That Philips H7 LED hasn't actually been released for sale anywhere, that I'm aware of, so they were testing some kind of a prototype. And the fact that they didn't test it in the same lamp they tested all the other bulbs in means the numbers they got for it are not comparable. It also means the same thing that's true of all these "LED bulbs": they might work OK in certain specific headlamps, but not in all/any headlamps that will physically accept them. Assumably Philips either supplied the prototype already installed in the BMW headlamp and said "Don't take it apart" or they said "We'll let you test this and publish the results if you test it in this specific headlamp". Also, all we know about this "test" is that AutoExpress liked what they saw. The measurements they made, as described in the how we tested them section, don't even come close to determining if this setup gave anything like legally acceptable or safe performance. Same problem with some of their other claims in this round of "tests". They say the Philips +130 put out "too much glare". Oh yeah? What does that mean? How much glare is that? How did they measure, and where? They don't bother telling us.
Years ago the AutoExpress tests were really good. They tested at a collection of valid seeing and glare locations, provided the results for each of those locations, tested the filament position of each bulb and gave it a pass/fail on that basis...very useful stuff. Now they have this arbitrary "We measure at these three points, double one of the measurements, and that's how we get our 'beam' rating...oh, and we might measure for glare...somewhere...without telling you how, where, or what we consider too much". Bunch of useless baloney.
