BenQ already made my favorite desk lamps, but their ScreenBar is the best thing I didn’t know I needed this year.
Like the rest of their lamps, the ScreenBar is an e-Reading light, designed to be used with a monitor as well as pen and paper, and provide directional light that automatically adjusts to “just the right amount”, 500 Lux, with no accompanying glare. As you’d expect, the temperature is also fully adjustable.
If saving real estate on your desk and saving your eyes wasn’t enough, the ScreenBar’s installation is a delight all around, because there isn’t any. The bar sits atop your monitor, held in place by a counterweight, and it’s powered by USB, and I had no issue “installing” it on a curved ultra wide. Anyone with a monitor-mounted or monitor-integrated webcam might have to get creative, but otherwise you’re golden.
It’s annoying that the ScreenBar’s auto function doesn’t remember your manually chosen color temperature, and capacitive buttons still suck, but otherwise the ScreenBar is the first entry in a category that should become standard.