From reduced eye strain and fatigue to enhanced mood and productivity, good lighting offers many benefits. Although there are less expensive options, the BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 makes a compelling case as being the best monitor-mounted lighting solution for your desk.

Compatibility

Flat/Curved monitors 0.17 – 2.36 inches

Type

Dual color LED

Power Input

USB-C, 5V/3A

Brightness

Center illuminance 1000lux

This premium monitor light is fantastic for dim workspaces, but its price may make less expensive options a better fit.

Pros & Cons

• Provides wide front and rear desktop lighting where needed
• Motion detection for hands-free use
• Auto-dimming works well
• Wireless controller

• No USB-C cable to charge the wireless controller
• No RGB color lighting options
• Wireless controller is sluggish to wake
• Wireless controller attracts fingerprints

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Price and Availability

The BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 monitor light is available from Amazon or direct from BenQ for $180. In the box is the ScreenBar Halo 2 lamp with attached USB-C power cord, USB-C AC power adapter, wireless controller, webcam accessory with extra adhesive, and paperwork.

Premium Design and Hardware and an Easy Setup

The ScreenBar Halo 2 is primarily made of an aluminum alloy with rubber padding on the base and a mix of metal and plastic on the clamp. It looks sleek and has sufficient heft at around 1.76lb (0.8kg) to give a feeling of being a premium product.

The built-in monitor clamp is versatile, with various grooves, the ability to stretch, and a thick adjustable back piece for additional stability. Although it’s rated for monitors with a thickness of 0.2 to 2.3 inches and a curvature range between 1000R and 1800R, it has some additional wiggle room.

For instance, you can use the ScreenBar Halo 2 with an 800R curved monitor as long as it’s within the stated thickness range and has a screen surface that’s good at resisting glare (the light would otherwise be reflected on both sides thanks to that type of display’s more extreme curve).

At nearly 20 inches wide, the ScreenBar Halo 2’s front light is over two inches wider than something like the Razer Aether Monitor Light Bar. Although BenQ’s own SceenBar Pro is the same width, it lacks the ScreenBar Halo 2’s rear light and is overall less substantial. In contrast to the Aether’s rear light, which consists of two horizontal LED strips, the rear light on the ScreenBar Halo 2 is a centered rectangle, which I found does a better job illuminating the wall.

The setup of the ScreenBar Halo 2 is as simple as it gets. You extend the monitor clamp, place it on the top of the monitor, plug the roughly 5-foot USB-C cord into the included USB-C AC power adapter or 5V DC/3A or higher equivalent, then power on from the included wireless controller.

The included wireless controller requires a USB-C cable for charging, which is not included, and is a strange omission at this price point. It can be charged from any standard 5V DC/1A or above USB port. The wireless controller’s power indicator lights red when charging and green once finished, providing up to three months of usage.

Finally, in a nice touch, a webcam mount is included. While I find monitor lights essential, having to place my webcam to the side of the monitor light, rather than centered on the monitor, is less than ideal. With the webcam mount, I can keep my webcam where it’s supposed to be.

Simple, Quality Functionality

Let’s answer the most important question. How good is the light? To level-set, I use several monitor lights, including the aforementioned Aether and ScreenBar Pro. Those are good lights, which do a fine job of providing enough illumination in my workspaces. However, the ScreenBar Halo 2 is on a whole other level, particularly for my darkest workspace, which lacks overhead recessed lighting.

If, for example, the ScreenBar Halo 2 is placed about 20 inches above your desktop, you can get a maximum of around 1000 lux of center illuminance, with a total overall coverage area of approximately 33 x 20 inches. For comparison, the Aether has about half the center illuminance and a total overall coverage area of approximately 23 x 12 inches. Those figures make it clear why the difference in both brightness and coverage is so noticeable with the ScreenBar Halo 2 versus other lighting solutions, which again, are otherwise good products when taken on their own.

Similarly, although the SceenBar Halo 2’s tri-zone backlight is only around 500 lux, it does a great job of illuminating whatever is behind it. Again, I can’t help but think it’s not only the quality of the full-spectrum LEDs that BenQ uses but also their logical layout and configuration that help disperse the light so well.

The Aether features both app control and an onboard touch panel. The sticking point with the Aether is the somewhat unreliable connectivity from its apps. The ScreenBar Pro, on the other hand, eschews any type of app for just an onboard touch panel. Even though the touch panel requires just a light tap, the bar itself can sometimes shift if you touch the panel just a bit too hard.

Putting aside the fact that it lacks the Aether’s RGB backlight, the advantage with the Halo 2 is its separate wireless controller, so that there’s no chance of shifting the bar once it’s in place. Of course, I would have also liked redundant controls on the light bar itself like with the ScreenBar Pro, but I guess you can’t have everything.

The wireless controller is a sleek, circular puck with an angled touch panel and a smooth outer ring that can be turned to separately adjust the color temperature and brightness of the front and back lights. Functionality touch points, including presence detection, auto-dimming, favorite mode, power, brightness adjustment, and color temperature adjustment surround centered front light brightness percentage, color temperature, and backlight bright percentage numbers.

It’s an intuitive wireless controller, although it is a bit sluggish to wake from sleep mode, which it enters after just five seconds of inactivity to conserve power. The only other real downside I found with the wireless controller is that its shiny touch surface attracts unsightly fingerprints.

Both the front and rear lights on the ScreenBar Halo 2 have a color temperature range of 2700K, which is very yellow, to 6500K, which is very white. If you use the auto-dimming feature, it will sense the ambient light and automatically adjust the temperature accordingly. While it does a good job of harmonizing with your environmental lighting, I personally prefer the clean white light of 6500K.

Similar to the ScreenBar Pro, Presence Detection is a useful feature, allowing the light to turn on automatically when entering the detection area. The detection area and detection time setting are both adjustable from the wireless controller.

Having used the ScreenBar Halo 2 between two 24-inch ThinkVision monitors, the INNOCN 49Q1R, and the AZORPA M3RC, I can say that it works well across those very different display types. Even with the AZORPA, which has a very reflective screen, I was able to properly angle the light in such a way as to minimize, if not entirely eliminate, glare at the top of the display. The SceenBar Halo 2 does a great job of placing light where it’s supposed to.

Should You Buy the BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2?

If you need extra light, and lots of it, in your workspace and on your desktop, the BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 is easily one of the best ultra-wide monitor light bar solutions. It’s a premium product with a price tag to match, but you can really see the care taken in the overall design and quality of the light.

If your lighting needs are a bit more modest, you’re arguably just as well off with cheaper, or more versatile, options. Nevertheless, even with its relatively high cost and lack of flashy features like RGB color, the ScreenBar Halo 2 is undeniably very good at what it does.

Compatibility

Flat/Curved monitors 0.17 – 2.36 inches

Type

Dual color LED

Power Input

USB-C, 5V/3A

Brightness

Center illuminance 1000lux

This premium monitor light is fantastic for dim workspaces, but its price may make less expensive options a better fit.