So I wanted to open this post with that to give a disclaimer that whatever you do on your car regarding HID kits is solely your decision. I'm just providing as much background info as I can. Daniel Stern wrote up an annoyingly long piece on the issue of fitting HID kits so that'd be a good read for someone interested in the topic.
If still looking for a HID kit, then here are some of the options you can choose/consider from.
Battery source
You'll find kits designed for 12V or 24V or both. This is dependent on the battery you use - most passenger cars use 12V.
Power wattage
The most popular kits come in 35W or 55W, but there are some that come in 75W, 100W and even higher. This is essentially the intensity of the light that the bulbs produce. As a side effect of the increased brightness, the bulbs will run hotter and in certain headlights where it's been designed to withstand a certain bulb's intensity, increasing it will cause components to wear faster or even melt (I'm thinking some of the plastic components and the wire insulation). 35W is the "standard" and the 55W seems to be the safe upgrade for them (google 35W vs 55W and you'll find quite a few forum threads with positive feedback on the performance of 55W). Any higher and problems may surface.
Mismatched bulb and ballast kits may lead to premature failure of either too. There are some cheap eBay kits advertising 55W bulbs with 35W ballasts and vice versa. Both ballasts and bulbs are not designed to take different power.
Bulbs
Each kit comes with HID bulbs. You cannot use your regular bulbs as use a different plug-in connection. The best way to know which bulb type you need is to pull out your old ones and read the label around the base. I know that for a face-lift model 8L A3, the main/low beam (projector bulb) is H1 and the high beam is H7. For this A3, you'd want a HID kit utilising an H1 bulb. For other 8L models, check this site out.
Temperature rating (in Kelvins)
This is what most people are concerned with when purchasing HID kits. The temperature rating in Kelvins directly correlates to the colour of the light - the hotter it is, the bluer the colour.
The yellow of the 3000k provides the best light-penetrating power, and is the best in terms of absolute brightness. As the temperature rating goes up, the brightness intensity decreases, although your eyes might feel otherwise. 4300k seems to be optimum temperature rating based on general consensus between brightness and "clarity".
CANBUS vs relay
Some of the higher-end HID kits provide the option of a CANBUS-wiring kit or relay. With some of the newer cars, the ECU might detect a blown bulb if a HID kit is fitted on, resulting in an annoying dash display or an error code when the car is scanned by a diagnostic tool. CANBUS-wiring kits allow the HID kit to be fitted on and have the wiring bypass this warning feature, tricking the ECU into thinking it's still running on the factory setup. Relay kits, also known as plug-n-play kits, are found in your typical aftermarket HID kits.
DIY
I was searching for a DIY when it came to installing HID kits on 8Ls - here's a decent one. It's for a typical relay kit. One thing I would do differently is to mount them in a different location, perhaps somewhere hidden on the chassis rails, on the side of the radiator support or within the raintray. I don't know if the units are waterproof though, but since they're supposed to be mounted in the engine bay, I reckon they should be waterproof.
Great post it was really helpful while learning about this topic.
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Thanks for sharing this. My boyfriend was looking at these HID kits, and I was going to surprise him for his birthday, but I wanted to make sure I was buying him the right stuff. This has been very helpful. Thank you. :)
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