Good overhead lighting does a lot to illuminate a workspace. Problem is, there are some tasks you will need to do that will be best served with a more focused light – one that you can adjust according to whatever the task requires. When fiddling with circuit boards, for instance, you’ll want to move the light as low and direct as possible to illuminate all the tiny nooks and crannies. When your eyes are starting to get tired, on the other hand, illuminating the area around the monitor can reduce the contrast between the backlit display and the surrounding environment, which should help relax the eyes by letting you maintain a consistent focal perspective.
Ideally, you’ll want a lamp that offers as many adjustments as possible. From warmth and brightness to height and intensity, being able to adjust as many things as possible will help you tailor a desk lamp’s illumination to each task’s unique requirements.
These desk lamps should make for great workspace illumination.
TaoTronics LED Desk Lamp with USB Charging Port
You just want the bare basics: a reasonably bright desk lamp with a fair amount of adjustability at an economical price. Look no further than this TaoTronics model, which offers seven brightness settings, five color temperatures, and 530 lumens of maximum brightness. It’s a great lamp for working on a laptop, as it’s wide enough to illuminate the area surrounding most laptop’s monitors, making the screen feel a lot easier on the eyes. There are also a fair amount of positioning options, with the base able to swivel a full 180 degrees, the arm able to tilt forward up to 40 degrees, and the head able to tilt up to 140 degrees. Not to mention, you can easily move it to another part of the desk when needed. Features capacitive controls, a USB charging port, and a memory function that remembers your last brightness and temperature setting.
OttLite Dual Head Desk Lamp
This desk lamp comes with two heads, each with its own separate LED lighting array, with a design that allows you to combine them for concentrated lighting or line them up for wider coverage. The neck holding the heads is flexible, too, allowing you to tilt it various angles. While you can’t control the LEDs on each head separately, as it only has one set of controls on the base, it does offer five brightness settings and three temperature modes, so you do get a handful of lighting options. Maximum brightness is 300 lumens, so it’s not the brightest desk lamp. If you want something that takes up minimal space while being lightweight and affordable, though, this definitely does the trick. Oh yeah, the base integrates as a Bluetooth speaker and as a USB charging port, in case you need either one in a pinch.
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KableRika LED Desk Lamp
This desk lamp has an 18.1-inch wide head that allows it to shine its illumination on a good chunk of most desks, making it viable for use even with dual-monitor setups. It’s set at a fixed height, which is tall enough to accommodate a 32-inch monitor under the head, as well as a fixed 45-degree angle for the head. There is room for positional adjustment, as it uses a flexible neck that can be bent in any direction, so you can tilt it forward when needed. However, the lamp’s design is really optimized for illuminating the area surrounding the monitors to minimize eye strain, which is what we love about it. It’s bright, too, delivering 700 lumens of brightness, with a stepless adjustment that lets you set it anywhere between 15 percent to 100 percent brightness, as well as any of six color temperature modes. If there’s anything to complain about, it’s the visible cable at the back of the head, which ruins the aesthetic a fair amount. We’ll take it, though, as it’s a really well-designed lamp at a reasonable price with none of the unnecessary gimmicks far too common in the category.
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NeatFi 3,500 Lumens LED Task Lamp
This clamp-mounted LED lamp has a 26-inch wide head equipped with 270 individual SMD LEDs, allowing you to cover a generous amount of desk space with bright illumination. It’s very bright, delivering a powerful 3,500 lumens, although it only offers four brightness settings (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%), so you can’t dial it down in a more granular level. A few settings are also offered for the color temperature, with the option to go anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000K, so you can keep it warm for more casual desk work or cool for more intense productive tasks. Unlike most lamps in this list, this one is designed to clamp to the edge of the desk for optimal use of desk space, with a pair of joints on the arm and a jointed head allowing for plenty of positioning options.
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BenQ eReading Lamp
While it’s far from the most economical desk lamp option out there, this unique-looking arc-headed lamp brings some really unique features that justify its price. Equipped with 36 LEDs evenly spread across the curved head, it can illuminate any office desk from end to end, beaming a light that, the outfit claims, is 150 percent wider than most standard desk lamps, making it ideal for multi-monitor setups. It can be set to any of 23 brightness settings ranging anywhere from 250 to 1,000 lumens (yes, it can very, very bright), while the color temperature offers 13 levels of adjustments, from warm tones ideal for casual reading and cool tones for performing more intense tasks. It even has an auto-dimming feature can automatically adjust the brightness on the fly to suit the ambient lighting in the room.
The lamp has three jointed sections, with the arms able to move it up, down, forwards, and backwards, while the head is able to pan, allowing you a fair amount of positioning options. While it comes with a desk stand, it’s also designed to work with an optional floor stand and an optional desk clamp.
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Dyson Lightcycle Morph Desk
If you’re willing to spend good money for arguably the most tech-heavy desk lamp there is, then the Lightcycle Morph just might make the cut as your office lighting of choice. It’s not the brightest, delivering just 850 lumens, but makes up for it with a unique functionality that automatically adapts the brightness and color temperature depending on your age, task, mood, and time of day to maintain perfect illumination in the space. Those adjustments happen every 60 seconds, too, so it literally performs changes on the fly, ensuring it minimizes any chances of eye strain from too much lighting contrast in your environment. Oh yeah, that 850 lumens is plenty bright for most office tasks – brighter isn’t necessarily better, especially for computer-based work.
Being a Dyson product, this is really well-designed. While the height is fixed, it does allow you to pan the light towards any direction, with the option to twist the head to face any angle, including upwards, sideways, and more. You can even fold the top arm so that the head aligns with the vertical arm, which turns it into a gorgeous ambient light.