Anglepoise Type 75 review

An object, not a gadget

Everything else in this category is an LED panel with a controller. The Type 75 is a spring-balanced arm designed by Sir Kenneth Grange in 2004, descended from George Carwardine's 1930s original, made in a factory that will still repair one you bought twenty years ago.

That matters practically, not just romantically. Anglepoise's guarantee is for life, and they run a repair and rewire service for lamps well outside any warranty. There is no LED panel in this review that will exist as a repairable product in fifteen years.

The mechanism

Constant-tension springs, three joints, and the ability to hold any position you put it in without a knob to tighten. Push it, it moves; let go, it stays. It does not creep down over an afternoon the way cheap arm lamps do, and it does not require you to over-tighten a friction joint until the paint wears off.

After months on a desk, ours holds the same positions with the same effort as on day one.

The bulb question

Most configurations ship without a bulb, which is presented as an inconvenience and is actually the Type 75's biggest advantage over the LED panels here.

You choose the light. Want 2700 K warm for evening reading? Buy that bulb. Want a high-CRI 4000 K for looking at printed colour? Buy that one, for about the price of a coffee. When LED technology improves in five years, buy the improved bulb.

Every sealed LED product in this review is stuck with the light it shipped with, forever, and will be thrown away when the emitters degrade. The Anglepoise will not.

The corollary is that the light quality is your responsibility. Fit a cheap bulb and you get a cheap light from a beautiful lamp.

The screen problem

Here is the reason this does not score higher on a site about desks.

A task lamp lights a cone. Put it beside a monitor and some of that cone hits the screen, and you get a reflection — worse on a glossy panel, present on almost all of them. You can mitigate it by placing the lamp well to the side, low, and angled away, and on a deep desk that works.

On a small desk with a monitor, there is often nowhere to put it that does not either reflect on the screen or light nothing useful. That is not a flaw in the lamp; it is the geometry of task lighting next to a self-illuminated display, and it is why monitor light bars exist.

Our recommendation is to use it where paper is: a reading corner, a desk where you write by hand, the side of a desk where you sign things. Combine it with a ScreenBar for screen work and you have the complete answer.

Choosing the bulb, since you have to

Because the lamp does not decide the light for you, here is what we would fit.

For a desk where you read and write on paper: a 7 to 9 W LED at around 2700 to 3000 K for evening use, or 4000 K if the room is used mostly in daylight. Anything above 4000 K in a domestic room looks clinical.

Look for a stated CRI of 90 or better. Cheap bulbs sit around 80 and render printed colour and skin poorly, which is exactly the job a task lamp exists for.

Check the bulb's physical length before ordering. The Type 75's shade is deep but not infinite, and a long filament-style LED will protrude and glare directly at you.

If you want dimming, buy a dimmable bulb and a plug-in dimmer, or a bulb with built-in step dimming. The lamp offers neither.

Sizes and price

Anglepoise sell the Type 75 in several sizes — Mini, Standard, Midi and larger floor versions — at prices running from roughly £189 to £289 for the desk models depending on size and finish, with designer collaborations above that. The Mini is genuinely small and suits a shelf rather than a desk; the Standard is the one most people want.

Desk versions come with a weighted base, and it is heavy. That is what stops the lamp tipping when the arm is fully extended, and it is desk space you are giving up.

Verdict

8.4. The best-made thing in this category by a distance, and the one that fits a modern screen-centric desk least well. Buy it for the right job and it will outlive you.