Not too long ago, I was completely taken aback by the cute yet mighty Logitech Litra Glow — a simple plug-n-play light powerful enough for streaming but small enough to fit in your laptop bag. I loved it. So it almost seems like Logitech heard my thoughts and were like “Hold my beer fam” because they’ve upped the game with one of the most unique lighting accessories I’ve ever seen.
Meet the Logitech Litra Beam LX, a dual-sided RGB streaming key light; and yes, you read that right. The Litra Beam LX has two sides, one with diffused white light and the other with RGB lighting. And if that wasn’t enough, the Litra Beam also has a unique stand that not only telescopes to give you some insane reach, but the lightbar can be oriented in multiple ways thanks to a unique mounting system.
This effectively transforms the light from a key light to desk lamp to background fill light; its really up to your imagination. And you also get multiple ways to control the Litra Beam including Bluetooth controls — like, seriously, Bluetooth! Suffice to say that at an asking price of $269.95, you get a whole lot of light for your money.
Logitech Litra Beam LX Review
The Litra Beam comes in large box that immediately lets on that you are getting a lot of stuff. There’s the light bar itself, a telescoping arm and a solid metal base. You also get a separate power brick with a lengthy cable and a USB-C cable for connection to your computer. The extra brick does add to the number of cables but sadly, the Litra Beam needs far more power than a simple USB connection can provide.
Assembling the Litra Beam LX is a breeze, no screws necessary. The stand also has cable routing hooks and a channel in the base to keep things neat. The bar itself has two threaded screw points, one in the middle for horizontal mounting and another on the end for a more traditional desk lamp mounting. Whichever you go for, you still have leeway to rotate the lightbar as you wish, allowing for a number of use cases. My only issue is that the power cable can sometimes get tangled if you aren’t careful how you rotate the light.
The stand is about a foot tall in standard mode but can telescope to about double that at its maximum height. Depending on how you mount the light bar, you can basically get almost 3 feet of height out this thing. That’s super helpful if you have a large monitor like the behemoth 43-inch Samsung Odyssey Neo G7. And its also great for using the Litra Beam as a monitor lamp when working late at night.
The bar is certified Carbon Neutral and is made from 48% post-consumer recycled plastics. The packaging also comes from the FSC-certified forests so you can enjoy your streaming light knowing that you saved the environment in the process. The bar is 40cm long, 4.2cm thick and 3.5cm tall and weighs just shy of 1.5kilos.
On to the lights, you have the front facing Bi-color light and the rear facing RGB light. In between them is the module for your controls and connections. On top is a power button and a switch to toggle between front and rear light and paddles to adjust brightness, temperature and RGB mode.
The front facing key light emits only white light and uses the same TrueSoft technology found in the Litra Glow. This gives a soft, diffuse light that doesn’t cast harsh shadows and also provides what Logitech calls ‘cinematic lighting’ — apparently perfect if you do cinematic streams, I guess? Regardless, it looks great and illuminates my face and African skin tones well. It gets extremely bright making it great for late night use.
On the rear facing light is where you get your party RGB lighting. It supports 16 million colors and using the G Hub, you can craft as many different lighting presets or dial in that exact shade of lavender to match your stream brand. It’s not as bright as the front light but its enough to illuminate walls or backdrops nicely and to cleverly light up some product shots.
Underneath the lamp are connections for power and USB-C if you want to control the lamp through the G Hub software app. However, there’s also a small, almost missable button to activate Bluetooth pairing for the light. Having wireless connectivity means you can at least do away with the USB cable connection to your computer. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, Bluetooth control only works with the G Hub on PC or Mac but not the mobile app. That’s a missed opportunity and I do hope Logitech adds that functionality like Elgato does.
Speaking of G Hub, the app offers a wealth of intuitive controls for the Litra Beam similar to the Litra Glow. You can adjust colors, temperature, brightness in the app and even save some profiles for quick access. So you can have a Zoom profile for work and then a Streaming profile for later. I like that you can also set the light to automatically turn on whenever your camera is in use. And for the RGB enthusiasts, the Litra Beam works with Logitech LIGHTSYNC allowing you to synchronize its lighting with your other Logitech peripherals.
Verdict
As you can see, the Logitech Litra Beam LX is one versatile light offering not just great lighting, but multiple types of lighting and orientation configurations for every setup. So, not only can you use it as a key light for streaming, you can also use it as a monitor light, desk lamp, fill or ambient light. Its fantastic and a truly great product. I do wish you Bluetooth control was available on the G Hub mobile app but hopefully, Logitech will issue an update with that functionality in the near future. In conclusion, you want an all purpose key light for your desk setup, then get the Litra Beam LX; maybe even two.
Logitech Australia kindly provided the Litra Beam LX to PowerUp! for the purpose of this review
