Rechargeable LED Hat Lamp

This lamp is shaped like a small hat, with the brim acting as the shade and the crown holding the light, and the form turns out to be well suited to what it does. A wide flat brim directs light downward and outward in a controlled circle, so the lamp lights the surface it sits on rather than throwing glare across the room, which is exactly what you want from a light that sits at eye level on a desk or a bedside table. The proportions are compact, so it occupies very little of a surface that is usually already carrying a laptop, a book and a cup. What makes it genuinely different from an ordinary table lamp is that it is cordless. A rechargeable battery and USB charging mean the lamp is not tethered to a socket and does not need one nearby, which changes where it can live. It can sit on the far side of a room from the nearest outlet, move from a desk to a bedside for the evening, go out onto a balcony table, or come off a shelf during a power cut. Anyone who has arranged furniture around the position of a plug socket, or run an extension lead across a floor for the sake of one lamp, will recognise the problem this removes.

Control is by touch rather than a switch, which suits a lamp of this size: there is no toggle to hunt for in the dark and no cable to knock, just a tap on the body. Being clear about the category matters, because it determines whether you will be happy with it. This is an ambient and accent light. It is well suited to a soft glow on a bedside table that you can turn down before sleep, to a warm pool of light on a shelf or a console, to a desk beside a screen where a bright task lamp would fight the monitor, and to a dinner table where candles would otherwise do the work. It is not intended to light a whole room and it is not the right lamp for reading small print for an hour. Five colours are offered, in deep grey, black, gold, orange green and blue green, which is a wider spread than most small lamps bother with. The neutral finishes disappear into a room; the gold reads warmer and suits a space with brass or gold hardware already in it; the two green tones are the deliberate accents and work best where the lamp is meant to be seen as an object during the day as well as a light at night.

A few practical notes on living with a rechargeable lamp, since they behave differently from corded ones. Quoted battery life on any rechargeable light assumes moderate brightness, so running it at full output all evening will shorten the figure noticeably; using it at the lower settings, which is what an ambient lamp is for anyway, gets much closer to the stated run time. Lithium cells also prefer not to sit fully flat for months, so if the lamp goes into a drawer for a season it is worth charging it first and topping it up occasionally. Charging is over a standard USB connection, which means any phone charger, laptop port or power bank will do the job and there is no proprietary adapter to lose or replace at an inflated price. The real advantage of cordless lighting is behavioural rather than technical: because moving it costs nothing, it gets moved and used far more than a corded lamp in the same house would. Care is a dry cloth, and the lamp should be kept away from water despite its portability, since the charging port is an opening like any other. Treated as the portable ambient light it is, it is genuinely useful.

• Power: Built-in rechargeable battery, USB charging
• Control: Touch-operated - no switch or cable
• Design: Hat silhouette with a light-directing brim
• Output: Ambient and accent light, not a task lamp
• Colours: Deep Grey, Black, Gold, Orange Green, Blue Green
• Portable: Use on desks, bedsides, shelves, balconies
• Care: Dry cloth; keep the charging port away from water

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