This is the new Screenbar Pro from BenQ. It’s a light that attaches to the top of your monitor, illuminating your desk, and enabling you to work, draw, paint, whatever you want, at your desk. I’ve had this attached to my monitor for the last few weeks and here are my thoughts.

The screen bar comes in two finishes, black or white & silver, and we received the latter. It’s sleek, it’s minimalist in design and it looks very clean when attached to the top of your monitor. Size-wise, it’s 50cm long and it’s compatible with any monitor (apart from those fat back CRT ones but who use them nowadays). I reckon any monitor 24” and greater, will look great. BenQ does state that the bar is compatible with monitors that are 0.4cm to 6.5cm thick, and have curvature of 1000 to 1800R. Back to design, it’s got this flexible, rubber-toothed mounting clamp to the rear, that sits onto and behind your monitor, keeping it in place, although in terms of security, it’s not great but more on that later. The front section, the actual linear light does rotate ever so slightly, which allows you to direct the light onto your desk more than your screen, if preferred. To the front and top of the bar, are the controls, which are touch sensitive. It’s hardwired with a USB C cable, which is 180cm long and can be plugged directly into your PC to power it, or a power brick, which is provided in the box and then into your plug socket. 

In terms of specifications and features, it can potentially output up to 1000lux, from the centre of the bar, which is a lot, far too much for day-to-day work but you can dim it down. Guides in the UK state a lux level of around 500lux for a desk environment when working. Lux is the amount of illumination on any given surface, be it the floor or a desk. It uses LED’s, several individual chips, lined up next to each other, covered by an asymmetric optic to help reduce glare. Colour temperature can be adjusted from a warm white of 2700 kelvin to a cool white of 6500 kelvin. Day to day, you want to be around the 3000 to 4000k in my opinion. Brightness, there is flexibility there with 16 levels which should be more than enough. Colour rendering, is the way the light represents colours in their true form, which is a measurement nowadays. Typically, you will see lights offering RF of 80, which is good, but the screen bar hits RF96, which is even better and will provide you with near on perfect colour representation of items on your desk. Keep this plugged in, and powered and the sensor on the underside of the bar will detect you and automatically turn on when it senses you, or off after five minutes. This sensor will pick up movement from around 60cm away. 

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As for performance, I think it’s very good. The presence sensor is great, I can walk upto my desk and it will automatically turn on. The auto setting does it all for you and that’s typically the setting I used the most. However, you have to press the auto button for it to set itself. So if you’re environment changes, i.e. it gets darker or brighter, the screen bar won’t change anything unless you press the auto button again. So does automatically adjust to suit the environment but won’t automatically do it, if that makes sense. When it does sense the environment and set itself, you can see the indicator notches to adjust to suit, so you can see what it’s adjusted itself to.   

Colour temperature, 8 stages in total, starting from warm white through to cool white. Each increment is shown via a little indicator light notch on the bar, so it’s quite easy to see what level you’re at. Brightness is similar, although there are two increments per notch, so in effect 16 increments, which does offer more flexibility. The colour temperature is good, I generally kept it mid-way through the notches, so 3 or 4k, then brightness, I would set per the task I was doing on the desk. When just using my PC generally, or while gaming of the evening, I stuck with the auto setting but when I wanted to mark up some drawings for work, I’d come out of auto, tilt the light towards the desk and up the brightness and colour to suit. I eventually saved that option as a favourite. 

Yes, there is a favourite button which is handy. Basically, you adjust the light to suit, colour temp and brightness, then hold down the heart button. All the buttons will flash, indicating that the setting has been stored and bingo. Press that button at any time, and that profile with turn on.

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As mentioned before, the controls are touch-sensitive and they work ok. They’re easy to see or find but in some instances, I had to press multiple times to register a command. Whether I wasn’t tapping on the right spot, although the buttons were clearly marked or I wasn’t firm enough, but then tap too hard and the screenbar moved. Buttons include on/off, presence detection on/off, auto-dimming mode, favourite mode, plus colour temperature and brightness up & down. 

How secure the screenbar is and how it fits onto the monitor, is ok but it’s not completely secure. If you knock the screenbar or monitor, it will likely move and potentially change angle or position. It won’t fall off, I’m fairly sure of that but me moving around, going above the monitor to the shelf, I did knock it and I had to reposition it back into place. It’s not a deal breaker by any means and I’m not sure how much more BenQ could do to secure it. The clamp is restrictive, with a good spring back, plus rubber notches too but I did knock it and thought I’d mention it. 

In terms of price, this retails at £119 here in the UK and I’m going to say BenQ are the go to for monitor lights, screenbars. The others I’ve seen can’t compete, so yeah potentially a premium therefor having one of the better lights, if not the best and worth it. Desk space is actually at a premium nowadays and to remove the need for a desk lamp, replacing that space with something else and having the light on top of your monitor, that’s a big bonus in my opinion. 

Overall, a sleek, discrete, versatile and well-performing monitor light. Now that I’ve used this, chances are I won’t want to go back to a time when I didn’t have it. 

For more info, head over to the official BenQ website.