BenQ ScreenBar Lite REVIEW | Mac Sources

BenQ ScreenBar Lite

7.6

An e-Reading LED task lamp designed for use with laptops.

I work in a well-lit office area during the day. The problem is that those lights are mainly fluorescent tube lighting, which can cause eye strain and blurred vision not to mention headaches from the incessant flicker. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make my office feel more home-like by adding LED and incandescent lamps throughout the space. While it helps for most tasks, I still feel I need a bit more light when it comes to working on my laptop. This is where the ScreenBar Lite from BenQ comes in handy.

Details

The ScreenBar Lite is an e-Reading LED task lamp that is designed to be attached to laptops. It will work with any monitor, but it’s slim, sleek body caters directly to a mobile workstation. The light features auto dimming based on ambient light. There is a built-in sensor that works with the auto dimming features. The light is also designed to to provide gentle light with no glare. The ScreenBar Lite is made using durable materials such as aluminum alloy and thick rubber so that it will transport well and be set-up within a matter of seconds. The light can be stowed away in its hard plastic case and ready for your next adventure.

The ScreenBar Lite is designed with an Obtuse-Angled Projection (OAP) that precisely projects light to the ideal place within your workspace without any glare on the screen. The light only uses 5W to produce the perfect illumination for a laptop workspace. The color temperature is adjustable by touch control and are compliant with the American National Standards Institute LED lighting chromaticity standard. It ranges from 6500K to 2700K so that you can have cool light while you work and warm light for relaxation. The ScreenBar Lite has a personalized mode available that saves your brightness and color temperature settings so you can instantly enjoy your favorite settings at any time.

• Light source: Dual color LED
• Color Rendering Index: Ra 88
• Illuminance: 1300 lux in the center (height 30cm)
• Luminous Flux: 250 lm
• Color Temperature: 2700–6500K (ANSI White 8 quadrangles color temperature)
• Power Input: 5V, 1 A USB port
• Power Consumption: 5W (max.)
• Materials: Aluminum alloy, Polycarbonate
• Dimension: 26cm x 5.5cm x 4.6cm
• Net Weight: 170g (0.17kg)
• Touch Control: 7 touch sensitive buttons (favorite, brightness, color temperature, 2 switch buttons, power, ambient sensor adjustment)
• SmartLite App: Can be used to adjust settings via connected device

Impressions

When I first started using the ScreenBar Lite, I wasn’t sure if it was something I would really need. I have had experience with the big brother of ScreenBar Lite, The ScreenBar Plus and the truth is, it comes in really, really handy. There are a lot of times that I’ll work late at night — sometimes from bed. In those moments, I never really consider how low light is effecting how I’m working. I’ve been really impressed with the both the amount of light the ScreenBar Lite casts on my screen and keyboard and the ability to shift the color temperature. The ambient light sensor works really well. I tested it out by having the overhead fluorescent lighting on and then turning those lights off. As I mentioned above, I still have ambient lamp lights in my office so the sensor does a really nice job of compensating for any available light in the area.

One thing I am not a fan of is how badly the light drains my laptop battery. While it only take 5W to power the light, I found that within about 4–5 hours, my laptop went from 99% battery down to 11%. During that time, I had left the light plugged in even though it wasn’t always turned on and I wasn’t always using the laptop. About 25% of that time, the laptop was in standby mode. This normally wouldn’t be a huge problem, but most days, I can use my laptop without needing to pull out a charger and when I was testing the ScreenBar Lite, I did.

I did test this light out with both a Windows and Mac laptop. In the case of the Mac laptop, I had to use a USB-C dock to connect the lamp to the computer since the MacBook Pro only has USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Final Thoughts

While I originally wasn’t sure where the ScreenBar Lite fit into my mobile workstation, I now see it as a fantastic add-on to my laptop kit. It provides subtle light than bigger options do and because it’s designed to work specifically with laptops, it comes with a handy, hard plastic carrying case. I appreciate that its main source of connectivity is a standard USB-A plug, but I do wish that it came equipped with a USB-C adapter so that it could be used with more mobile computers. There are a lot of USB-C laptops in the market now so it would be beneficial to include something for those users so that they could plug the lamp in directly without the use of a dock. The ScreenBar Lite does carrying a steep price tag for a laptop light, but I think it’s well worth the investment.

For more information, visit BenQ.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Originally published at https://macsources.com on May 17, 2019.