Review: Lume Cube Edge Light Go Desk Lamp

Cordless lamps are often simple, single-purpose affairs: reading lights, table lamps, or glorified lanterns. Lume Cube's new rechargeable Edge Light Go is a rare exception, a portable lamp that offers the same level of precision, power, and targeted light that you'd hope for from a good workbench or home studio lamp.

The Edge Light Go is shaped like a classic three-point adjustable desk lamp in miniature form: sturdy without being hefty, with three slightly resistant hinges and a swivel. The light is soft and matte, suitable for Zoom time, product photography, and close work. The quality of this light is also minutely adjustable, both in warmth and in intensity, from clean blue-white light to soothing amber and red.

This leads to astounding versatility. Lately I've been dragging the dang thing all over the house—including to my nightstand with a book. I find the Edge Light Go to be charismatic in a mid-century minimalist way, with the self-conscious bulk of its knobby joints and small details like the curvilinear transition into its base. My editor is more inclined to say it simply looks “like a lamp.”

There are a couple quirks, including a base that's not quite heavy enough to anchor the lamp from tipping over when placed in some positions. But at heart, the Edge Light Go feels like a category of lamp that should already exist—but mostly doesn't. It is a small but powerful work light that's unfettered by proximity to a power outlet.

Soft Light Is Good Light

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Lume Cube is a relative newcomer to the lighting world, a still-wee company founded a dozen years ago in Southern California. Much of the product line is miniaturized versions of studio lighting equipment, the sort of mini-home studio fare favored by influencers and online retailers alike.

Its upscale desk lamps have found a similar niche: offering soft, matte, glare-free, infinitely adjustable LED lighting that's well-tuned to Zoom meetings and product photography. As it happens, the land of Zoom and product photos is mostly where the WIRED Reviews team lives. And so Lume Cube's Edge Light 2.0 ($170) has traveled like a meme among WIRED staffers.

The sell on the original Edge Light is twofold. In part, it's the namesake edge-lit technology, which lights from the outer rim of the lighting area to create very even lighting that's flattering to both people and objects. The other is the touch control on its base that allows for customizable gradations of intensity or red to blue light warmth. This versatility gives even me a fighting chance of taking a good picture, or not looking tired during a virtual meeting.

And so for the past year or so, I have treasured my two Edge Lights for my amateur two-point photography lighting system. But it can still be a bit of an ordeal finding the right location within reach of a power outlet for both lamps. It's a total pain, actually.

And so this small cordless Edge Light Go would already solve a problem for me, even if I never used it for any other reason. The Go offers the same matte edge-lit light as the original, and actually a higher max intensity. Which is to say, it's just become my new rim light whenever I need to do product shots for small devices.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

But the gentleness and evenness of light make the Go equally useful when I inevitably travel around my home with the laptop over the course of the workday. Aesthetically, it's also gentle. As with all three-hinge lamps descended from the classic Anglepoise, the Go has a vaguely anthropomorphic, Pixar-lamp quality. In addition to basic black, it's available in the neutral houseware hues of the moment: sand, slate, and sage.

The base of the lamp has two slider buttons. One toggle adjusts the warmth, from cold white light all the way to red. One adjusts the intensity, from ultra-bright down to a glareless glow. Hard taps on each button skip ahead, while holding the toggle down on one side or another adjusts the light settings quite slowly—slowly enough I at first sometimes question whether it's happening.

The maximum brightness is 1,000 lumens—the approximate intensity of a 75-watt incandescent bulb. At this brightness, the battery lasts about five hours. At a lower intensity, this can extend to as long as a dozen hours.

Red Shift

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

There's an added feature I have come to appreciate at night, which is the red-light mode. There's little evidence that blue light from your little smartphone is keeping you awake at night. But numerous studies do show that blue light wavelengths can affect melatonin levels and thus your body's circadian rhythm, while red light doesn't do this.

Red light therapy is, of course, the province of TikTok as much as science—a field where wild exaggerations live alongside legitimate uses and benefits. For every sleep study showing that red light is superior to blue light when it comes to melatonin levels, there's another showing that red light is associated with “negative emotions” before bed.

So I can only offer my own experience, which is that Edge Light Go's red reading light offers me a pleasant liminal space between awake time and sleepy time, one not offered by a basic nightstand lamp. It allows me to sort of bask in a darkroom space that still lets me see and read, and drift off a little easier.

If I fall asleep, the light has an automatic 25-minute shut-off, which means I won't do what I far too often do, which is drift off while reading and then wake up, alarmed, to a room filled with bright light in the middle of the night.

Caveats and Quirks

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

This said, for all the virtues of portability, the Edge Light Go does not boast a base that's heavy enough to stop the lamp from tipping over if I bend it forward from its lowest hinge. This can be an annoyance when trying to use the lamp as a reading light from a bedside table or the arm of a couch.

The wireless phone charger also feels as much like a novelty as a useful feature, given that the lamp's battery capacity (about 1,900 Wh) is significantly lower than the battery capacity of most smartphones. This makes it useful mostly when the lamp is plugged in, which means you're already near an outlet anyway.

The Qi wireless charger is also not quite powerful enough to charge an iPhone while in an Otterbox phone protector with its outer sleeve on. To use the charger in this case, you'll have to get your phone naked.

These quibbles are, however, just that: quibbles. This little lamp punches above its weight—literally. I have searched in vain for other portable lamps that can offer light with such softness, precision, and versatility. I welcome other candidates. But so far, I haven't seen one.

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