Review: BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 monitor light bar

Review unit provided by BenQ Singapore

The BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 is a desktop monitor light bar designed to prevent eye fatigue when you're working in a dark room. Retail price is Singapore is SGD 289 but you can get it at a lower price on Shopee SG and Lazada SG.

What you get in the box would be the light bar, a web cam mount, wireless remote, USB-C charger and a user manual.

The wireless remote included has excellent build quality with the metal rotating ring. There's an internal battery that can be charged with USB-C. The remote is already paired with the light bar out of the box, but if that's not so you can read the user manual on how to pair.

The remote provides controls for

• Colour temperature from 2700 warm to 6500 day light
• Brightness from 1 to 100%
• Enable or disable the front and/or back light
• Power off, pairing
• Save your favourite setting
• Auto setting
• Proximity sensor

Just tap on the touch sensitive control panel, and turn the dial to adjust settings. The dial allows for very fine adjustments, e.g. 1% brightness or 25K colour temperature at a time.

Setup is straightforward. You just mount the light bar on top your monitor. This unfortunately does not work with a monitor hood.

When you look at your monitor and the surrounding is just dark, the contrast can make your eyes tired, and that's certainly not good for your eyes.

The light bar is designed to create a sphere of light around your monitor. There's a back light for lighting the back wall behind the monitor. This makes the area around your monitor brighter, or as bright as the display, and this prevents eye fatigue, and this works surprisingly well.

Shown above is the maximum light setting. The light bar has an attached USB-C cable to power source, and will draw up to 15W at maximum brightness. You do not need to use the included USB-C charger but you need a charger that can provide at least 20W of power. 15W of brightness should also give you an idea to how bright the light bar can be -- it can be very bright.

The minimum brightness is brighter than I expected, but low enough for me to want to increase the brightness further.

This is how the warm light looks. You can select either the front and back light to adjust each light separately, or select both to adjust them together.

If you're someone who likes to work in a dark room and don't want to switch on your room lights, this light bar is gonna work best for you since it will only light up a localised area, the front of your desk and back of the monitor. The light bar can be adjusted slightly to light more or less of the desk. The LED light bulbs are not visible to the eyes.

I've not tested monitor light bars from other brands so I cannot say how BenQ's offering compares to competitor. All I can say is this light bar works very effectively and does it job well. And looks pretty good too without getting in the way.

Availability

The BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 can be purchased from BenQ online store, Shopee SG and Lazada SG.