Have you ever seen a LED with a small box on the harness? There are many videos calling it a “LED ballast”, but it isn’t!

A ballast is an extremely important component, but for Xenon lamp kits. Its role is to convert the low voltage from the car battery into a significantly higher voltage, which is necessary to generate the electrical discharge that lights up the gas inside the Xenon bulb.

LEDs work in a totally different way. They generate light using semiconductors and operate on low voltage. In other words, LEDs don’t have ballasts!

But then, what is that external little box that comes with high-performance LEDs? That box is actually the electronic board or PCB board responsible for activating the chip’s lighting. Since these modern LEDs are designed to deliver a much higher lumen output, they generate more heat. If these electronics were integrated right there in the bulb, they would operate at a very high temperature and end up burning out in the short term. Keeping it separate guarantees durability and stability to the system.

Here is the hack: if you see a small LED without the separate electronics, it won’t generate much light. If you see a robust LED like Extreme Force, with lots of light, high electronic complexity, and a separate driver on the harness: it will deliver extremely high performance!

Want to explore TECH ONE’s complete automotive lighting line? Click here to check it out, and of course, to stay tuned on everything happening in the automotive world and the high-performance lighting universe, follow Rê from @techonebrasil.