Reviewing and Testing the SKYVIEW 2: The World’s Most Advanced Circadian Lamp

I recently bought the SKYVIEW 2 lamps to try for myself to run through our usual battery of tests, so if you’re looking for info on this light, you’ve come to the right place!

While I was using them, my wife kept on saying “ooo that’s pretty” and she was not wrong!

I’ve been using them for a while now both at my desk and as a bedside lamp, and in this article, we’ll go in-depth into the SKYVIEW’s spectral properties, features, and my opinion on their usefulness as a lighting wellness product.

The SkyView 2 Circadian Lamps

The SKYVIEW lamps claim to recreate the health benefits of sunlight through optimal circadian scheduled lighting right at your desk or bedside.

But do they?

There are currently two SKYVIEW lamps available, the SKYVIEW 2 and the SKYVIEW 2 Pro:

The difference between the two is mostly in build quality, with the Pro model being made out of glass and a heavy aluminum base, while the normal model is a bit more plastic-y.

At this time the Pro model offers a “Dynamic Cloud Cover” option that the base model doesn’t.

Specifications

While BIOS claims the Pro model gives off more total lumens, I measured the lux from both lamps to be about the same.

The cord length on the Pro is about

Base:
22w
2.4lb
116in or 9.7 ft

Pro:
23w
9lb
63in or 5.25 feet

How Does the SKYVIEW 2 Work?

The SKYVIEW 2 uses several different LEDs to flow through different lighting modes throughout a 24-hour period:

• Sunrise
• Daytime
• Sunset
• Evening
• Night

These settings can be customized further which we’ll get into later. I’ve also tested everything with a spectrometer so we can see exactly what kind of light the SKYVIEW 2 is giving off!

The SKYVIEW 2 Pro Model

The pro model is a bit different in that you have to put it together:

Putting it together is very easy, just plug the light engine in and screw on the glass globe.

The brains of the operation:

Setting up Your SKYVIEW

When you get your lamp, the first thing you have to do is connect it to the app. Once plugged in it will begin to flash red indicating it’s ready to pair.

The included manual walks you through this process well and I had no issues with the pairing process with either of my lamps.

Basic Scheduling

The biggest standout feature of SKYVIEW is its automated circadian rhythm scheduling, which is ver simple to set up.

After pairing you’ll be presented with this screen:

Just click and swipe through to here:

You have the option of setting your lamp to mimic your local sunset and sunrise, which you’re more than welcome to use, however, I’d recommend using a schedule that fits your lifestyle.

To do this, select Customize. You’ll then be asked when you wake up and go to bed, for me that’s about 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

After this SKYVIEW will create a dynamic circadian schedule for you!

Custom Scheduling

You can however go on to the Detailed Setup if you want to customize the day-by-day rules:

After finalizing this you’ll be shown the summary of your personal circadian schedule:

The Circadian Schedule

Once your lamp has been fully set, you’ll be shown the Home screen which gives you a nice visual representation of your lamp’s lighting schedule.

I think it’s time to dive into some science!

Sunrise/Sunset

A typical sunrise starts with a dim blue sky followed by a warm orange/red/purple light.

The SKYVIEW’s sunrise transition does a pretty good job of mimicking this!

The sunrise starts out as a dim light blue color and the bottom of the lamp slowly illuminates the red LEDs giving it a slightly purple glow that becomes a bit more red/orange as the sunrise continues.

It’s very difficult to capture this on camera, but the sunrise looks kind of like this at the end:

You can edit the duration of the sunrise in the app.

From the main screen, under Settings click on Edit Schedule.

From here the top option Saturday Sunrise will show you the customizations you can make. For Sunrise, it’s really just the start time and duration.

And that’s about it! I think this is a cool feature and it’s one of the most unique approaches to a sunrise I’ve seen yet.

If you haven’t checked it out, we have a good article on how beneficial waking up to a simulated sunrise can be.

Daytime

This is the mode your SKYVIEW lamps will spend most of their time in.

It’s dominated by a blue light at the top followed by a transition into a slightly warm white light on the bottom.

One thing worth noting is that the Pro model gives you the option to introduce what they call Dynamic Cloud Cover while the base model doesn’t have this feature.

This gives the lamp a very subtle variation change over time that I think subliminally makes it feel a bit more comfortable and realistic.

You can choose how much blue light you want in your daytime mode. I’d keep the blue light maxed out since this will help the SKYVIEW be as effective as possible.

Sunset

The sunset is basically the sunrise in reverse, and it can also be changed from 5 to 60 minutes. It does have one extra setting you can change though…

You can select between Full Sunset and Half Sunset.

Full Sunset features 1 second of complete darkness before the evening mode kicks on, while Half Sunset forgoes the complete darkness and jumps right into the evening.

There’s not a huge difference here, just personal preference. Half Sunset is the default setting.

Evening

The evening mode is defaulted to being on for around 3 hours before your bedtime, so it functions well as a visual reminder that you should begin to wind down for the day.

You can adjust this mode to be anywhere from red to a fairly white color.

I found I preferred the color just above red, once you mix in just a little bit of the soft white LED it gives off a really nice calming rose gold sort of color.

Here’s a reading I took of the evening mode from the white setting over to the red/orange side.

As you can see you probably don’t want to be using the white setting on the right side of the dial, there’s quite a bit of blue light over there!

Night

The night mode allows you to set anywhere from pure red light to a red/amber light.

I opt for only red light since as soon as you mix in amber on the SKYVIEW you’re adding in blue and green light which I lie to avoid late at night.

Here’s a look at what’s being emitted from the SKYVIEW when only the red LEDs are turned on:

Not bad! Not a super narrow red LED which I kind of like.

Quick Modes

The SKYVIEW 2 lamps come equipped with 4 quick modes that can be enabled from within the app.

These allow you to temporarily bypass the circadian schedule with one of 4 settings:

• Sleeping
• Reading
• Relaxing
• Working

Sleeping Mode

Sleeping mode is just the red light.

This could be handy if you want to skip ahead to this setting earlier than usual in your evening routine.

Reading Mode

This turns on a 3000K white light, great for reading in the evening.

Here’s a spectral graph of this light:

Relaxing Mode

Relaxing mode turns on a 2200K warm white similar to how I like to set my evening mode.

And here’s the spectrum from this:

Working Mode

This just enables daytime mode on full brightness! Pretty simple.

Testing Results

How effective is this lamp really?

Well BIOS recommends using their lamps at 3 feet away from you, which seems really far to me.

None the less we tested these at 1, 2, and 3 feet.

Spectrum

I wasn’t expecting it but the SKYVIEW 2 and Pro models emit slightly different light:

As you can see the pro model emits a bit more of a broad range of colors than the base model.

The base model emits around 6600K while the Pro is more like 7700K so they’re both quite blue.

Total Light Output

Here’s a graph comparing the relative spectral output from both lamps:

It looks to me like the Base model emits a bit more total light even though the Pro is advertised as doing this.

Comparing the lux output at 1 foot for both lamps, we see that they perform relatively similarly.

As you can see at the recommended 3-foot usage distance they’re outputting less than 200 lux which is quite low, but I don’t think most people have desks this large anyway…

Measuring circadian light, a spectrally weighted metric to show how much melanopically sensitive light is present, we see they also perform about the same here as well.

These are much dimmer than most SAD lamps, and that’s okay!

This makes them far more visually comfortable and since the light is heavy in blue it’s also plenty effective, meeting all the minimum requirements for circadian activation.

My Experience Using the SKYVIEW 2 Lamps

The setup is super easy, and the lamps are beautiful. I enjoyed using mine at my office desk and as a bedside lamp.

I’ll still be using my DIY SAD lamp though, because it’s much brighter and more effective at making me feel energized during the day.

However, if you’ve tried other traditional SAD lamps and found them too bright and uncomfortable, this might be the solution you’ve been looking for!