Best Monitor Light Bars UK 2026

A monitor light bar fixes the one thing a desk lamp cannot: it lights the desk without putting a bright source in your eyeline. A lamp standing beside the screen throws light across the panel and leaves a reflection on it, which is why people end up squinting at a bright screen in a dim room. A bar clamps over the top bezel and shines downwards, so the screen stays dark, the keyboard gets lit and the rest of the room does not have to be bright. We compared eight bars sold in the UK, from £15.99 to £149.00, and our top pick for most desks is the Quntis 41cm Wireless Monitor Light Bar at £39.99, because the remote lets you dim it without reaching behind the screen.

Quick picks

• Best overall: Quntis 41cm Wireless Monitor Light Bar at £39.99. Remote plus touch, 78 LEDs and a two hour timer.
• Best value: Yeelight 42cm Monitor Light Bar at £26.99. The highest light claim on this list and the widest colour range.
• Best for a small monitor: Poeruse 33cm Screen Light Bar at £15.99. Short bar, low price, no light wasted past the edges of a 24 inch panel.
• Best if you never want to touch the controls: Quntis 40cm Auto Dimming Monitor Light Bar at £32.99. It reads the room and adjusts itself.
• Best for a curved screen: Quntis 51cm Curved Monitor Lamp Bar at £50.99. Built for a 32 inch curved panel or a wide monitor.

Compared side by side

Prices are what Amazon showed when we checked, and they move around.

1. Quntis 41cm Wireless Monitor Light Bar: our top pick for most desks

This is a 41 cm bar with 78 LEDs, and the part that sells it is the control. You get a wireless remote as well as a touch strip on the bar itself, which matters more than it sounds: on a monitor pushed back against a wall, the touch pad sits behind the top edge and you end up reaching around the screen every time you want to dim it. The remote sits on the desk where you can find it. Colour temperature runs from 3000K to 6500K, brightness is stepless, there is a two hour timer for evening work and the bar remembers where you left it. The listing quotes 900 lux at the desk, which is plenty for reading a printed sheet next to a keyboard. The clip needs a flat top bezel, so check that before you order.

Verdict: our top pick for most desks.

Price: £39.99 at the time of writing. Length: 41 cm. Control: remote and touch.

2. Yeelight 42cm Monitor Light Bar: the best value here, and the one for colour work

Yeelight's bar is about the same length as the Quntis, at 42 cm, and it claims more light: 1500 lux against 900. Treat both figures as the makers' own claims rather than a measured comparison, but the gap in the listings is wide enough to be worth knowing about. The colour range runs 2700K to 6500K and the listing quotes Ra95 colour rendering, which is the number to look at if you edit photos or match swatches on screen. Control is a touch strip only, so there is no remote, and at £26.99 it undercuts every bar here except the two budget curved options. If you want one bar and you do not care about a remote, this is the sensible buy.

Verdict: best value, and the one we would pick for colour work.

Price: £26.99 at the time of writing. Length: 42 cm. Colour range: 2700K to 6500K.

3. Poeruse 33cm Screen Light Bar: best for a small screen and a tight budget

At 33 cm this is the shortest bar on the list, and that is the point. On a 24 inch panel a 51 cm bar throws light past both edges and onto the wall, which looks untidy and wastes the brightest part of the beam. The Poeruse is built around an asymmetric optic, which is the technical way of saying the light is aimed forwards and down at the desk rather than straight out at the panel, and that is the feature that separates a usable bar from a glare machine. You get three preset colour temperatures between 3000K and 6500K, stepless brightness and a clip that goes on without tools. The build is plastic and the finish is honest about it, but the light does the job.

Verdict: the cheapest bar here that still does the job, and the right shape for a small screen.

Price: £15.99 at the time of writing. Length: 33 cm. Colour range: three presets.

4. Quntis 40cm Auto Dimming Monitor Light Bar: the one for people who work into the evening

Same 40 cm bar, 78 LEDs and 900 lux claim as the RGB version below, but the feature here is a small ambient light sensor that reads the room and trims the bar to match. That sounds like a gimmick until you have a desk by a window: the light you need at four in the afternoon is not the light you need at nine at night, and the sensor takes the decision off you. You can still override it with the touch strip, and it remembers the setting. Quntis also lists compliance with IEC/TR 62778 and IEC/EN 62471, the standards covering blue light and photobiological safety, so the eye comfort claims are at least checkable rather than marketing words.

Verdict: the one we would pick if you work late and never want to touch a button.

Price: £32.99 at the time of writing. Length: 40 cm. Control: auto with touch override.

5. Quntis 40cm Monitor Light Bar with RGB Backlight: best if you want a glow behind the screen

The front of this bar is the standard 40 cm Quntis unit, and the difference is the rear section, which carries 24 RGB modes and throws colour onto the wall behind the monitor. That is a look rather than a lighting fix, and you should buy it for the look. What it does buy you in practical terms is a softer transition between a bright screen and a dark wall, which some people find easier to sit in front of after dark than a black rectangle floating in a dark room. The front light is the same 900 lux claim and the same 78 LEDs, so you are not giving anything up on the working side. At £29.99 it is the cheapest way to get both.

Verdict: best if you want the backlight glow as well as the desk light.

Price: £29.99 at the time of writing. Length: 40 cm. Backlight: 24 RGB modes.

6. Quntis 51cm Curved Monitor Lamp Bar: the pick for a curved or ultrawide screen

A flat bar on a curved monitor leaves light spilling at the ends and a bright spot in the middle, because the top edge of the panel curves away from the housing. This one is 51 cm, curved to match, with 84 LEDs, a rear backlight and a wireless controller. It also claims Ra95 colour rendering, which puts it alongside the Yeelight for colour accuracy. The length is the reason to buy it: it is the only bar here sized for a 32 inch curved panel or a wide screen, and on a normal 24 inch monitor it is too much bar. At £50.99 it is the second dearest thing on the list.

Verdict: the right bar if your monitor has a curved top edge.

Price: £50.99 at the time of writing. Length: 51 cm curved. Control: wireless remote.

7. Laliled Curved Monitor Light Bar: the budget way into a curved screen

If you have a curved monitor and £50.99 for the Quntis is more than you want to spend, this is the cheaper way in. It is a USB bar with a curved housing, stepless dimming and touch control, and the listing is thinner on detail than the others, with no lux figure and no colour rendering number quoted. What it does have is the right shape for a curved bezel and a price that makes it an easy experiment. The mount is a clip rather than a weighted bracket, so it works on most panels but not on a monitor with a very thick or rounded back.

Verdict: the sensible cheap pick if you have a curved screen and a tight budget.

Price: £23.99 at the time of writing. Control: touch. Length: not stated.

8. BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2: the premium option, and the benchmark worth knowing

BenQ more or less invented this category, and the Halo 2 is the version with a rear light as well as the front bar, a wireless dial that lives on the desk, and auto on and off when you sit down. The dial is the nicest control here by a distance: one turn for brightness, one for colour temperature, and no reaching for the screen at all. It also has the best light shaping of the group, with a sharp cut off so the panel stays free of glare. At £149.00 it is by far the most expensive bar on this list, and for most home desks the Quntis at £39.99 does the same job for about a quarter of the money. Buy the BenQ if you want the dial and the build, not because it will light your keyboard any better.

Verdict: the best-made bar here, and only worth it if the budget is genuinely not the constraint.

Price: £149.00 at the time of writing. Control: wireless dial. Light: front and rear.

How a monitor light bar actually works

Every bar on this list uses the same trick. The LEDs sit inside a shaped reflector, and the reflector aims the beam forwards and down at roughly 45 degrees so it lands on the desk in front of the screen rather than on the screen itself. Makers call this an asymmetric optic. Done properly, you see a pool of light on the keyboard and no bright band across the top of the panel. Done badly, you get a stripe of glare in the top third of the screen, which is worse than having no light at all.

That is why price and light quality only loosely track each other, and why the cheapest bar here can still be a reasonable buy. What you pay more for is control: a remote, a sensor, a better dial and a housing that stays where you put it.

Match the bar length to the screen

A bar should be a little narrower than the panel. On a 24 inch monitor, 33 cm to 42 cm is the useful range. On a 27 inch screen, 40 cm to 42 cm is right. On a 32 inch screen or anything wider, you want 51 cm or a curved housing. A short bar on a wide screen leaves the edges of the desk dark, and a long bar on a small screen throws light past the monitor and onto the wall.

Measure the top bezel as well. The clip needs something flat to grip, and a monitor with a heavily rounded or very thick top edge will not hold a clip-on bar properly. If your panel is curved, buy a curved bar rather than trying to force a flat one onto it.

Touch, remote or automatic

Touch control is the cheapest option and it works well if the bar is easy to reach. On a monitor set back against a wall it is not, and you will end up leaving the bar on a setting you do not want rather than reaching around the screen. A remote fixes that for a few pounds more, and it is the reason the Quntis 41 cm is our pick.

Automatic dimming suits anyone who works in a room where the light changes through the day, particularly a desk near a window. Set it and leave it. The catch is that an ambient sensor measures the room, not your screen, so it can dim the desk while you are reading a bright white document. Check that the model you buy lets you override the sensor, and the Quntis does.

Which colour temperature to use, and when

Cooler light, around 5000K to 6500K, reads as daylight and is the setting most people leave a bar on during the working day. Warmer light, around 2700K to 3000K, is easier to sit under in the evening and matches the lamps in the rest of the house. Every bar here except the two budget models lets you choose, and the ones with the widest range, the Yeelight and the Quntis 41 cm, are the most useful for a desk that gets used at nine at night.

A bar with a fixed colour temperature is not a disaster, but check which one you are buying. A 6000K only bar is unpleasant to sit under after dark.

Power, cables and where the USB goes

All of these run from USB, which is one of the better things about the category. The cable usually goes to a port on the back of the monitor, and the neatest setup is a monitor that keeps its USB ports alive when the screen sleeps, so the bar comes on with the computer. If your monitor cuts power to its ports on standby, the bar will switch off every time the screen sleeps, which is annoying if you also use it as room light.

Check the cable length before you buy. A bar on a monitor that sits far back on a deep desk needs a longer run than the pictures suggest, and a short cable means the bar ends up on a hub on the desk instead of the monitor.

Do light bars help with eye strain?

They remove one specific cause of discomfort, which is the mismatch between a bright screen and a dark room. Lighting the desk and the wall behind the monitor lowers that contrast, so the screen stops being the brightest object in your field of view. That is a lighting fix, not a medical one.

The Health and Safety Executive's guidance on display screen equipment covers the rest of the setup: screen height, distance and the position of the keyboard. If your eyes still ache once the lighting and the screen position are sorted, that is a question for an optician rather than a desk accessory. Our guide to monitor risers covers the height side of the same problem.

Frequently asked questions

Will a monitor light bar fit my monitor?

It will if the top edge is flat and reasonably thin. Most bars use a clip or a weighted bracket over the top bezel, and both need a straight edge to sit on. Monitors with a very thick or heavily rounded top, and most all-in-one designs, are the ones that cause trouble.

Can I use a light bar on a curved monitor?

Yes, but buy a curved bar. A flat bar on a curved panel leaves the ends of the bar away from the screen, so light spills at both sides and the middle of the panel gets the bright band. The Quntis 51 cm and the Laliled are both shaped for a curved top edge.

Do light bars work with a webcam on top of the monitor?

Usually, if the webcam clips to the bar rather than the bezel, or if the bar sits slightly forward of the camera. A bar that covers the whole top edge will not leave room for a webcam mount on the same edge, so plan for one or the other, or look for a bar with a camera mount built into the clip.

Are they bright enough to replace a desk lamp?

For a keyboard, a notebook and a document next to the screen, yes. For reading a book or doing anything fiddly with your hands, a lamp pointed at the desk still wins, because a bar lights a narrow strip in front of the monitor rather than the whole worktop.

Will a light bar work on a laptop?

Only on a laptop with a flat, rigid screen edge, and even then the bar is usually too wide. A clip-on lamp or a small desk lamp is the better answer for a laptop, and if you use a separate monitor most of the day, put the bar on that screen instead.

Do I need a remote control?

Not if the bar is easy to reach, and not if you use automatic dimming. It is worth the extra when the monitor sits against a wall, because the touch controls end up behind the screen where you cannot see them.

The verdict

For most home desks, buy the Quntis 41cm Wireless Monitor Light Bar at £39.99. It lights a keyboard properly, the remote means you actually use the dimmer, and the colour range covers a bright working day and a softer evening. If you do colour-sensitive work on screen, the Yeelight 42cm Monitor Light Bar at £26.99 gives you the wider colour range and more light for less money, at the cost of the remote.

If your monitor is curved or wide, go straight to the Quntis 51cm Curved Monitor Lamp Bar at £50.99 and skip the flat bars. If you want the best-made object here and the price is not the issue, the BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 at £149.00 is genuinely nicer to use, though it will not light your desk any better than the Quntis.

Related reading: Best monitor risers UK 2026, best keyboard trays UK 2026 and best standing desk converters UK 2026.

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