REVIEW: ​Dyson Solarcycle Morph Desk Light

Dyson, best known for their vacuum cleaners, has a storied history of making eye-catching home appliances with industrial design. The company’s foray into lighting, then, presents an exciting venue for it to flex its utilitarian and aesthetic muscle. This is distilled into Dyson’s Solarcycle Morph Desk Light, a €549 desk lamp with an armature that allows the light to move independently of the cylindrical base.

While the Solarcycle Morph looks undeniably cool when evoking a kerosene lamp of days past, its ingenuity is expressed in the movable arm that contains the actual bulb, which interlocks with the cylinder with a satisfying magnetic click.

Rotating the arm allows the light to be moved fully relative to the base; the upper part of the arm also can be rotated fully itself. This allows for a wide variety of lighting setups such that the Solarcycle can be directed anywhere in your room, including the traditional room lamp setup of straight up. This versatility in the Solarcycle being able to act as a warm ambient light, directed task light, or general room light is one of its most appealing qualities.

There’s also a built-in USB Type-C port on the stem of the lamp which is handy for connecting up your phone or tablet for charging without having to run another power cord across your desk.

The “morph” in the name refers to both this physical flexibility as well as the capability of the LED to go from 2700-6500K, the gamut of warm white to cold white, when not docked in the cylinder. The orange filter in the cylinder limits its capabilities there to 1800-3400K. A slider for brightness and color temperature, along with the power button, is on the top of the arm.

All of these are capacitive areas, operated by touch. On the underside of the arm, there are three buttons: the auto brightness toggle, the motion sensor toggle, and the Solarcycle Morph’s real magic: the automatic color temperature toggle.

Of course, there is an app for a light in this day and age, and in this case it pairs with the light over Bluetooth and syncs your location with the light so that it can emulate the color temperature outside in your specific location. Unfortunately, it doesn’t factor in real-time weather or any other things that affect real conditions, but having the correct sunset and sunrise times means the light is able to function quite well as a sunrise lamp.

The app also allows controls for more cool features, such as the light adapting brightness for your age and being able to set exact brightness and temperature values along with scheduling. Dyson has also made a handful of presets available if you don’t want to bother with meticulously setting Kelvin values.

Overall, the app worked well and its UI/UX matched the sleek, minimalist, and futuristic feel of the light itself.

The Solarcycle Morph is not cheap. But it does have a stunning design that wouldn’t be out of place in Blade Runner 2049. It is also very effective in terms of displaying a wide variety of color temperatures and doing so based on the sunset/sunrise in your area.

Conclusion

Its rock solid build quality and ability to make people deliberately gawk at such a household fixture makes it worthy to recommend for those who want a defining statement in premium lighting.

Dyson Solarcycle Morph Desk Lamp Pricing & Availability

The Dyson Solarcycle Morph Desk Light is available from Dyson.ie for €549.99