This is a typical desk lamp and this is a monitor lamp. Now you might be thinking cool story,
what's the point? Well, I was on the same boat until I got the Xiaomi Light Bar. You see,
the problem with desk lamps is that they're too short and would obstruct the view of the monitor.
And if I move it off to the side, then I only get light on one side of my desk. Monitor lamps
solve this by sitting on top of the monitor so that it's not in the way and doesn't create
additional clutter. If I simply tried raising the desk lamp to the same height, then I get a lot of
glare from the LEDs and a lot of reflections off the monitor. And no matter how I angle it, it's
either gets too much glare or too much reflection because it's not designed for this height.
Now to understand why the light bar doesn't have the same problem, I actually ordered three monitor
lights from Banggood. They sent these in for free but didn't have any input on the video. So let's
take a look at how it works. Traditionally desk lamps have LEDs aimed directly down,
which creates a symmetrical lighting pattern. If you were to draw a center line,
then the light would be equally bright on both sides of the line.
Monitor lights are slightly different because the LEDs are not aimed directly down,
but at an angle. This creates an asymmetrical lighting pattern, where there's more light on
one side compared to the other. There's two advantages to this and the first one is that
it reduces reflections on the monitor and the second one is that it's able to concentrate
the light in front of the monitor so that it's brighter on the desk. Now some of the light does
reflect off of the dust on the screen but it's not really noticeable when the monitor is on.
Now that we know how monitor lights work let's take a look at how the design
impacts brightness. And this is where things get interesting because it means I get to experiment
with different setups. Let's start off with the baseline: I positioned the desk lamp at
the same height as my monitor, which is about 19 inches above my desk. Taking a light meter,
I was able to get 300 lux at the brightest part of my desk. If you want you can also try this
out at home it's about the same brightness as a 60 watt equivalent bulb at the same height. 300
lux is a standard brightness for reading and it's typically found in libraries and in classrooms.
Testing out the Xiaomi light, I was able to get 500 lux at the same height. This means light bars
are brighter than traditional desk lamps. But monitor lights do come with a few trade-offs.
The first is that they can't be used standalone and like their name implies requires a monitor.
The second is that because they use USB connection it doesn't have enough power to host additional
USB plugs. And lastly, you can't replace the bulbs if they burn out. Desk lamps like this makes it
easy to swap out for burnt out bulbs. If you also wanted to get a smart bulb you can do that too.
So now that we've seen the difference between monitor lights and desk lamps. What monitor light
should you buy well? I want to take a closer look at each one of these. The Xiaomi is most expensive
at $44. It comes with a light, a mounting stand, a single USB cable and a wireless dial.
The light comes in a round aluminum tube and the LEDs are covered with a frosted glass.
There's two pins on the back and they're used to power the light bar. As for the mounting system,
there's a magnetic groove for the monitor light. There's a front lip for hooking onto
the monitor and a solid metal back piece that helps balance everything. Assembled, this is
what everything looks like together. The light is controlled by the dial but I'll talk a bit more
about that later. As for the other two lights, the generic light bar is a lot cheaper at $27.
It doesn't have a name so I'll just call it generic light bar. Inside the box it comes with
a light, a stand, and a USB-C cable. The light itself is inside this hexagonal prism which is
also made out of aluminum. There's no frosted glass and the controls are on top with the power
connector behind it. The monitor mount is made out of plastic and uses a ball for stabilization.
At first the mount looks pretty cheap but it works surprisingly well.
The final one is a generic laptop light and it's the cheapest at $14. It comes with a light bar,
and a carrying bag. The light bar itself is made out of plastic so it's lightweight. It uses a
clip system with a cutout for the webcam. Everything is attached together as a single
unit and you can't really take it apart. The controller itself is built right into the cable.
As for power consumption all three lights are able to run off of USB. At max brightness the
Xiaomi uses 5 watts but computer USBs only supply 2.5W, which means you'll need an external power
supply to get the most out of your light. The generic light bar uses less power at 3.1W,
but it can still benefit from an external power supply. The light will still work if
you want to use a computer USB but it will be dimmer. The laptop light bar uses only 1.6W,
which means it can be powered by computer USBs.
As for controls, each monitor light has a different control system.
My favorite is the Xiaomi remote dial. It takes in two AAA batteries and it's really intuitive. Press
to turn on and off, rotate for brightness, press and rotate for color temperature.
There's also a shortcut to change the brightness to 50% if you press and hold. There's a total
of 15 steps for brightness and 6 steps for color temperature. The reason why I like this the best
is because everything can be within arm's reach. And the wireless dial provides a nice clean look.
I do get connection issues sometimes like when the tap doesn't register, but that just means I need
to hit the thing twice. As for the generic light bar, the touch interface works well and I find
it to be more consistent than the Xiaomi dial. The only downside is that I have to reach up to change
anything and to me it's quite annoying because my monitor is a little bit further than arm's length.
There's a total of 9 steps for brightness and 3 color temperatures. Initially I was concerned if
the light bar would shift when I tap it but I'm pretty happy to report that this hasn't happened.
The light bar feels very solid and the interface is also very consistent. As for the laptop
light bar the interface is also very consistent. Having the controller built into the cable means
everything is within arm's reach but it also means that it's not as clean as having the remote or
having everything built into the light bar. Really it's not much of an issue just me nitpicking.
As for mounting systems the Xiaomi uses this hinge-like mount and it feels very solid but
it also feels like it's designed by two different people. The top is made out of plastic with hard
and very sharp corners. Personally, I find that the sharp corners poke me so I would
have preferred seeing rounded edges and corners instead. Contrasting this is the bottom which is a
solid chunk of metal with rounded corners. Inside we have this rubber texture to protect and grip
the monitor. The light attaches to the mount using magnets, and it turns on when it's contacting the
mount. There's a total of 25 degrees of rotation as shown in the manual. Now if you want to get
creative and mount this thing upside down, it will still mount but the lights won't turn on.
Personally I found the mount to be very limiting because it only works on monitors between 1.5in
and 1.25in thick. This means it doesn't fit monitors that are too thick or too thin.
And also because the USB-C connector is integrated into the mount, the light requires
to be mounted in order to work. Now as for the generic light bar, the USB connector is built
into the light bar itself so that means it's able to run independently. The monitor mount
is made out of plastic and the light snaps into the mount. The light feels very secure
and doesn't wiggle when I tap the buttons. There's a ball on the back that's used as
a counter balance. The maximum width is 1.75in thick, which is much better than Xiaomi's 1.25in.
To me this mount is more functional because it's compatible with a lot more monitors and
the range of motion is also a lot better. As for the laptop light bar it uses this clip design
and is extremely lightweight. This makes sense because if I tried using the full size monitor
light, then the laptop goes off balance. Because everything is attached, it's all just one piece.
The clip does have a cutout for the webcam but because most webcams use wide angle cameras the
monitor light does get in the way. The light is really bright when it shines onto the keyboard
but to me it's not super useful. And if I wanted something like that then I'd just get a desk lamp.
Now that we've gone through all the monitor lights and the features let's talk a bit about
my thoughts. I've been using these light bars over the past month and I find them to be a huge
improvement over desk lamps. They're brighter, they reduce clutter and they provide a modern
aesthetic. The Xiaomi is the most premium out of the three and I'm a big fan of the wireless
remote. If there was a way to combine the Xiaomi remote with the mount on the generic light bar
then that would be the ideal product. But if I had to choose, I guess I'd pick the Xiaomi
as my top choice and the generic light bar as a second, if the Xiaomi didn't fit. I'd avoid
getting the laptop light bar because it's not very useful. It gets in the way of the webcam
and there's no real advantage over traditional desk lamps. If you're thinking of getting
monitor lights, I've provided a few links in the description below. The ones that I've shown are
all designed for flat monitors but there's also ones that are dedicated to curve monitors as well.
Alright that's it thanks for watching like and subscribe