-=Hot|Ice=-

I have the static LED's on my 2016 C300 4Matic Sport. The lights are aimed a little low, but the light distribution is great.

Vvvvvv

The 1.9% financing is only for people that has superior credit scores. In this case, the only people who have it would be 1.seniors 2. People who runs a business. No exception. Maybe there's people that has put in effort to build their credit for YEARS, but very rare. Even people with good jobs won't have it. Anyone that tell you otherwise is pure BS. I Know people that work at dealers, they'll tell you the same. Should be common sense. Now if you're really wanting to ask a specific credit score? 800. Minimum.

Mike5215

Top tier credit for auto financing is 720 or better. If the best they're offering is a 1.9% rate then a minimum score of 720 will get it. ( A small percentage of the population has an 800. Car dealers need to cast a much wider net to sell cars.)

ManiacGT

Wtf has this to do with LED headlights?

guhvies

With great credit you'll be able to hopefully afford retro fitting the active LED lights with the money you save in the interest charges. But hopefully next time you won't buy halogen lights...

FullDISK

ILS is a "whim".
Static LEDs works very well. >In my opinion<, expend 900EUR+ to get Intelligent lights makes no senses :P there is not much difference in brightness.

My first post ^^