Geek Review: BenQ WiT Eye-Care Smart Desk Lamp

When is a lamp more than a desk accessory? As its name suggests, the BenQ WiT Eye-Care Smart Desk Lamp isn’t your regular desk lamp, also because you’ll need a huge table for it. Desk lamps are typically small and lightweight, and don’t take up much space, much like the hopping desk lamp found in Pixar’s logo. Instead, the WiT Eye-Care Desk Lamp is big and heavy, almost like an extended robot limb of GLaDOS of Portal fame. It has a wide 90cm dual LED light source, which also provides a wider coverage compared to most traditional desk lamps.

With a gross weight of 5.8kg (3.3kg for the base itself), and measuring 59 x 22 x 62.5 cm, this is a lamp with a satisfying heft to it, though it’s not like you’ll be carrying it anywhere. The coverage and size makes the WiT Eye-Care Desk Lamp more suitable for those with big desks, like the Omnidesk, where everything on the large table will be illuminated nicely.

This doesn’t mean that the WiT Eye-Care Desk Lamp is rigid though, because while it can be fitted with either a heavy base for easy placement, or a clamp where the set-up can be suitably planted in a single spot, it also comes with a ball joint and hinges, which allows it to be stretched and bent, to provide lighting from a variety of angles. It does take a bit of elbow grease to make the adjustments, but after that, the lamp is able to provide great lighting in just the right way whether it’s for reading, writing, playing video games or simply illuminating parts of the desk.

The first thing that BenQ correctly identified is that what’s important here isn’t portability, but adjustability. Being lightweight is pointless when users can’t tweak the lighting to best suit their needs. The WiT Eye-Care Desk Lamp has two modes, one for book-reading, and another for screen-reading. The latter gives the lamp a lower brightness in the middle of the LED to account for the light emission coming from a screen. Also, brightness and colour temperature can be finetuned using the knob. The lamp also has auto-dimming that optimises the brightness depending on ambient lighting conditions. The attention and care given to the lighting options are plain to see. For users who are particular and sensitive about the quality of their desk lighting, the WiT Eye-Care Desk Lamp is not going to disappoint. Too bright? Just turn it down a tad. Too warm? That’s easily resolved as well. 

Unfortunately, the much-appreciated options come in unintuitive controls. The lamp is turned on and off by touching a metal ring near the LED. It seems cool at first glance, but it’s easy to end up grazing it accidentally while adjusting the lamp or moving things around one’s desk.

To switch between book-reading and screen-reading mode, the user also needs to touch the metal ring for two seconds. When the indicator light is orange, it’s in book-reading mode, and when it’s green, it’s in screen-reading mode. Again, not only is the touch and hold method unintuitive, it is easy to forget which mode the lamp is in given how each mode is arbitrarily assigned a colour. The awkwardness of the controls also means that users are likely to just stick to a single mode no matter what they do due to the sheer convenience of not having to mess with it.

When it comes to the colour temperature and brightness, the controls fare better due to it being a knob. Still, having to press the knob to switch between adjusting brightness and colour temperature can be a bit finicky, as users will inevitably end up changing the brightness when they want to change the colour temperature and vice versa every so often.

The WiT Eye-Care Desk Lamp sacrificed intuitive controls (instead of adding a few buttons and another knob, for example) for a cleaner, more minimalist aesthetic, which is a bit of a shame. It not only introduces a learning curve to using a desk lamp, it also discourages users from making full use of the options packed into the lighting.

However, if one gets over this initial learning curve, the WiT Eye-Care Desk Lamp really leaves nothing more to be desired. It illuminates well, has lighting options to suit users’ needs, and has wide coverage with adjustable angles. Its heft may not be for those who are strapped for space, but other than that, as a desk lighting solution, it’s one of the best options out there.

While the price of S$349 may be a bit of an investment, the lamp’s aluminium alloy and zinc alloy build is durable, and in the long run, this is a lamp that can spare your eyes from a lot of strain and fatigue.

The BenQ WiT Eye-Care Smart Desk Lamp is available now on Amazon (Worldwide), Lazada (Singapore) and Shopee (Singapore).