Struggling with the standard candles in my 10 plate (Jan 11) HSE SD4 - Manual says they are H11 (low & high beam). I am guessing the most cost effective improvement will be HID bulbs rather than Xenon. Is there a plug in and play kit available please? or any other wise advice welcome - thank you

There are dozens of threads on here on the very subject, try typing 'headlamp upgrade' in the search bar

Thank you

There are many many many threads ... If people would search first, then ask questions in the release ant threads, the forum would 'work' better.
We understand you are new to the forum and the simple thing is to ask, but many long standing members, who are very knowledgable, get fed up repeating themselves and ultimately stop posting.

It also saves us time trying to merge threads and keep things in order.

Don't get confused with Zenon or Xenon and HID, there are fundamental differences, xenon is a gas used in both Halogen and HID lamps.
If you have halogen then the simple upgrade £20-30 is higher output lamps, search 'nightbreaker', if you want excellent lighting then an upgrade to HID is possible, expect to pay hundreds of pounds, there is a further solution, fitting projector style headlamps and using the latest LED technology, this as far as I know has not been tried yet, on here at least.

Apologies & thank you for the clarification, much appreciated

Lesson learnt

everyone will help, you will get most by asking in existing threads, some members will have certain threads on a 'watch' alert, they will know when someone posts in them and respond accordingly.

Something in the back of my mind tells me the manual is wrong too, I think a 10 reg car has two different lamps for low beam and high beam?
If you can stretch to a HID upgrade, the difference is substantial and well worth it.

my MY2010 XS (but March 2010 so not the face-lift version of OP) uses same bulbs for dipped and main beams. Not very helpful I guess as the face-lift model could have had the bulbs changed but would this be likely?