These brilliant BenQ ScreenBar lamps are my favorite WFH accessory

I’m reviewing a lot of home office equipment for my job, which means my workplace is in flux.New desk today, another one office chair tomorrow – you get the idea? The one constant over the past three years? You may have heard of BenQ before, which is manufactured by a Taiwanese company excellent monitors and: projectors— but this lamp is my number one work-from-home accessory.

ScreenBar takes up no desk space as it hangs over your computer monitor and illuminates the desktop brilliantly. It’s a simple little thing, but it makes me very happy and the company is iterating on it, and the latest version, ScreenBar Pro- I’m here to tell you that you should probably get one for yourself home office.

Let there be Light

ScreenBar comes in several flavors Screen bar, ScreenBar Halo:, ScreenBar Plus:and: ScreenBar Pro:. I’ve tested the original ScreenBar and Pro. Halo offers a backlight that pushes light behind the monitor if you want light on your desktop. and: the wall behind your computer screen.The Plus is the same as the standard ScreenBar, but it has a separate dock to control the light settings instead of the touch controls on top of the lamp.

You can adjust these lamps to your liking, changing the color temperature and brightness or even turning on the auto-brightness function to match the ambient light in the room.But what sets the latest ScreenBar Pro apart from its brethren is the motion sensor After a few minutes of leaving the desk, ScreenBar Pro shuts down. When I come back, it lights up my desktop as if it were loading my battle station. Rad.

These ScreenBar lights are designed to have minimal bleed so those LEDs don’t blow out your eyes, although you’ll need to make sure your monitor is at eye level to avoid them , the only time I’ve noticed the screen glow is when I’m watching something with dark content, like a moody video game or movie. That’s when I turn it off ScreenBar to enjoy the rich blacks and deep contrast of my OLED monitor.

I haven’t had any problems using them on all kinds of monitors, including my current curve Alienware AW322QF 32-inch curved gaming monitor. Best of all, you won’t have to use an expensive USB-A slot on your PC or laptop to keep the lights on; I just plug the ScreenBar directly into my monitor’s USB port for power.It also keeps the cable tidy.

So where are you? install a webcam if you have a ScreenBar on top of the monitor. Well, I used to have my webcam slightly off-center, but it took some tweaking in the field of view to get it to look good. A better solution is to just get the BenQ’s webcam accessory. This sticks to the top of the ScreenBar and you can balance your webcam on top. It does put the webcam quite high, but I was able to tilt it my MX Brio beautiful so as not to seem strange.

Leave no one behind

The ScreenBar is pointless if you don’t have a computer monitor at work. But if you work exclusively from a laptop, BenQ hasn’t forgotten about you. space for late nights at the office.

However, there are some trade-offs with this option. You have to apply magnetic adhesive to the back of your laptop, which keeps the LaptopBar attached. When you don’t have the Laptop Bar attached, there’s a permanent magnetic circle on the outside, which doesn’t look great. The LaptopBar is also battery-powered and can run for about two hours at full brightness, but you can plug it into your laptop to run longer (this will drain your laptop battery).

Still, it’s a small lamp that’s perfect for people who regularly type in the dark.The lamp comes with a carrying case, can be dimmed, and offers warm or cool color temperatures.

All this may sound a little silly. It’s just a lamp. Who cares? I know. But the unique looking ScreenBar series really saves space on my already packed desktop.I also love the light; I’m someone who likes to keep the lights on in the house while my wife prefers to sit in the dark (I once found her cooking in the dark, which is just annoying to me) so blasting my desk with as much light as I want feels happy at my workplace, especially in the months when the sky gets dark a little after 4pm.

It’s the little, comfortable things that make working from home so much fun. And not having to change into work clothes. Or pack a lunch, you know.