well hid's are going to be A LOT brighter, however: even with my lights pointed downwards and my car lowered i was still blinding people, i was even blinding 18 wheelers!! the lack of a projector in the 99-00 civic (ek9,ek4,em1) headlight makes the light flood out, its very hard to control where the light goes. i was able to light up a quarter mile!!! im not saying its impossible to make them aim properly just that i was not able to do it nor did i have time to play with them. these new phillips x-tremes are excellent for a non-hid bulb, i do a lot of canyon driving at night and these bulbs really show me every detail in the road and go really far. if you have the time and money to get hid's and make the aim properly then do it, if not, these bulbs are an excellent alternative.
another complaint i had about the hid's is that i lost my high beam. i only had 1 beam and it was all over the place.