MobileTechTalk OK, you’ve probably got us on a technicality here. This isn’t “mobile” as such, but you can move it so hah! Either way, Aukey are a company who deliver a whole load of mobile technology related gadgets and peripherals so it’s only right we shed some light (!) on the products from them that just scrape into our remit. We’re looking at the Aukey Desk Lamp in our full review. Read on to be further illuminated (OK, we’ll stop).
Most people who have any ongoing utilisation of technology and gadgets have heard of Aukey. They are perhaps best known for their portable power banks and Bluetooth speaker offerings, but they have more to their armoury. Cables, keyboards, action cameras and even aroma diffusers are all available from Aukey on Amazon. Today though we’re looking at their Desk Lamp.
The unit itself is incredibly minimalist. A tall craning metallic arm is offset by a glossy plastic base and a matte plastic light piece, with the LED light structure then sits within the centre of the matte black casing.
In the box are:
- LED Light
- AC Adapter
- User guide
Quite sparse but it’s a light; it doesn’t require too much in the way of explanation or accessories.
Aukey have gone for simplicity here and haven’t looked to deliver anything too out of the ordinary. With their background in peripherals it’s a shame that we haven’t seen any built-in Qi wireless charging in the base, or full RGB control over the LED lights via Bluetooth or WiFi. With that out of the way, what Aukey have done is delivered a quality and minimalist LED lamp.
The head of the lamp has a 180 degree angle of vertical movement with 270 degrees of lateral pivot. The height of the arm is static however and therefore the height can only be adjusted manually by placement and by utilising the vertical and pivot movements available to create the require lighting. That’s not a show stopper but we’d have liked to have seen some height adjustment to deal with different working conditions.
Powering the unit is a simple case of plugging in the AC adapter which thankfully has a rather small and well hidden plug, and then hitting the On/Off capacitive button on the base. The unit has 3 separate lighting modes; cold light, natural light and warm light. These flow, as the eye sees, from brilliant white to yellow, and can be adjusted further by using the Up and Down buttons on the base to move through the 5 built-in brightness levels.
The desk lamp does get sufficiently bright and has quite a nice carry distance, although we’d suggest placing this at the back of the desk, centred if at all possible so as to make the most of the pivot capabilities. In our testing we had the lamp on the far right (and left) of our standard 150cm wide desk, and whilst the light could carry the entire width, it did mean that the light would have to shine directly at the desk rather than fall upon it subtly had the lamp been allowed to extend another 25cm higher for example.
The colour options are interesting. We personally only ever used the cold light mode, but we can see why the warm light (aka night mode) might be useful for those wishing to read by this light. The warm light is a very yellow hue but it’s still bright enough to get work done.
The Aukey Desk Lamp is a nice product and it comes in at a great price for a desk peripheral; £29.99. What it doesn’t do though is blow our socks off. There isn’t a standout feature that would make us recommend this over any other number of desk lamps and that’s unfortunate.
The build here is quality for the price point and it does what it does well. As mentioned in the main body however we’d have expected Aukey to utilise some of the technology they sell elsewhere in their catalogue, here, and deliver some USB ports, wireless charging, or indeed height adjustment. That product does exist from other vendors, and in the same ballpark price-wise so we’re at a loss as to why Aukey didn’t look at integrating some of this.
That aside, this is a strong LED lamp with a versatile vertical and lateral pivot mechanism and it gets plenty bright. After something to fit in aesthetically with your office or reading snug? Give it a look!
Aukey Desk Lamp
£29.99
Pros
- Minimlist design
- Capacitive touch buttons work well
- Bright enough
- Good pivot range
Cons
- Lack of more technology
- No height adjustment
One comment
Pingback: Bestek LED Desk Lamp: Great Value - MobileTechTalk