Corsair iCUE LT100 Smart Lighting Towers Review

Final Thoughts

I am all for RGB products and especially RGB desk products. Over the years I’ve tried to pimp out my desk with different RGB products so when Corsair asked to send their iCUE LT100 Smart Lighting Towers over I was really excited. The Starter Kit ($109.99) comes with two towers, which are suggested to go behind your monitor. The towers as well as the base light up with some pretty awesome RGB lighting. RGB lighting that is very customizable using Corsair’s iCUE software. With individually controllable LEDs you can really become creative with the lighting.

One of the new lighting modes is called “Video Lighting” where the towers will mimic the colors of what is going on, on your screen. In iCUE you can customize what tower is set to what part of the screen and you can even adjust the size of coverage, which I haven’t seem before. This means that if you are playing a game or watching a video the lighting will dynamically change, which is really cool and makes you feel more immersed.

Now while these Smart Lighting Towers offer some pretty impressive lighting and effects I did notice a few things that bothered me. First off they are towers that are going to be sitting on your desk. This means they are going to take up space and no matter what you are going to see them. For me when I was designing my desk setup I went with a monitor arm so I could free up space under my monitor and go with that “floating” look. Now I have a tower right in the middle of that.

The second thing is that the towers do no have as much coverage as I thought they would. The illumination barely reaches over my monitor (granted it is on an arm) and even with the expansion kit (1 more tower) I was still not able to get as much coverage as what I was getting with the NZXT HUE 2 Ambient Kit, which was installed on the back of my monitor. With the Starter Kit ($129.99) and Expansion Kit ($59.99) you are looking at $169.98, while the HUE 2 Ambient Kit is only $49.99!

Maybe there is too much diffusion on the towers or they shouldn’t have used a diffuser at all? I just wish the coverage was better. Maybe if I moved them further away from the wall I could have got a little better coverage? But then they would be even closer to me cluttering up my setup.

I think that for me the iCUE LT100 Smart Lighting Towers are a swing and a miss. Yes they are going to make your setup look better and add some awesome lighting, but there are other options out there that provide better coverage and don’t require towers to be sitting on your desk. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Corsair iCUE LT100 Smart Lighting Towers a 7 out of 10 score.

rating7 10

Pros:
– Both the base and tower light up
– Very easy to setup
– Excellent controls within iCUE
– “Video Lighting” mode is pretty impressive
– Headset holder included

Cons:
– Not as much coverage as I would have liked that have seen
– You have towers taking up space on your desk
– Price vs competition

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