So, FedEx just dropped off a rather large box
that I believe contains a product
that I'm supposed to review.
[knife clicking]
Let's get Undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and I just got a package from BenQ
and I'm pretty sure I know what it is, in which case,
this should make for a pretty peculiar review
because I'm not really sure how it applies
to my channel, but let's open it up and see.
[package ripping]
Needlessly large box.
[plastic ruffling]
Yep.
So it is what I thought it was. BenQ contacted me
a couple of weeks ago telling me that they were going
to send me this light to review. So, a quick disclaimer,
I was not paid to make this video,
but they did send me this product for free.
This is the BenQ ScreenBar E-reading Lamp.
Now, I can totally see how they thought
that this would be up my alley, because I talk about lights
a lot on this channel, and then I also have that video
where I took my BenQ monitor apart.
So they were probably like, "Hey look, lights and monitors!
We should send this guy a light for his monitor."
Now, I don't really have a need, I don't think
for putting a light above my monitor,
and because the channel is about technology
for being creative, let's see if we can't repurpose this
thing into something a little bit more creative,
because, as John Lennon once said--
I'm an artist. You give me a fu-[horn tooting] tuba,
I'll get you something out of it.
Okay, so while I open this thing up,
I'm going to go ahead and play you some footage
that they sent me that, kind of, better articulates
exactly what the light is for and then we'll give it
a little bit of test and see if it works
as I would have expected it to work
for what they said it should, and then let's go ahead
and see if we can use the light
for some video lighting stuff, or maybe to,
I don't know, provide some accents for photos.
Let's take a look at that.
[invigorating music]
♪
Okay, so there's a box inside the box.
[loud crashing]
And then there's a box inside that box.
Then you got a little bit of paperwork,
and then we've got three pieces, basically.
It's actually pretty nice packaging,
they've got it all laid out for you.
Anyway, inside it looks like there is a micro-USB cable
because the thing is powered off USB.
There is the counterweight and clip for the light,
and then the light itself.
[tape ripping]
Now, I'm not a huge fan of when channels
completely change their message in order
to review products that people give them
just so they can get free stuff, so I'm a little bit,
I guess, apprehensive about talking about this
on my channel because it is not exactly
in my wheelhouse as I was saying,
but I did want to give it a try
because I am very interested in lighting
and I thought if we could use this as some kind of,
like, accent light or something, that could actually
be pretty cool, especially when it comes to shelves
and that kind of thing. Although, I'm not sure
if the value is going to be there, but we'll get into that
in a minute too. So, the cord's pretty nice.
It has a nice texture and it's one of those flat,
thin cords. Looks like it's about six feet long
and it's just micro-USB to USB on the other end.
♪
[tape rustling]
♪
Alright, so, it works. It works as advertised,
it works well seemingly and one of the things
that they said that was, kind of, cool is that,
it's not going to put glare on your screen
and I didn't really notice much glare
on my screen either, and you can change
the colour temperature from cool to warm
so you can fight against eye fatigue and all of that stuff,
so, you know, just for the sake of reviewing
the product as, as intended, yeah. It works great,
the counterbalance is good, it sits on the monitor fine,
the construction seems, seems solid.
It's $99 and I don't know if $99 is worth it
for a lamp on top of your monitor. I think solely for,
like, a reading light, I think it might be a bit expensive,
because there's probably some, just some lamp
and alternatives you can do that, that are a lot cheaper
than that. But, the idea, I guess, that you can change
the colour temperature and stuff,
I mean you can't really get that. It's LED,
it's low power, you can power it off of USB,
which means you can use it with a laptop.
I guess those features you couldn't really have with,
like, a lamp or something but it is kind of expensive,
but LED video lights are also expensive.
So, if we can use it as, like, a cool replacement
for something in that kind of way or do cool effects,
then it might actually be a decent value at $99.
So, let's see if we can do some creative stuff
with it now, since, when it comes to desk lamps,
I don't know. What do I know?
Alright, so let's ditch this counterweight monitor
bracket thing for now. I do find it a little bit difficult to--
No, no I'm just stupid. It's easy, it comes out easy.
I, just, was doing it backwards. And then, I've got the,
the USB cable that it came with powered on
to just a USB power brick so that we can operate
the light, handheld, I guess, without having it
plugged in anything, but you can always plug this thing
into your like phone chargers, or whatever,
to plug it in the wall for continuous power
if you want it, but we'll just power it remotely
like this for now.
♪
Alright, well, I don't know. It's, kind of, cool, I guess.
I was comparing it in my head to some
of the other LED panels that I have from Aputure
and that kind of thing, and I think it's, kind of, neat.
And, price wise, when you're in that space,
it's not so crazy to say that it's $99.
What I think it could really be used for is accent lighting
in sets, maybe using a little bit of, like, supporting light.
Not so much as a practical, I think that when you can see
it looks a little bit bizarre, but maybe you could,
like, hide it behind something, kind of like a more powerful
version of, like, strip lighting or something like that.
I think that there could be some ways to play with it
in that regard with the shape. The colour temperature range
is okay. It runs from, sort of, like a daylight to tungsten
kind of range, like that, but you don't know exactly
what temperature you're setting it on
because there's no readout for that, so you know, balancing it,
you'll have to, kind of, do it by eye. So, it's obviously
not intended perfectly to be a video light, but I think
you can kind of play with it around a little bit and maybe,
maybe get it to work for you in kind of a neat way.
I was doing some photos back there that I thought,
because you can make, kind of, cool shapes with it,
almost like barn doors. You know, you can, can get
a hard shadow in, sort of, a strip, but that'll depend
on how close and far away you get it. You're going to
have to get pretty close in order to cut the angle
that you want, but then it might get in the shot,
but there's definitely some neat, like product stuff
that you can do with it, but you might need some stooge
to hold it for you. I don't know, I don't know
what I'm doing here. I got it set up there, kind of,
like a split spotlight now, almost looks like it's coming
out of the China ball. It's kind of cool. I like lights,
I like doing funky things with lights, so for me,
it's kind of a cool product that way. One other thing
that it might be good for, rather than reading and writing
is that it might be good for people that don't have
backlit keyboards, who have trouble seeing their keyboards
at night but want to keep a darker environment,
you could use this thing to, kind of, light up
your keyboard, so you can see what you're typing
a little bit better. I've got some products shots
I have to do a little bit later today, so maybe I'll play around
with the light there and see if I can come up with
some cool stuff. If you're not following me on Instagram,
follow me there and you can see the results of me
using this light and see how it worked in the photos
if you're trying to come up with groovy stuff yourself.
Anyway, that's going to be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful or at least entertaining,
and if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already,
but if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice. Alright. I'm done.
[upbeat techno music]
♪