Some years back I retrofitted 35w HIDs with projectors into my factory headlight housings. Probably not California legal, but the cutoff is very clean and I aimed the beams correctly. They were a tremendous upgrade over the stock halogens in reflectors.
I like to tinker with things and try to fix what isn't broken, so on a whim I picked up some of the highest rated fanless LEDs on Amazon which would fit into my H1 projectors (which insure that whatever bulb I use, will not blind other drivers).
They advertise these as 40w per bulb, 4800LM per bulb. My understanding is that most 35w HIDs are somewhere around 3200-3400LM, and that 35w is before conversion losses from the ballasts, so on paper these should be better, right?
HID on the left, LED on the right:
No forward facing pictures. My car was not parked in a place where I could get a good comparison, and the difference was so stark I didn't even bother.
I was pretty disappointed. I expect you can't just make up numbers like I'm about to, but if the 35w HIDs I have are 3200 lumens, I expect the brightest LEDs on the market aren't more than 1500.