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Jake Dyson's Desk Lamp of the Future

By Rain Noe - December 29, 2011

in Tech | Lighting

Following our series on the story of the modern desk lamp, we now look at what Jake Dyson intends to be the desk lamp of the future—literally: His CSYS LED Task Light is designed with "thermal management" technology designed to prolong the life of its bulb for some 37 years. Unsurprisingly for a Dyson, the technology consists of a vacuum that sucks the heat away from the bulb.

But while that's cool, the far cooler feature is the way the lamp articulates, versus the traditional desk lamp. I myself own a variant on the Anglepoise, mine being a cheapie imitation from IKEA that I use to illuminate the workbench where I do motor repairs and the like. I have it mounted to a fixture in the wall to provide added height, and I find the swing-arm invaluable for getting light into projects from various angles. Unfortunately, the springs wear over time, losing elasticity and necessitating the ugly rubber band fix you see here.

Dyson's CSYS, in contrast, operates with these wicked rollers combined with rotating and telescoping actions.

You've got to see it in video to appreciate it:

Here's another vid of Dyson manipulating the lamp around that really gives you a sense of how cool this thing would be to use:

Alas, this coolness won't come cheap; the lamp's price is nearly US $900.

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jomy

13 years ago

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I would rather get the adjustability of the Koncept Z bar at a fraction of the price.
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product tank

13 years ago

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I keep my lamp in the corner of my table, to maximise the amount of table space I have (who keeps a lamp in the middle of a table?). The table lives against a wall, so the only way I could adjust this design would be up and down, because moving the lamp arm back to get the lamp closer to the base would mean it would bang into the wall. Despite beautiful engineering, this is currently functionally poorer than an anglepoise - will wait for version 2.
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powers

13 years ago

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@ all:

I can't even afford one. Would I buy one if I could? Probably. You just have to know what you are buying. In this case you are buying essentially a prototype. The next version will probably have an articulating or swiveling head of some kind. With a cutting edge design like this there are always trade-offs. The people who buy the first version pay for development of improvements in the next generation. I appreciate investing in the development of great things when I can. Just because product X doesn't have some feature that you'd want doesn't mean it's not still great design - not that any of you are necessarily saying that, but something to think about when looking at the price tag of a design.
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chris

13 years ago

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It will save me money in the long run? where does he buy his light bulbs? Its a beautiful design of a very utilitarian product. I would like to be able to articulate the head of the lamp (assume its a limitation of the heat sink) It may be less obtrusive but you loose some utility not being able to angle the direction of the bulb any way but down...
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Tai

13 years ago

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Sorry, but any lamp I'd want to use long-term would have to be more adjustable than this. The light only points straight down? No deal.
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powers

13 years ago

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Drool.

@ Anthony
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yes.
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Anthony

13 years ago

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I understand "Innovation" and "Higher quality product" ... but $800 for a desk lamp? Really?
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