BenQ ScreenBar review: the original monitor light bar, its 1–3 cm clamp, and the 5 W it runs on

Verdict

What it is

What it lights

The bar’s optics are asymmetric: light goes forward and down, not back towards the screen. The result is a lit rectangle of 60 × 30 cm in front of the monitor — the keyboard, the mouse, the near edge of the desk — at 500 lux, the level commonly used for office work, and a screen with no reflection on it. The HSE’s display-screen guidance asks for lighting that avoids glare and reflections on the screen; a light bar solves that by design rather than by placement.

What it does not light is just as clear. Paper beside the keyboard, a notebook to one side, a bookshelf behind, your face for a video call: none of these is in the 60 × 30 cm patch. If your desk work includes any of them, a desk lamp does what a bar cannot, and our light-bar-versus-lamp comparison sets out the trade in detail.

Auto-dimming and colour

The ambient sensor is the feature that makes the bar disappear in use. As daylight fades, it raises the output to hold 500 lux on the desk; as the morning brightens, it backs off. Set it once and stop thinking about it. The fifteen levels and the eight colour temperatures, from a warm 2700 K to a cool 6500 K, are there for when you want to override it: cool white in the afternoon, warm in the evening. The Ra ≥ 95 colour rendering means colours on paper and objects on the desk look as they should, which matters to anyone matching fabric or checking a print.

The clamp: check this first

BenQ specifies the original ScreenBar for monitors 1 to 3 cm thick at the top, flat or curved. Many monitors sold now are thinner than 1 cm at the top edge, and some gaming and older office monitors are thicker than 3 cm. A strongly curved monitor may also sit poorly under a straight 45 cm bar. Measure your monitor’s top edge with a ruler before buying.

There is also no version for a laptop. The clamp needs a monitor’s rigid top edge; a laptop lid is thinner, hinged and at the wrong height. For a laptop-only desk, a lamp or a monitor on a stand is the answer.

Power and the cable

At 5 W from USB, the bar needs no mains socket, which on a desk with a full socket strip is half its appeal. Plug it into the monitor’s own USB-A port and the 1.5 m cable disappears behind the stand. One catch: many monitors cut power to their USB ports when they sleep, which turns the bar off with the screen. For some that is a feature; for anyone who reads at the desk after the screen sleeps, a small USB wall charger keeps it on.

The weight figure

BenQ gives 0.53 kg as the net weight; the listing says 800 g, and BenQ’s gross weight with packaging is 0.94 kg. We use BenQ’s net figure and record the conflict. Whichever figure you read, it is light enough that a monitor stand does not notice it.

Against the Halo 2

We reviewed BenQ’s ScreenBar Halo 2 separately. It adds a backlight that washes the wall behind the monitor — easing the contrast between a bright screen and a dark room — a wireless controller, and a much wider clamp of 0.43 to 6 cm with stated curved-screen support from 1000R to 1800R, at 15 W, three times the original’s figure, from a 5 V 3 A USB-C source such as a phone charger rather than a monitor’s port. The original is the simpler, narrower tool: if your monitor fits and your room has some other light in the evening, it does the essential job.

Who should buy it

• A monitor 1 to 3 cm thick on a shallow desk, where a lamp would take space the desk does not have.
• Screen-only work into the evening in a room with some ambient light.
• A work laptop docked to a monitor, with the bar powered from the monitor’s USB port.

Who should not

• A laptop-only desk. It cannot mount on a laptop; buy a lamp.
• Thin or strongly curved monitors. Outside BenQ’s 1–3 cm clamp; the Halo 2 takes 0.43 to 6 cm.
• A dark room in the evening. The bar lights the desk, not the room; the Halo 2’s backlight or a lamp bounced off the wall does.
• Paper, notebooks and video calls. A desk lamp lights what you aim it at.

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