Year after year, we demand more and more features and functionality from our daily use devices, but for some reason we’re happy to just let lamps slack off and do nothing but give us light? The lamp’s day of reckoning is here now that Lenovo has shown us how much functionality it’s crammed into its new Go Desk Station.
At first glance, the Lenovo Go Desk Station reminded us a lot of Dyson’s $US600 ($833) Lightcycle lamp, which has a horizontal arm that can raise and lower or extend and retract through a clever cantilever system, as well as automatic colour temperature adjustments to match the time of day when it’s used. Lenovo’s lamp instead features a strip of LEDs along an arm that can be rotated up to provide illumination for someone on a video call, or angled down onto the surface of a desk.
Similar to the Dyson, the Desk Station lamp also offers three colour temperature settings for the LEDs — 3,000K, 4,500K, and 6,500K — to help match the time of day. But far more useful to those who spend too much of their day on video calls is the 4K, 30FPS webcam with autofocus and automatic framing that helps keep the person the camera is focused on in frame, even as they move about.
The lamp essentially serves as a tripod stand for the webcam, making it easier to position than if it were perched atop a monitor or a laptop’s screen, and the webcam itself can be attached to either its own rotating arm, or the end of the lamp’s illuminated arm (to extend its reach). Like the Desk Station’s strip of LEDs, the camera can also be adjusted to point downwards towards a desk or table, making it easier to highlight a physical document or object during a video call without having to hold it up to the camera.
Even the base of the Lenovo Go Desk Station goes above and beyond the call of duty, with a 20W USB-C port, a 65W USB-C port for powering laptops, a pair of USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and even a pop-out wireless Qi charging pad with up to 15W of power delivery.
The lamp will be available starting next March for $US329 ($457), and while you can purchase the included Lenovo Go 4K Pro Webcam separately for $US150 ($208), the Go Desk Station is only available bundled with the webcam.