Our process for coming up with this Kensun HID kit review involved looking at a lot of headlights and customer reviews. Eventually, we developed an idea of the feasibility of their conversion packages when compared to some of the other HID kits on the market. The bottom line: The options and prices on these kits make them a good choice if you want to add some distinct personality to your ride without lightening your wallet too much.
Read on for a deep dive of how we came to this conclusion, along with an overview of the options available from Kensun and some of the finer points of purchasing these particular kits. If you decide at the end that Kensun doesn’t work for you, feel free to check out our other reviews and read our roundup of the HID kit market in general.
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Kensun Hid Kit Review
Kensun HID Kit Selection
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What Is a Kensun HID Conversion Kit?
A Kensun HID kit contains the parts you need to convert your factory headlights to aftermarket high-intensity discharge upgrades. Depending on the type of conversion, the basic set of components should include new bulbs, ballasts, and brackets to mount your parts. Kensun also throws in a reusable aluminum carrying case that doubles as extra shipping protection for the delicate bulbs.
What Is a Kensun HID Kit and How Does It Work?
The Basics
HID bulbs use a different type of illumination mechanism than your standard halogen headlight technology. The bulbs that come with most vehicles use a filament that heats up and emits light when current runs through the wire. HID technology, on the other hand, uses a gas capsule. The principle is similar to neon tube lighting. Electricity runs through gas, causing the particles to generate light.
Personal Style
One of the benefits of Kensun kits is that many more colors of xenon bulbs are represented in the company’s catalog. Choosing the right color temperature is a personal decision. Some people prefer to keep a warmer shade that’s closer to the yellowish headlights you tend to see in most vehicles. If you’re looking for these tones, you should choose a temperature lower than 5,000 Kelvin. To replicate the bright white color of high-end LED headlights, you might want to pick a 6,000 Kelvin bulb. The extremely high color temperatures, going up to 30,000 Kelvin,n appear as light blue to deep indigo in the Kensun repertoire.
Maximum Illumination
Most people do not perceive the high and low ends of the range to have the same brilliance as the colors from 5000-7000 Kelvin. The lights that appear deep blue or yellow tend to seem less bright. Kensun also makes kits in pink and green, but you should check with your local authorities before you install these. Colored headlights are not always legal, especially if you are changing the color of your primary headlights.
The reason you can install xenon headlights in the deeper blue or yellow ranges, even when colored headlights are prohibited, is that these lights are not actually blue or yellow. They only appear to be a different color because they are either cooler or warmer along the spectrum of white light, compared to what we’re used to seeing on the road. This technical distinction may seem unnecessary, but it’s an important point when you live in a municipality that only allows white, amber or red lights on street vehicles.
What Makes a Kensun HID Kit Unique?
Kensun kits are unique in a couple of ways. The first is their wide range of color options.
The company especially shines when it comes to the higher range of Kelvin temperatures: the deep blues. Another aspect, although it’s not likely to be as important to you when it comes to the appearance of your headlights, is the aluminum carrying case.
Pricing
Kensun is far from the cheapest option out there; other headlight kits might cost half as much. However, there are also many kits that could quadruple your costs, or even multiply them by a factor of ten, when compared to Kensun. If you examine all of the prices of the best HID kits, you’ll see that Kensun kits occupy the lower midrange of the spectrum.
The Price Tag
For the price, which ranges from around $$ to $$ per kit, you get a few perks when compared to the cheaper options. For one, you get the full color range and the carrying case we mentioned above. Compared to high-end kits that can occupy a $$$-$$$ range, Kensun offers a little less reliability. However, you do get a professional appearance at an entry-level price.
Another thing you get is good customer service, at least according to customer reviews. It seems that what you won’t get, though, is the complete reliability that the company aspires to provide. Even some of the 5-star reviews we read were stories of how Kensun fixed quality problems by offering quick returns, refunds or replacements. Their warranty policy states a replacement window of 45 days from the order date if a part is confirmed to be faulty.
Examining the Options
The variation in prices comes from which colors, wattages, and sizes you choose. As we mentioned before, Kensun offers a lot of colors. Here’s the rundown of Kelvin color temperatures available, starting from their yellow option and ending with deep indigo:
In addition to these white colors, as we mentioned, you could potentially choose pink or green lights if they’re legal in your area. Lights are available with 35- or 55-watt ratings. Kensun also offers kits for most standard headlight bulb sizes. Here’s a full list:
The final thing to consider is whether you’ll buy a single or dual light kit. Make sure to examine your vehicle or read the owner’s manual for the exact details before you place an order.
Relay Harnesses
One final note about pricing is that you might end up needing a relay harness. Since the chances are that your vehicle was not designed to work with these types of headlights, you might experience some small electrical problems. The relay harness eliminates the source of many of these issues: lack of steady electric current to your ballasts. You can buy them directly from Kensun if you decide you need them.
Prices for Kensun relay harnesses range from around $$ to $$, so you could end up adding about 50 percent to your total upgrade cost if you need one. This is one more reason that we consider Kensun to be more of a balance between customization and value, rather than a true budget option. Additionally, it bears mentioning that some of the other manufacturers on the market include relay harnesses already. Check out the list of best HID kits for more details.
Public Perception
One nice thing about Kensun kits is that they have mostly positive customer reviews, in addition to having a significant volume of people reviewing their products. The company promotes its high level of service, and customers seem to agree for the most part. From the reviews, we could tell that customer service is accessible. That means that, even if the resolutions were dissatisfactory for about 10 percent of the purchasers, we could assume from each review that customer support professionals from Kensun had at least attempted to resolve the issue. Overall, the things people seemed to appreciate most were the appearance of the headlights and the long-term reliability of the bulbs.
How It Compares
The Kensun HID kit has many competitors on the market. In a way, it’s a very similar product to many other xenon headlight replacement kits. It contains bulbs, brackets, and ballasts— the most basic elements of a headlamp replacement job— but it doesn’t include a relay like some of the other kits out there. It’s not the cheapest, and it’s not the most expensive, either. Kensun is indeed an industry luminary when it comes to light temperature range. It seems to be much easier to get super-high Kelvin temperatures with Kensun than it is with many of the competing kits, especially the brands selling at a lower price point. If you’re upgrading your night mode with other lighting, such as rack, ground effects, or interior lights, buying a set of Kensun headlights could make it possible to get a closer match.
What We Think
To review, the principal opinion we formed during our Kensun HID kit review is that these kits are one of the better values for people who want a simple upgrade to their ride’s image. According to customer reviews, the quality control might not be as excellent as the high-end options. People always say that Kensun seems to maintain its good reputation by offering replacements. Additionally, you would be hard-pressed to find a higher-rated mainstream HID kit for this price point. If you decide against Kensun but want something in the same range, check out BEAMTECH. It has comparable ratings, but fewer color options.
Thank you for reading. We’ll split up our final vote for this product into a few sections, based on our review of customer opinions and our examination of the Kensun catalog.
Kensun HID Kit Selection
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Featured Image: CC0 Public Domain via Amazon
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Last update on 2023-04-15 at 07:41 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API