[kastle]

I'm not sure how many others have noticed this, but many of the led lights in the 2023MY outbacks are no longer user serviceable. I wanted to change out the dome light bulb in my car as it's pretty dim, and noticed that the owners manual cryptically says to contact the dealer for service on many of the led bulbs like the dome and map lights.

I thought that was strange so popped the dome light cover to see why, and see that they now don't use bulbs at all, just what looks like a surface mount led in the light recess:

Same for the map lights. Pretty disappointing, I'm guessing it's just a cost saving measure, but a pretty crappy one if you don't happen to like the color or brightness of these built in lights. Anyone know is there are any other options for replacing these leds?

 

[kastle]

Just noticed that the vanity lights are still fuse bulbs, so I'll try just replacing those instead if I need more light. Probably a better solution for the front since the dome light is so far back anyways.

 

[kastle]

This Youtuber has a 22 OBW, and he's swapped out a number of different incandescent bulbs with LEDs, including the vanity and puddle lights. Not shown in the video, but interestingly at around the 3min mark he mentions replacing the dome light with leds....so maybe you could replace with a 22MY dome light assembly and swap with LED bulbs then?

Thanks, I placed an order for a set of LED vanity bulbs, I think it's actually going to work out better since I primarily want something that can help me read in the car, in the front seat, and I see now that a brighter dome light isn't actually going to help me much.

 

[kastle]

Just to wrap up my post with a quick follow up - I ordered a set of 6 led vanity lights from Amazon, and just popped them in this afternoon. As no doubt most of you have read from previous posts about replacing the interior lightbulbs, the difference was literally night and day. Super bright, but not blindingly bright. Lights up the front seat areas perfectly for me. For the $7 or so it costs for the pack of 6, it's a no brainer upgrade if you want brighter lighting in the front seat area. In case anyone wants to order the same bulbs, they're amazon item id B081DHQLHK. No idea if these are particularly good vs. the million other similar bulbs on Amazon, but they seem to work well in my opinion.