This monitor light bar never touches your monitor

· The Gadgeteer

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Most monitor light bars grab the top of your screen and hang there.

Secretlab’s new one skips the screen entirely. The ErgoArch Monitor Light Bar Add-On rides on its own arm, arches over the display, and throws its light down from above. It’s an add-on in the truest sense: the bar mounts only to Secretlab’s MAGNUS monitor arms, so it’s aimed squarely at desks already built around the company’s gear, and it covers the one thing a good arm setup still lacks, light positioned as carefully as the screen.

Secretlab ErgoArch Monitor Light Bar Add-On
Task light from 2700K to 6500K · Nanoleaf-powered RGB backlight · Ships November 20, 2026
Price: $179.00
Where to buy: Buy at Secretlab

The arm does the aiming

A three-point adjustment arm carries the bar. One hinge sets the height, anywhere from 179mm to 435mm. A second reaches the light forward up to 316.4mm, the upper hinge swings through 220 degrees, the lower through 100, and the bar itself tilts 37 degrees, so the pool of light lands on the keyboard, the notebook, or the middle distance between them.

The three-point arm swings the bar through its full range of positions.

The light gets its own hinges, so its height and depth are set apart from the screen’s position. Your monitor keeps its full range of motion underneath, and nothing hangs in your sightline. A webcam perched on top of the bar keeps a clean shot of you, too. Small thing. A video call proves it fast. The bar never has to come off to let the screen move. It just rides along, aimed where you left it.

The light runs warm to cool

The bar’s task light covers 2700K to 6500K, from lamplit warm to flat daylight, and peaks at 810 lux measured 45cm out. Colors hold up under it. Its color rendering index sits above 95Ra, high enough that printed photos and paint swatches keep their tones, and two spreads are built in: a wide wash for the whole desk, and a tighter pool for reading and writing.

The full kit: bar, three-point arm, wireless puck, and the magnetic base connector.

The overhead angle is the eye-strain argument, because a bar at screen height bounces light off the display and back into your eyes, while light from above lands on the desk instead and keeps the screen out of the bounce path. It keeps the light off your face, too, a kindness anyone squinting into a screen bar at midnight will appreciate.

A puck on the desk runs it

Controls live on a wireless puck, 67mm across, that sits wherever your hand rests. Twist it, brightness follows. Press, hold, and twist to walk the color temperature up or down instead. A single press kills the task light, and a two-second hold handles the backlight.

The wireless puck handles brightness and color temperature from the desk.

Two buttons on the bar itself cover power for both lights, for the moments when the puck has wandered off under a notebook. It happens.

The back of the bar faces the wall

Flip the setup around and there’s a second light show. The rear throws RGB bias lighting against the wall behind your monitor, powered by Nanoleaf, with 16.8 million colors on tap. Colors and scenes run through the Nanoleaf app, which carries a library of preset scenes alongside room to build your own, so the glow can match the game, the film, or the hour. It also ties into the big smart-home platforms.

From behind: the backlight panel, the arm mount, and a webcam riding on top of the bar.

It mounts to the arm, not the screen

Here’s the catch, and it’s a real one. A magnetic base connector snaps the light’s arm onto the VESA plate of a Secretlab MAGNUS Monitor Arm. Single, Dual, Vertical Stand, and Heavy Duty editions all take it. Curved monitors are fine, bezel-less ones too, and nothing clips to the display itself, but no MAGNUS arm means no mount, and the $179 only makes sense if that arm is already on your desk.

The magnetic base connector snaps onto the MAGNUS arm’s VESA plate.

The connector is magnetic, so the whole light lifts off the plate without tools when you want the desk back.

What’s in the box

Alongside the bar and the puck, Secretlab packs a magnetic webcam mount it values at $29. It holds cameras up to 165g and pins them to the top of the bar, clear of the screen. Power is USB-C at 5V and 2A off a PC or a wall supply, with a 2-meter cable included for the run down the arm.

The included webcam mount holds cameras up to 165g.

The magnetic base connector rounds out the box, the small piece that marries the light’s arm to your monitor arm’s plate, batteries for the puck included.

Secretlab ErgoArch Monitor Light Bar Add-On
App control through Nanoleaf · 16.8 million RGB backlight colors · 810 lux peak task light · USB-C powered
Price: $179.00
Where to buy: Buy at Secretlab

At $179 with no discount attached, this is a purchase you make because the desk is already a Secretlab desk and the overhead light is the piece it’s missing. The arm gives it positioning no clip-on bar can match, and it never asks your monitor to carry it. Everyone else should price the monitor arm into the decision first, because the bar’s best trick needs it.

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