Just a little sidenote - I work as an IT manager and operations supervisor for a valet company, so I get to drive a lot of nice cars with HID headlights.

Anyway, the upgrade makes the beam cutoff much, much more apparent. I'm not sure if many people have had the privilege of driving cars with HID headlights, but I drive them in garages somewhat often. Since the beams are then projected into the wall (instead of into open air), the cutoff becomes very apparent. Almost all HID lights have a near-complete cutoff of light after a certain horizontal point, like drawing a line on paper, sideways, and coloring underneath it. Above it, there is no color, just like on the HID projection. It's difficult to see this on the open road, so a wall makes it much easier to see.

This cutoff is very easy to see with HID lights, even at a large distance. With the stock 9006 low beams in the SVX, the cutoff is very difficult to see, but becomes apparent at point-blank distance. After upgrading to the 9005 bulbs, the cutoff can be seen from a greater distance, but not as far away as with HID. A definite improvement though.

The cutoff is significant because the light is projected down onto the road, which is obviously what you need to be looking at when driving at night. Headlights without projectors have a beam pattern that diffuses very quickly, and are therefore less efficient. The projector creates a cutoff, and "focuses" the light into a more "dense" beam pattern. The stock SVX bulbs, as mentioned above, do not have such a sharp cutoff as the 9005 bulbs - i.e. the light diffuses differently with 9006, and is more similar to headlights without projectors in comparision to the 9005 bulbs.

Is this making any sense, or is my wording too funky?

So yes, it is much brighter. If you use a bulb with a blue tint, you will be getting light that is much whiter. So, upgrading to 9005 with something like Cool Blue or a Street Glow bulb will yield a whiter light that is pretty similar to less-intensive HIDs. If you use a bulb with a purple tint, you will be getting light that is somewhat blue. While I haven't used one yet, this will probably appear much similar to the high-intensity HIDs that you see on some Porsches, BMWs, and Benzezzezesss (Mercedes ).