Yes, yes, another thread about LED tail lights. I'm a moderator so you can't me. Seriously, the reason I am creating this new post is because there are so many LED tail lights posts already that I couldn't pick one to resurrect.

I had the "Check Rear Lights" and "Check Brake Lights" errors from my OEM tail lights so I did the soldering fix to repair the burned/pitted spots on the circuit board. That didn't really help as I think the circuit board itself was bad. (Great design BMW!) I got tired of it and did not want to spend the time hard wiring in each bulb so I opted to get rid of them altogether.

I took the opportunity to upgrade to LED tail lights. I read the many posts here and decided to go with eBay seller "zomkspeed". There are many, many other sellers on eBay selling LED tail lights for our X5s and truth be told, I think there are some that are duplicate sellers using different accounts. I went with this one due to positive experience with members here. My experience was also positive. They shipped the next day and since I am in SoCal where they also are, I got the lights in a day. Anyway, prices vary quite a bit but they should cost you about $155 before shipping. They can be advertised as "Euro" or "uses Philips Lumileds". Some sellers mention a brand name. Previous posts have brought up different brand names so I'll clear that up a bit here.

Zomkspeed does not advertise a brand but they sell "Spyder" a.k.a. "Sonar" brand. I have seen people use either name. They are one in the same. I have read that Spyder is the US importer of Sonar lights. Here is the box that the lights were (drop) shipped in. They came very well packaged!



Here are the labels on the box.





And here is the back of one of the pieces showing the "Sonar" name.



What I think is that just about any of the eBay sellers selling LED tail lights advertising "Philips Lumileds" or "Sonar" or "Spyder" or versions that look like mine are selling the same thing so go with whatever seller you like.

I opted for the red/smoked LED tail lights. There are red/clear, black, and crystal versions too. There are actually also red/smoke and red/clear non-LED versions for quite a bit less money but I wanted the look and function of LED. Link to post by pezho405.

I apologize for the iPhone photos and the fact that the photos aren't that great but I wanted these things on immediately and it was dark out when I installed them. Here are some comparison photos with the stock lights so you can see the degree of smoke on the new ones. I wanted something a little different from OEM but not smoked too dark. These are PERFECT. They have just enough of a tint to look different and cool. They are a huge improvement over the OEM lights and look far more modern. It really updates my X5 and looks awesome on Steel Gray.









Technical notes:

They were plug and play and I have no errors nor flickering. My X5 is a production date 03/02 so I expected no problems since the only problems reported are with '03 and newer X5s, if there are problems at all. I did not disconnect my battery prior to installation. The only small issues were with one of the plugs where I had to fiddle with the pins a bit and then kind of force it to plug with the X5's wiring harness and the light's wiring harnesses are off the center of the light so they don't run through the best hole in the X5 and requires you so tuck some wires and squeeze them down when installing the corner lights.

The brake/rear lights are nice and bright red LEDs and look terrific. The signal light is also LED and is a yellowish orange and is also quite bright. The reverse lights uses your original incandescent bulb or you can swap that out for the appropriate LED bulb. These are wired for Euro rear fog lights but you have to do other wiring to get it to work.

Bottom line: I am very happy with these. They look great, update the rear of the X5 so much, and for $195 shipped/tax, totally worth it. The best part is no more annoying errors.

NEXT MOD:

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