HELLA Value Fit 500 LED Off Road Light Review

Choosing a good off-road light can be tricky. There’s a ton of range in both price and quality. If you search for off-road lights on Amazon, you’re going to mostly find cheap options. Frankly, several of them look okay. But, the reviews are inconsistent on these lights so it’s hard to make a good decision. I have been obsessing over which lights to mount to my Land Rover (seriously, I’ve read tons of reviews and stuff) and I settled on the HELLA Value Fit 500 LED lights for various reasons.

When I say a lot of range in price, I mean it. You can buy this complete kit for the $58 floating under your couch cushions, which includes 4 pod lights, a light bar and mounting hardware. Or, you can swing to the polar opposite of the spectrum and finance these 2 lights for $958. Yeah, that’s some serious range. I for one am not willing to go super-cheap, but I’m sure as hell not spending a grand on 2 lights either. I took the somewhat cheap, but not too cheap option with the HELLA lights. This is a brand I’m familiar with and they have a good reputation.

On to the review.

Quirks and Features

This is a complete kit, so you get 2 lights, 2 covers and a very nice wiring harness, complete with switch. It’s plug-and-play. In the Amazon listing, it’s not apparent that these lights have a parking light feature. While unboxing them, I noticed the wiring harness has 2 relays. Wonder why. Oh, the switch has 3 positions too. That’s strange. In the image below you can see why. 👇

Cool, right? A running/driving/parking light. It’s like a lower light brow. I wasn’t expecting that. Now, I’m the coolest guy on the trail. One thing about this, it would be easy to turn these on and forget they’re on, killing your battery. Also, if you’re going to turn these on while driving, better make damn sure you know which position to flip the switch or you’ll end up severely blinding other drivers.

The lights are 7 inches around. They fit nicely under my bull bar and aren’t annoyingly large or alien looking. I do hate that they call these lights “value fit”. That name makes them sound cheap. It’s not as if HELLA offer a more expensive option (that I have seen) so why call your only LED style light “value fit”? Who knows. I mean, they are a great value, I get that, but let’s not go plastering it on the lights themselves. I’m cheap, but we don’t have to announce it.

These lights also come with 2 black covers that say HELLA really big in light gray. I forgot to take pictures of those, and I’m not going to because I’m lazy. Having covers is nice. I probably won’t use them much because then I’d have to get out of the truck and take them off every time I want to use the lights and I couldn’t use the cool parking light feature. Maybe they’d be good for a long highway trip where you don’t want rocks flying up and cracking your lights.

Let’s Talk Quality

With a name like Value Fit and a the low, low price of $122.00, one should temper expectations. But, the HELLA brand does carry some weight, so I wasn’t expecting total garbage here either. Well, these lights are really impressive. HELLA sold themselves short with this stupid name. The build quality inspires confidence. Solid construction. Nice and heavy in the hand. The hardware they provide is also top-notch.

We’re talking solid aluminum. Deep fins in the back for heat dissipation. Waterproof wire connectors. A rubberized plastic bezel. Strong front element that feels like it could take some abuse. Honestly, I would pay $250 for these if that’s what they cost. Okay, if they took that dumb “value fit” badge off I’d pay $250 for them. Did I mention I don’t like that?

The wiring harness is beefy. With plenty of wire length in every direction, you shouldn’t have any problem routing the wires to your lights and getting the switch into your vehicle. They covered the wire with a heavy plastic wire loom and the junction where the wires meet the relays are finished with tight-fitting rubber. The switch itself is the only thing that’s not so great. It’s an oval shaped switch, which is hard to cut a hole for, but it gets the job done, I guess.

Okay, now the important part: how’s the light output? Well, they’re bright. Not blow your pupils out, or put on sunglasses bright, but they do throw some quality light down the trail. The light pattern is somewhere between a spot and a flood. It’s not quite either and I like that. They’re directional but there’s a lot of spread. I’m not disappointed in the light output for my use (slow-speed crawling mostly). If you’re doing 80-100 mph in your trophy truck, maybe get the Baja Designs lights.

The Big Fat Conclusion

The HELLA Value Fit 500 LED lights are great. I’m glad I held out for a known brand. They call them Value Fit lights and they’re not wrong. For the money, these lights are built very well, they put out a bright beam with a useful pattern, come with covers and a nice wiring harness, so yeah, that’s some value right there. And, they have a really cool parking light feature that all your off-road friends will envy. If they end up catching fire, or falling off the truck, I’ll be sure to update this post. I doubt that will happen though.