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If you're still using an old-school desk lamp with an on/off switch, you're missing out on a ton of advanced technology. Imagine a desk lamp with multiple illumination levels, one with different hues (color temperatures) so you can select a stark white for morning reading and a gentle, warm white for evening study. A desk lamp that can show you the time, charge your phone, your tablet and anything else you need. Even via wireless Qi charging!
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ got his hands on the new, not-quite-shipping Lumicharge II smart desk lamp from Lumicharge and gives you all the details. It's not all great, however, there's a bit of a design hiccup you'll want to know about too...
Check it out at https://www.TheLumicharge.com/
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0:00
Is this the king of desk lamps? Let's have a closer look
0:10
Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at this. This is the LumaCharge 2. It's the second generation
0:16
LumaCharge desk lamp and boy does it have a lot of features. Let's start right out with
0:21
its most obvious which is that it is, surprise, a desk lamp. But one of the things you can do
0:28
is you can actually change the temperature of the light. Now let me turn it a little bit so
0:34
you can see that difference. So there's three different temperature or kelvin settings and
0:40
this is really important because if you're working late at night you want to be able to have less
0:46
blue light so that it helps with your sleep cycles. Plus it tends to be just a gentler light
0:51
Let me turn this off again. So very nice. So it has the three different colors of light but how
0:58
about illumination levels? Well it's got that covered too. So you have, let's see, I think you
1:04
have about five different brightness levels. So here's the least bright and then we'll go to the
1:09
most bright. And as you can see from what I'm doing, all the controls actually are on the base
1:14
itself. But there's also, and this is very handy, let me again turn it off, there's this whole
1:20
display system right here on the stem. So this makes it really nice for you to have maybe on
1:27
your desk right by your bed if you're a teenager or something. Or if you have it on your desk
1:32
at work then you get all of this information too. So it has time and date and day and even
1:38
temperature. It also has, you'll notice there's this little bulb down here, there's a little night
1:43
light that's triggered by motion. So if you do have this and you want to be able to have it
1:48
just come on very gently in the middle of the night because you have to get up. Then that
1:53
features here too. And on the back there's an on-off switch because if you don't want that
1:59
then you can slide this little switch and boom you've defeated that feature. Pretty handy. So
2:06
what else does this have? Well it's not just a light because it also has charging capabilities
2:11
One of which is on the front that it has actually a little charging dock. But this is actually a
2:17
pretty nifty little gizmo because it lets you dial the kind of connection you want. So here we
2:23
have, let's see, we'll start here with USB-C and then I can dial it and it actually then becomes
2:30
micro USB. And if you don't like that one and you want something else like for an iPhone
2:36
then you have this which is lightning. And so if I plug my phone in, then you can see my phone is
2:42
now charging. But hey, I have an iPhone 10 and that means I can do wireless charging. So I can
2:49
close that if I want. And then the base is a wireless charger if you go ahead and push the
2:56
button that turns on the wireless charging capability. And boom now it's wirelessly
3:01
charging. So that's really nice. So you can actually charge two devices at the same time
3:06
No, you can charge three because on the back at the bottom there's also a USB plug. So you could
3:13
be a charging fool in the middle of the night with this desk lamp in addition to obviously using it
3:19
for reading or studying or whatever working on your great novel. Whatever you want to do. So
3:25
the Lumicharge calls this their universal phone charging dock. And as I said it has USB-C
3:33
micro USB and lightning connectors. There's also the USB connector on the back. There's the night
3:38
light capability. So all of these are all working together and it's highly flexible. So you can bend
3:45
it to whatever exact position you want. You can obviously also tilt this part. So if I turn it on
3:53
that gives me lots of flexibility. So I can get it just so. Now there's a lot to like about this
4:01
But there is one thing that I was a little disappointed by that turned out to be kind of
4:05
frustrating. But before we get there let me tell you it comes with kind of a brick. This is a pretty
4:11
big charging cord. I was surprised by this that they didn't put this circuitry inside the base
4:16
unit. It's a pretty big charging wire. But I guess it's under your desk. It's under your table. Under
4:23
your nightstand. Whatever. So maybe that's not a big deal. But what is a big deal is that it's
4:29
really light. In fact it's too light. I found that when I was using it at more radical positions
4:36
that the base, like even right here, the base isn't heavy enough to hold it in the right place
4:42
And I know it's kind of weird to complain that a product isn't heavy enough. But I feel like if
4:47
they would have put even half a pound more, even just a piece of metal or something in the base
4:52
it would work better. Because I find it disconcerting that like if I drop my phone
4:57
now the whole unit is moving back and forth. Might not be a big deal for you. You might just
5:02
normally have it like this or even like that. And then you'll never even notice that because now
5:08
your center of gravity is over to the other side of the base. So that's really the only thing I have
5:14
to complain about. Otherwise there's really a lot to like about this. It's a nice finish. It feels
5:19
like a brushed aluminum. The base is plastic. All the buttons are pretty intuitive. Although
5:26
when they sent it to me, I opened the box. There were no instructions at all. If you have that happen, go to their website because they have a manual. So that's all easy
5:34
enough. And frankly, it's not that hard to figure all this out. The biggest trick is really getting
5:38
this set correctly so that you have the correct display for time and date. But once you get that
5:44
you should be set to go. So there's that. Now, before I tell you the price, and I don't think
5:50
you'll be too upset by the price. But before we get there, can I ask that you go ahead and
5:54
subscribe to my channel? I really appreciate when you do that. Cool. Now, it comes in black
6:00
or white or silver. This is obviously silver. Maybe it's not obvious, but this is the silver
6:05
version. And they're not quite shipping. This is a version. They sent me an early version. So if you
6:12
get this on pre-order at lumacharge.com, then you can actually reserve it for a dollar. And they
6:19
tell me it's going to end up being around $99 through the pre-order system. Or you can wait
6:26
till it's a fully shipping product, at which point it's MSRP, manufacturer suggested retail price
6:32
will be $149. So $149 is a good price for this, but $99 is a really good price for this. So if
6:39
this is something you're interested in and you like the full feature set, especially my favorite
6:44
is the wireless charging. So if all of this is appealing to you, then I would encourage you to
6:48
go to lumacharge, I'm sorry, thelumacharge.com, oops, wrong domain, thelumacharge.com and go
6:55
ahead and sign up for a pre-order discount and that'll be worth your money. So this is Dave
7:00
Taylor. I'm going to get back to figuring out what color light I prefer, which means I'll catch you
7:07
in my next video
#Laptops & Notebooks
#Consumer Electronics
#Lamps & Lighting
#Product Reviews & Price Comparisons