Verdict

Although you miss out on the smart features and temperature changing bulbs of Dysons other lights, the Dyson CSYS Desk is still a quality work light, focussing on delivering high-quality light where you want it. Thanks to the eight LEDs, tuned to daylight colour temperature, you get a focussed spot of light to work under, and no glare from the lamp head. With the excellent stand providing a high level of movement, you can easily focus the light where you want it, although the lamp is a little bulky so make sure you have enough clearance. With its long-lasting LEDs, this is a high-quality desk light that should last decades.

Pros

• Easy to adjust
• Powerful and focussed light
• Long life

Cons

• Needs a fair amount of room
• No smart features

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Precision light can make the difference between a horrible working environment and a comfortable one. It’s an area that Dyson has put considerable effort into, and I’ve been impressed with its smart lighting range. With the Dyson CSYS Desk, you lose the smart features but maintain the quality lighting, precision adjustments and long-life features, all for a much lower price.

There are cheaper desk lights around, but you’ll struggle to find one with such precision, and work out the yearly cost of this lamp and it’s actually pretty good value.

Design and Features – A simply beautiful bit of engineering

There are three versions of the Dyson CSYS Desk available: black, black and silver, and white and silver. It’s a purely aesthetic choice, as all three versions are the same size (650 x 177 x 527mm) and have the same features.

Aside from colour, all three are built in the same way, too. Dyson has put an emphasis on precision and quality for the stand, and the result is a beautiful bit of engineering. Once the light arm has been secured into place with the provided screws, the arm rolls backwards and forwards with very little effort. Given that the arm is quite long, you need a fair amount of room behind it to get the full adjustment.

Height adjustment is via a counterbalance, letting you get the exact height of the light with absolutely no slippage. The entire bass rotates, too, so you can spin the CSYS Desk 360-degrees. Helping out is this lamp’s 4.47kg weight, which is enough to keep it solidly planted to the desk.

There’s a single touch control on the front of the lamp: tap once and the light goes on, tap again to turn it off. You can also press and hold once to dim; then release and press and hold to increase brightness. This kind of simple control works well and is similar to the one used in the Philips Hue Smart Button.

Performance – Bright and precise

With the smart lights, such as the Dyson Lightcycle Morph, the company used a more-traditional spot head. For the CSYS Desk, Dyson has used a strip of eight LEDs, designed to shine in a pyramid angled at 60-degrees.

This gives you a fairly decent area illuminated by the LEDs, with a distinct cutoff between the lit and unlit areas. This is what you want for any kind of task light, as you want the area you’re focusing on to be well lit, while you can ignore other areas of your desk. This also means that people working or sitting nearby aren’t affected by the light from this lamp.

These LEDs can’t change temperature, although they’re tuned at 6500K to give you roughly daylight-colour light. If you want a brighter, colder light for concentrating on some projects, you should look at one of the Dyson Lightcycle products instead.

You can adjust the lights up to a maximum brightness of 650-lumens, which is around the same as an old 60W bulb. In other words, very bright for close-up working. Neatly, the way that the lights are recessed and diffused means that you don’t get a glare off them; instead, you get the light focussed on the desk where you want it.

Dyson rates the LEDs for 144,000 hours. Used for eight hours a day that gives you just shy of 50 years of use. And, even after 144,000 hours, the LEDs will still work, it’s just that they’ll have lost 30% of their brightness. Put into these terms, and suddenly the asking price doesn’t seem so much, as you’ll never need to change a bulb and will get decades of use out of the lamp.

Part of the reason that the lamp last so long, and much longer than LED bulbs are rated for, is because Dyson has used its heat pipe technology. This takes heat from the LEDs and disperses it down the long arm of the lamp, preventing the lights from overheating.

Should I buy the Dyson CSYS Desk?

On the one hand, you can say that £219.99 is expensive for a desktop lamp, but it’s not a question of how much this costs but whether or not the price is justified. I think it is. For starters, you get a precision engineered light that’s highly adjustable and stays where you point it.

The light quality from the lamp is excellent, too, giving you a dedicated cone of light to work from, without any glare. And, this light is rated to last decades, so you’ll likely never need to replace it.

The Dyson Lightcycle Morph has a few more options, including temperature changing lights that match the daylight where you are, but it’s a lot more expensive. For simple, precise light in a very adjustable package, the Dyson CSYS Desk is an excellent choice.

Trusted Reviews readers can now get a fantastic £20 off of the Dyson CSYS Desk Light with the code TRUSTED20 at Dyson

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