Dyson, the company that brought gadget lust to vacuum cleaners, fans, and airport bathroom hand dryers, is getting into LED lighting. Don’t expect another smart bulb though, Dyson is starting things off with a high-end, high-design task lamp called the CSYS.
The CSYS wasn’t originally from a Dyson that you know and love (James, Esther, or possibly Freeman), but rather James Dyson’s son, Jake. The lamp first made headlines when it was announced in 2011 for its longevity — it was said to be good for 37 years thanks to its ability to cool its LEDs — and its $860 price tag. Since then, Dyson (the fan and vacuum company) has absorbed the scion’s venture and dropped the price of the CSYS desk lamp down to $649. It’s available in a floor version for $899 as well.
The CSYS is basically three parts: a surprisingly hefty base, a vertical component, and a horizontal arm. The horizontal piece is counterbalanced so it can slide up and down when the slightest weight is applied. The arm can extend and retract in a similar fashion, though no counterbalancing is necessary. All the movement is made extra smooth by three wheels on each side of the lamp, which add a nice design feature and make any movement extra precise. The lamp can rotate about the base, an action which isn’t nearly as effortless as the other two adjustments. The CSYS is turned on and off using a touch-sensitive pad on the base.
Dyson CSYS’ heatpipe
The eight LEDs focus their light on a small area, making this an ideal task lamp. The piece that holds the LEDs, cannot be spun or tilted though, so the lamp is only a good for lighting whatever is happening on your desk, not a room or wider area. Moving the horizontal bar up will help with this, but the top of the range is only 24 inches, so the amount of area that can be illuminated is about that of a large desk. The light is a warm tone (about 27ooK) not a the blue-white you might expect from a LED lamp.
For as technical of a company as Dyson, the CSYS’s is largely devoid of specifications. The only number that is in any way revealing is “587lx” which presumably means 587 lux. Lux is basically lumens (you know, light output), but it factors in area. 587 lux means a reasonable amount of light, but not too much. In practice, the CSYS is about as bright as a 60W incandescent task lamp. The lamp has dimming, but it’s not immediately obvious how you activate it (you hold the on/off button). The dimmer cleverly has memory, so next time you start the lamp up, it starts at the previous setting.
I was able to do some quantitive testing, just to make sure the lamp was delivering on its promises. As far as the efficiency claims go, Dyson was entirely accurate here. The lamp consumed 7W at peak output and under 1W when at its lowest setting, making it extremely power efficient. Using a lux meter I found that at maximum height (24 inches) the lamp produced 1575 lux at full power and 100 at the dimmest setting.
For reference, 1500 is often seen as a minimum point for technical work (think working with small components by hand) and 100 isn’t quite enough to read by at night, but it would be OK to set the mood or provide some illumination while you worked on the computer or search for something on your desk at night. I’m not entirely sure how this meshes with Dyson’s claim of “587lx” but the point is that the CSYS is as bright as it needs to be and the bottom of its range barely provided any light, which is ideal.
During operation the CSYS handled itself quite nicely. It moves up and down with a frictionless ease that just screams “good design.” And then the lamp stays exactly where you put it, which is an impressive feat. The lamp can turn using a single finger but this is a more difficult operation, requiring a firm push on the arm of the lamp. Perhaps the nicest part of using the CSYS is that the LEDs are recessed so there is no glare. This means that lamp can be in front of you, with the LEDs shining on your keyboard and work area, without light shining into your eyes.
Despite the excellent design and excellent application of LEDs, the CSYS is not without its downsides. Some of these are quite minor, like the use of a glossy coating on the counterweight, which doesn’t go nicely with the matte components. It’s a minor complaint, but it’s not in keeping with the industrial design of the lamp.
A more notable complaint is that the lamp doesn’t tilt or rotate. The CSYS moves on three axes — up/down, in/out, and around — but it would be very useful for the LEDs to be able to turn 180-degrees and for them to tilt. This would increase the versatility of the lamp greatly. Unfortunately, copper heatpipes don’t turn or bend, so this might not had been possible given the design. Even so, it’s a flaw in the CSYS. This flaw is exacerbated by the fact that the maximum height of the LED arm is about 24 inches, which means it might hit your computer’s display (or something else that’s not particularly huge) and limit where you can place the light.
Ultimately, the CSYS fits right in the Dyson lineup. It does so quite perfectly because it: is wonderfully designed, addresses an portion of the marketplace that is underserved by good design, and it’s somewhat better than the competition while being wildly more expensive. That is, in a nutshell, the Dyson formula that’s done so well to date, and should continue to serve the company, so long as some small segment of people value lighting in the same way that they do vacuums and fans.
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