High also refers to the lack of beam cut-off or masking[1], not only the intensity. In UK English, the terms are "full beam" and "dipped beam" to reflect this.

[1] For older US cars, it was more about intensity as the masking sucked. I don't think it's that relevant to this discussion but you can look up "DOT vs Euro headlights" if it interests you.

This is how almost all cars with HID bulbs work, because HID bulbs can't be toggled on and off - they need time to warm up and have a limited number of arc initiation cycles before they wear out. So there's a mechanical shutter which changes the cut-off distance. Generally, there is also a leveling sensor which adjusts the cutoff when the car starts up, to account for suspension sag differences and load.

> The only difference is the field of view.

That's normal. Low beams are aimed low and often have a illumination pattern reducing light over the median, high beams are aimed high and uniform illumination. Very often, they're the same intensity.

Thanks, previously the only other car I had was a 1995 volvo which used additional bulbs when the high beams were engaged. Intensity and field of view were increased. The outback's headlights were very confusing to me since I leapt through like 3 generations of cars

I wonder if it became normal around the time everyone started complaining headlights were too bright

Most vehicles with dual-filament bulbs will turn off the low beams while the high beams are on, but looking around, I see it's mixed for vehicles with dual bulbs; US standards don't require it one way or the other --- you can meet the high beam requirement with separate bulbs or with both bulbs in concert.

I think complaints about headlights really started when different bulb types came out. HID, projector, and LED bulbs all cast qualitatively different light than the ubiquitous tungsten halogen bulbs that preceded them. A lot of these put out a lot of blue, especially in the fringes that I find very objectionable, and the lumen output seems to have increased quite a bit, as well as the spread.

Halogen bulbs were tightly constrained by power limits and output requirements; but the other types can hit the output requirements at well under the power limits, so they can cast a wider field of view (which is nice), but may need to be brighter in more of the the wider field of view to hit the output requirements in the central portion, and that additional brightness is more likely to cause glare. Of course, all of our eyes have aged as well which makes night vision more difficult, especially with light variance. I remember my parents sometimes complaining about other vehicle's lights when I was young and thought everything was fine, but everyone was using halogen lights back then.

They are often aimed too high from the factory