When it comes to eye care, making sure that your setup is adequately lit can be beneficial, especially considering the move towards working from home instead of office settings in dark evenings and seasons. This is where the Baseus monitor light bar comes in. Continuously stressing your eyes to gaze at a screen that is inadequately lighted can affect your general sensitivity to light.
This can create tension headaches, blurred vision, and an overall intolerance to light. If you find that you are staying up late and burning the midnight oil, you should definitely consider changing your setup to incorporate a monitor light. Even though a wide variety of offerings are available on the market, Baseus has developed a straightforward solution for monitor lighting that won’t strain your wallet.
This light bar is a space-saving device that can be placed on top of your monitor or computer, making it an alternative to the more well-known brands. Following several months of hands-on usage with the Baseus Monitor Light Bar, I put it through several tests to see how it compares to its more costly competitors and whether or not it makes a substantial difference in comparison to the standard desk light.
Key Takeaways
- The Baseus monitor light bar is an affordable and high-quality lighting solution designed to reduce eye strain with adjustable brightness and color temperatures. Its sleek, durable aluminum design and user-friendly touch controls make it a stylish and practical addition to any workspace.
- You should buy the Baseus monitor light bar if you need an affordable, high-quality monitor light with adjustable brightness and color temperatures and a sleek, space-saving design that reduces eye strain.
- You should not buy the Baseus monitor light bar if you require advanced features like auto-brightness adjustments, a smaller or thinner monitor that may not support its weight, compatibility with curved displays, and extensive color customization.
Here are the specifications:
| Brand | Baseus |
| Material | Aluminum alloy+PC+ABS |
| Voltage | 5V |
| Power | 5W (maximum) |
| Light source | LED |
| Light color | 2800K-4000K-5500K |
| LED quantity | 80Pcs |
| Color rendering index | 80 |
| Lumen value | 160lm |
| Product size | 450 x 66 x 92mm |
| Weight | 480 grams |
How Is The Baseus Monitor Light Bar Different?
At a budget-friendly price, it rivals more expensive options like the BenQ Screenbar, which offers features such as auto-dimming and advanced ambient light sensing. On the other hand, the Baseus light bar, while lacking these high-end features, provides a robust and stylish design with adjustable color temperatures and brightness, making it a solid choice for budget-conscious consumers. Overall, its simple yet effective design makes it particularly appealing for those looking for an affordable yet functional solution.
Packaging and Unboxing
The light is secured by a foam insert and packaged inside a vacuum-formed plastic sleeve. The packaging is not very noteworthy, but the light itself is protected. Both the USB power cord and the user instructions are provided in their own individual boxes, and you are also given plenty of cute stickers.
What’s included in the box:
- Screen hanging light x 1
- USB power cable (1.5m) x 1
- Manual x1
Design
The matte black aluminum finish gives the monitor light bar a surprisingly high-end feel, and the slim and low-profile design helps to keep your setup stylish. I am quite satisfied with the light bar’s appearance and look, especially considering that it is only available for purchase at $37.99.
The fact that it is discrete enough to sit above the top of your screen without becoming too much of a nuisance indicates that it will not seem out of harmony with your setup. This gives you a decent sense of how the bar will fit on your monitor size since the bar measures about 18 inches (450mm). With this, I could clamp the bar on my monitor, which was 24 inches in size, without any problems.
Moreover, it is quite straightforward to use through the USB-C cable connection. The cable provided is 1.5 meters long, which is sufficient for plugging it in. The cable can be easily tucked away behind the back of the light. Flawlessly, it connects directly to a USB port on either your computer or monitor, and it can also be plugged into a USB hub, which is easily reachable.
Build Quality
Aluminum serves as the construction material for the Baseus monitor light bar. The bar has a solid construction and is durable. This robust bar gives the impression that it is built to withstand use for a long time. Both the clamp and the fitting come up with two articulated points, which will allow you to adjust the angle of the light and its location on the screen to your preference. You can easily adjust the light bar according to your specific preference by moving it up and down in elevation.
Because of this, I could place the light at the angle that I wanted for my setup, which can be an important convenience for users using a curved display. Notably, the clamp is suitable for use with various screens, with thicknesses ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 inches. With an extra layer of silicone, this clamp will protect your monitor from any potential damage. Overall, they came up with a device that is not only of really good quality but also incredibly easy to clamp onto your display.
Control Scheme
A small touch panel controls the light bar on the right side of the device. The first button turns the light bar on or off, the second adjusts the color temperature, and the third adjusts the brightness. In my rush to turn on the monitor light and get it to function, I originally believed that the button that controls the brightness was either faulty or did not react to my touch.
However, it was easy to fix with a quick look at the instruction manual. To change the brightness, you just have to keep the button pressed for a brief amount of time. Overall, the entire design is pleasing to the eye and the touch, and the controls are easy to use, making it possible for even the least tech-savvy office workers to use them.
Light Settings
Although the Baseus Monitor Light Bar does not have a very extensive feature set, it does include all of the quality-of-life aspects that you would expect in a monitor light bar and even in lights in general. It comes with three different types of lights: a warmer light with a 2800k color temperature, a whiter hue with a 4000k color temperature, and a white LED light with a 5500k color temperature.
Changing the lighting to accommodate the changes in the amount of natural light that comes in throughout the day is quite straightforward. On days that were extremely cloudy, I found that it was quite helpful to keep the white option on merely to counteract the overall darkness. In the evenings, I would switch to the warm white mode.
Adjustable brightness also allows you to personalize the temperature of each individual light source, which is useful in situations when you find the light excessive or distracting. Notably, you can adjust the brightness anywhere from 5% to 100%. The color or brightness changes happen extremely quickly, and the device also has anti-blue light, which removes blue light that can harm our eyes.
Performance
A monitor light bar can be a simple upgrade to your home office workspace that can easily prevent issues related to insufficient light sources and lengthy screen usage. Although it is not a necessary investment for many gamers, the monitor light is a simple addition that can help prevent these problems. Additionally, the spread of the lighting is helpful for glowing your workspace, which is especially helpful if you are a designer drawing things out or even if you are just taking basic notes.
Regarding its functionality, the light functions just as you would expect it to, with only a small amount of unnecessary hassle.
Considering that I intend to get a suitable light for my home office setup for quite some time, the Baseus Monitor Light Bar is a good win-win situation for me.
My flat screen can accommodate it without any visible wobble or instability, and I am hopeful it will also accommodate curved displays.
The size of the light and the fitting becomes extremely readily apparent, and it is possible that it would weigh down smaller, thinner displays on certain laptops and Macs. Although you could definitely use this on a laptop screen, I would probably not recommend doing so. Although it would undoubtedly help brighten your keyboard, it will also be very noticeable.
Auto-brightness settings, which react to natural light as they vary throughout the day, are absent from this model, but you can get them with different models from competitor brands. Given the pricing range of the Baseus Monitor Light Bar, it is possible to live without this function even though it is a pleasant extra feature to have.
Should You Buy it?
Buy It If
✅ You want an affordable and high-quality lighting solution: At $37.99, the Baseus Monitor Light Bar offers excellent value, providing robust construction and effective lighting without breaking the bank.
✅ You need adjustable lighting options: With three color temperature settings (2800K, 4000K, 5500K) and adjustable brightness, this light bar allows you to tailor the lighting to your specific needs and time of day.
✅ You prefer a space-saving design: The slim, low-profile design sits discreetly on top of your monitor, saving valuable desk space and maintaining a tidy workspace.
✅ You appreciate user-friendly controls: The touch panel makes it easy to adjust the light bar’s settings, even for those who are not particularly tech-savvy.
Don’t Buy It If
❌ You need advanced features like auto-brightness: If you rely on features such as automatic brightness adjustments to match ambient light, the Baseus Monitor Light Bar might fall short of your expectations.
❌ Your monitor or laptop screen is small or thin: The weight of the light bar might be too much for smaller or thinner screens, potentially causing instability or damage.
❌ You require compatibility with curved displays: While it fits well on flat screens, its compatibility with curved monitors might be limited, affecting its stability and effectiveness.
❌ You need extensive color customization: If having a wider range of color temperatures and more precise control over the lighting hue is important, you might find this model lacking.
My Thoughts
The Baseus Monitor Light Bar offers a straightforward approach to lighting up your work area at an affordable and convenient price for your wallet. Those who want more light while working may find that it offers great value. It is an excellent option that can assist in keeping lighting in a certain area without requiring it to take up desk space, unlike the shining lights that you have to place all over your workplace.
Generally speaking, users who use this downward light have less strain and stress on their eyes, making it easier for them to see effectively at night or in situations with insufficient light. At this affordable price, a few features are absent, the most notable of which are automatic brightness adjustments and a wider range of color temperatures.
Despite this, a few other wonderful aspects of the Baseus Monitor Light Bar make it worthwhile. All things considered, it is an excellent monitor light bar if you are in the market for one. This is particularly true when considering the fact that competitors offer comparable options at almost twice the price with practically the same set of features.
Coming Next: Elgato Key Light MK.2 Review
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