The oddest thing; I just bought a pair of Hella 90mm low beam projectors from a place on eBay, and they are identical (even same P/N) in every way to the set I bought from Rallylights.com last summer, EXCEPT the new lights have the Fresnel lenses, and the older ones are clear. I'll have to hook up one of the new ones and compare it to one of the old, to see if I can detect any difference in beam pattern or intensity.

Here is the headlight picture of 2003 VW Touareg that I took in Europe (what a freak, goes to Europe and looks at headlights). Has Fresnel curved lens of a xenon projector. Go figure. May be a new thing that Hella started doing. I wonder what the effect is.

I just bought a pair of Hella (supposedly E-code)Bixenon projectors and they too have fresneld leneses.
I test fired those babies and it seems the fresnels allow a litle bit of light to bleed above the cut-off making it not as sharp as some of the true E codes i've seen. Now I wonder if that is entirely due to the fresneled lense.

Ekooke, I would love to see some comparison photos of the two H9 units.

I would not be surprised if some consumers have complained on razor sharp cutoff line projector based systems. Even here on this board there has been some talk regarding oncoming traffic have a annoying flickering look. Also the short reach going downhill, transitioning to uphill is a concern without autolevelling (which really is a north america concern only).

With fresnel lenses, doesn't the cut-off becomes more blurry... If so, when the light get bend at the shield, the color changing and on the cut-off would be thicker (blurry) with fresnel lenses. therefore, wouldn't the light seem bluer more often (due to broader range) to oncoming traffic? That maybe a advantage of fresnel lenses.

i think your right.

If cutoff shield (in a projector unit) is mounted slightly in forward in comparson to focal point, the cutoff line has like 5% blue, 70% orange and 25% red. This is typical in maybe half of Hella manufactured projectors. (The rest has the shield slightliy back or in focal point for a more dominant blue tone.)

The fresnel lense combined with 5% blue, 70% orange and 25% red, will therefor make a smoother vertical intensity transistion from dark to light, and at the same time yellow and orange and white are smoothend out as well, so that end result is a comfortable for driver, non flickering looking, and less glaring. At the cost of intensity right below cutoff, which is far down the road. But I am shure Hella has compensated for this in their design.

It surely leaves room for us tinkerers to swap fresnel lens with a clear lens to increase down the road illmination.