Yeah they are ugly! At least the round AEL Autobahns look like a normal cobrahead (albeit one that's missing the refractor door and got a piece of flat metal bolted to the bottom as a replacement but still, has nice contours and stuff) and the round Autobahns have nice glass optics too instead of LED chips. The ones they've been installing in Rhode Island perform very well. Only complaint is the glare from certain angles is harsh but not really any worse than looking at a flood light or FCO fixture with a clear MH lamp. The Leotek toilets that RIDOT is using actually perform really well too. The brightness on the freeways here is pretty uniform. Better than with FCO HPS. Not as good as drop lens HPS but the glare is cut. The toilets hardly have any glare until you pass right under them as oppose to the round Autobahns, which shine like a beacon miles away (but they spread the light further than any other LED I've seen, so you have to weigh the pros and cons...)

If I had to choose an LED street light I'd definitely go with the round AEL Autobahns but if I have a choice in anything I'd want 1960s GE cobraheads. Those guys are the beefiest cobraheads ever made. Love them to death. The early silverliners were rock solid too but they have cloth wiring and the red varnish likes to chip off and short the windings after 50+ years. Granted, that's way beyond their expected life anyway so it's not Westinghouse's fault but GE just loved to way over-engineer things back then so the mid-60s GE cobraheads are just phenomenal IMO. Unfortunately the "old" GE is long gone and "new" GE makes garbage. Most of the stuff they don't even make. It's just made in China and then they ship the parts to the US or Mexico and assemble from there. Their new lights are junk their new lamps (for the most part) are junk, their new appliances are pretty much junk... It's too bad since GE was the leader in inspiration and brilliant engineering for over a century. Now they're no better than any other company.