The Boring Lamp: Use The Force, Tristan! (Desk & Screen Light, Wireless Charger, Music Sync & More)

The Boring Lamp team sent me their upcoming lamp to test out, and I LOVE it. It has a high quality finish and a number of useful features including music sync, becoming a Jedi Knight and using it as a monitor/screen light.

You can also use it as a background ambient light bar and a standard desk lamp. It supports three color temperatures and you can dim it down too. The YouTube video is below:

The Boring Lamp goes on sale on March 30th 2023 on Indiegogo, and early bird prices start at just $99. The lamp will ship in May.

Video Guide & Transcript

The Boring Lamp in desk mode
The Boring Lamp in desk mode

Hello, I’m Tristan and this lamp is BORING. Seriously… it’s literally called The Boring Lamp. But it’s an ironic name: this lamp is pretty cool. You can use it as a desk lamp, a monitor light or even attach a battery and then pretend to be a Jedi Knight. 

[Jedi] You should like this video, and subscribe to my channel.

Before I show this product off more, I should say that I received this product for free to test it out. However I am not being paid to say purely nice things about it – I can be honest. This is a prototype version though, so there will be somer minor physical issues, but these should be resolved in mass production.

This lamp looks and feels like a really nice, high-spec item, with much of it being machined from aluminium (or “aluminum” as Americans would say). It feels like a premium product. One of the key benefits of this lamp is that it is modular and magnetic, allowing you to adjust its layout and use it as a standard desk lamp, a light bar, a monitor light or even a portable light that you can carry around your home.

To use it as a desk lamp, you simply clip in the main post and then plug in the light tube. Let’s give this a try.

[Jedi] Do or do not, there is no try.

Me holding The Boring Lamp and pretending to be a Jedi Knight
Me holding The Boring Lamp and pretending to be a Jedi Knight

Joking aside, this doesn’t require any effort – the setup is ultra-simple due to the push-on connections that are used. You then touch the side button for 3 seconds to turn it on, and it will start off with a bright white light color, although you can adjust this. You can rotate both the light tube and the post around 360 degrees which is really awesome because it allows you to shine light on the exact areas that you want to.

One of the things I love about this lamp is that it’s a bright daytime light, but you can also adjust the color temperature when it gets darker – switching to a warm-white color that more accurately resembles evening light. This is great for when you’re working or studying in the evenings. You can also easily dim down the brightness by rotating the side button, which dims it down a decent amount (although it’s worth noting that there’s no ‘night light’ function – the product won’t quite dim down to 1% brightness). 

You can also take off the light tube and plug it into the base directly, allowing it to run in ambient light mode which allows you to have changing RBG light colors, or stick to a single color and dim it down or raise its brightness as you require. This is quite a neat feature, and the lamp has eye care technology that meets the various international specifications – meaning that you won’t end up with eye strain when using this product during late night studying or gaming sessions.

Running The Boring Lamp in ambient light mode
Running The Boring Lamp in ambient light mode

A monitor mount is also included, that allows you to turn the lamp into a useful monitor light. It’s quite heavy and that’s good because it means you can easily clamp it to your monitor without worrying that it will fall off. The light then magnetically clips onto the main light and it is a decently strong magnet so the light shouldn’t fall off unless you’re actively trying to remove it. Using this as a monitor light will allow you to run it in ambient light mode, which is the same as if you plugged it into the base.

The Boring Lamp has a built-in mic allowing it to support music syncing, meaning that it can ‘dance’ along to songs – which is a pretty nice feature. [Music Playing] This makes the lamp a fun background feature in parties, but if you’re an introvert like me, it’s also pretty fun to use it when gaming late at night.

I really like that you can also detach the lamp from its base, and plug it into a battery. You can easily charge up the battery by adding it into port B, and a flashing blue light will tell you that it’s charging. The battery has a 3,000 mAh capacity, giving it around 3 to 6 hours of light. The battery then allows you to take it around your house, either using it as a BORING makeshift torch, or you become a Jedi Knight.

[Jedi] Use the force, Tristan

I’m so cool. This also has a magsafe base making it convenient to charge up your iPhone while you work, however it has general wireless charging capability too. I had no issues getting my Samsung S20 charged up with it, even though my phone has a fairly bulky case, and it charged up at “fast wireless charging” speed.

Using the Boring Lamps Qi wireless charging base for my Samsung S20
Using the Boring Lamps Qi wireless charging base for my Samsung S20

The Boring Lamp weighs just under 800 grams meaning that it’s decently heavy for a desk lamp, but I actually see this as a good thing because you want a sturdy and premium-feeling desk lamp – especially when paying over $100. It comes in two colors – silver and space gray – and it has up to 1500 lumens of light output, which is fairly bright for a desk lamp. It comes with a 12 volt charger, and this lamp uses no more than 24 watts at its peak – although this will use as little as 5 watts when dimmed down.

And that wraps up this review – I really like this product, and I will be using it myself going forward. Thanks again to The Boring Lamp team for sending me an early prototype. When this item gets released for sale, I will update the description and add a comment with full details of where you can buy this. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please click the thumbs up button. Please also click the subscribe button, and ‘ding the bell’ which will notify you when I release new videos. Thank you!

About Tristan Perry

Tristan Perry is a software developer who is passionate about tech gadgets, DIY and housing. He has therefore loved seeing smart homes hit the mainstream. Tristan also has an academic background (in Math & Computer Science), and so he enjoys digging into the technical ways that smart home devices work.

Tristan owns close to a dozen Amazon Echo devices, way too many Philips Hue bulbs and lightstrips, a boat-load of Ring Cameras and Doorbells... and a bunch of other smart home devices too (from Reolink, Google Nest, GLEDOPTO and others).

If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions about this article, please leave a comment below. Please note that all comments go into a moderation queue (to prevent blog spam). Your comment will be manually reviewed and approved by Tristan in less than a week. Thanks!

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