Tail lamp burnt out? Bad bulb? Replacing with LEDs... (Modernization?)

 So I recently noticed that at night when the lights were on, the left rear tail section (linked to the parking setting) would occasionally be not lit up - suggesting a bad bulb or bad connection (punching it would help sometimes).

When punching on it started to not have an effect, and although this area is not brake or safety-related, the unbalance at night bothered me, so hence I decided to replace the bulb.

So first, I had to take apart the rear tailgate inside cover to access the bulb.

First, use clips to remove these

Then the hand grip and the electrical switch to close

Interesting that this panel already has a lot of sound deadening. Not sure if working?

And then it turned out that most likely this connector had never been removed before - although a counterclock-wise twist worked in the end, it took a lot of effort since it seemed almost glued on!

On this side there is a tab that interferes with more than two fingers able to twist

OEM bulb looks ok actually...

First tested LED bulb...

But unfortunately this first T10 LED bulb I found was WAY too dim, on the sides.  An incandescent bulb gives off light in all directions and the light panel is designed for that, not for singular or limited direction LEDs.

So I dived into all the extra bulbs I had laying around and found these other T10 LEDs

I can't even remember when I got these

But these were WAY too dim. So I finally found a pair of these:

Which after install seemed to be relatively ok, although it still seems a bit bright in the rear direction vs sides.

Hard to tell here...

The right rear side

No tab on this side, very easy to twist and remove to access the bulb.

So after replacing the right side with the same black T10 LED, it was easy to put the tailgate all back together.

So from a distance it looks ok but a closer look....

Shows that the OEM outside bulb (parking and brake feature) is slightly pink, while the LED is very red.

But at least I have it done on both sides.  Eventually this gap in color will encourage me to figure out a better solution but at least for now, I don't have the blank on the left side...