review BenQ ScreenBar Plus | A $130 Lamp.

TechSquidTV · February 6, 2019

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BenQ ScreenBar Plus

Product Link: https://www.benq.com/en-us/lighting/screenbar-lamp/screenbar-plus.html

Price: ~$130-$150

Disclaimer: This product was sent to me by BenQ in exchange for my honest opinion in the form of the review above.

Key Features:

Screen mounted LED bar lamp
Brightness dimmable | 2700K : 300lm ; 6500K : 320lm
Color temperature adjustable | 2700~6500K ‎
High-quality control dial with an ambient light sensor.

Pros:

Increased desk real estate by removing lamp base
Convenient location and tilt direction.
Impressive mounting hardware
While the control dial could be seen as a con, but, with the ambient sensor providing an important job and the alternative being a software controller, I think a high-quality control dial is preferred.

Cons:

Not cheap
Incompatible with screen mounted webcam
Unable to chain multiple lights to one control dial
If your desktop is a considerable distance from your monitor this could be an issue (4+ feet)

Hey everyone!

My name is Kyle, and this is technically my first official tech review.

This is the BenQ ScreenBar Plus e-Reading Task Lamp. What a mouthful. The screen bar is an aluminum (alloy) tube with a high-quality bi-color LED strip inside that can be controlled with the included control dial. The control dial enables adjustment of the brightness and color temperature of the lamp as well as automatically set brightness via the integrated ambient light sensor.

The bar lamp attaches to your screen with an interesting weighted and spring loaded screen mount that clamps to the screen tightly. As opposed to a generic webcam which generally just uses some hinged plastic. I suspect this was done to support the more hefty lamp but it really is fairly light and with this grip it surely isn't going anywhere. An added benefit is this should accommodate most screens due to the "clamping" pressure. It even affixes to my mounted monitors, even though the arm mount is in the way.

The light is focused out of the tube into an area on your desk but it's careful to ensure not to splash any light onto your screen inducing glare which is the real hidden key feature. The light can also be adjusted to light further away or closer to the screen to some degree.

This is a bit of a niche product, not something you'd think to really search for on Amazon because it's a fairly unique product. I feel as though the concept of "book lights" or lights that lit your laptop keyboard were a concept some years ago that died off and as far as desk lighting has gone it has always required some kind of overhead lamp. This truly feels like the best solution to this problem.

It would have been interesting to have the option to control the lamp via software to produce an f.lux like effect, color shifting over the day.

The only major drawback for me is the price. At $130 it is actually fairly competitive in the market but it can seem like quite a chunk of change to many people understandably. I think what just justify the $100+ range is it's IEEE compliance ensuring there is No flicker, which could have easily killed this product for me if it wasn't perfectly flicker-free. As well as the high quality and accuracy color temperature settings. If this isn't quite in your budget but you are looking for a lighting solution I would keep an eye on this product or even recommend its older non-plus variant which lacks the control dial. With no direct comparison to really position this against it's hard to say for sure how it's priced but compared to what does exist out there I believe $130 is a fair price.

Thanks everyone, please let me know what you thought of the review. I'd love to get into producing more content like this in the future and would love your feedback.