The BenQ ScreenBar Plus - A Cool Light for Tired Eyes
/I don’t get out much…
… and that is because I’m always working. And not just during the daytime - I very often find myself glued to the monitor at 2AM, with burning, itchy eyes and a Cat 5 headache. Now, it is true that these disconcerting symptoms do sometimes improve when I remove the sandpaper discs that I use for contact lenses and stop rhythmically striking my temples with bronze gong mallets, but not always. And it is those other times that I want to talk to you about.
The lighting in my studio editing area is terrible. One overly bright lamp, that is actually an improvement over the dozen that went before it, but it still destroys the on-screen colors and overpowers the aging monitor. The later it gets, the harsher that light becomes. I think the problem is the unevenness of the light. One side is bright, the other dark - very jarring.
I have tried LED lighting in the past and have been disappointed by inconsistent colors, flicker, and eventual yellowing. So I have been looking for a monitor mounted light without actually know they are a thing. But before I could find one, a light made by a world renowned monitor company came to me - and it sounded very interesting.
My friend, Benjamin Qwertzenmuellerschstdine jr., or Ben Q to his friends
BenQ had called me a few days previously… well not really BenQ, but Tin, Tin Chen, on behalf of BenQ, the people that make the really excellent monitors used by my non-destitute friends. Tin wanted to introduce me to BenQ’s latest computer monitor light. This company has a reputation - a good one - for making well designed and well built equipment used by a large chunk of the photographic community. Their monitors are fantastic - I had one briefly, but the new ones are lightyears ahead of where they used to be. The make a bunch of other AV products as well, but I was unaware of their line of desk and computer lights until I was introduced to them by Tin.
the ScreenBar Plus, from the other side of my desk
The lights are universally slick, modern, and highly functional, but the one that Tin wanted me to see was something different. This light is an LED strip light using alternating high power yellow and white LEDs in a reflective housing and covered by a glass or acrylic shield. The strip is in a lightweight aluminum alloy tube (that is an educated guess) that probably also functions as a heat sink for these fairly large diodes. The mount is clever, utilizing a high friction counter weight that lays against the back of a computer flat screen to support the light bar that is held about an inch and a half in front of the screen.
The light bar has a USB-C socket and is attached to a standard USB-3.0 connector, but the cable branches into a second, flat wire that connects to the controller, seen above, on the right. It is pretty basic but very nicely made and has enough heft to feel like the price ($129) is justified. It has two buttons, one toggles the central dial back and forth between color temperature and intensity, and the second sets the light to automatic. It does a pretty good job of maintaining an even lighting pattern throughout the day and night, but it is important to make sure the area around the sensor is kept clear and exposed to the ambient light.
Another night in the salt mines
$129 seems like a lot for a desk lamp, but looking at the market place more broadly, it is probably about right for a top shelf popular brand. And, don’t get me wrong, this light does exactly what is says it is going to do. It delivers a very comfortable, even flicker-free light that illuminates my work area with so much as a stray photon making its way onto my screen. And that is a big improvement. Especially as I have an old iMac computer that I am using as a full size monitor - it is not a very good screen for an iMac, and with a desk lamp contaminating the light, the colors can be pretty washed out. This light definitely improves the colors on the screen and makes it a lot easier to look at for hours on end.
The only issue that I have is with light spilling onto the screen of my laptop - which I use as my primary computer. Most of the light hits the keyboard, but I have to watch out and keep the screen pretty vertical to keep the downlight from hitting the screen. Other than that, no issues.
But let me tell you all about it in a slightly more colorful video review….
So this is a top quality monitor light and I think you will be happy with how it looks and how it works. If you want to get one for yourself, or as a gift, you have a couple of choices. One is to drop by the BenQ store and order one. The other is to hit Amazon and do the same thing. You will not be disappointed, and at 3AM your eyeballs will thank you!
As always, I’ll leave you with a recent photograph, and this one is a little strange. I was trying to think of something original to showcase this attractive juvenile lubber grasshopper - the globe and wooden ladybird seemed like an interesting combination! Notice that the grasshopper is protecting his native state of Mississippi from the European invader!
