Not as bright as a typical floor/desk lamp, but bright enough to light up the room for general purposes. I reflect it off the ceiling above my bed to read by before I go to sleep. I also set it to slowly come on starting 30 minutes before my radio clock comes on - great for slowly raising the light level when you have to get up before dawn.
I made a home-made spectroscope using a music CD and a cardboard box with a slit in it, and I checked the spectrum of all of the light sources around me: Sunlight has a smooth, complete spectrum; Incandescent also has a smooth spectrum, but often weak in the blue; Flourescent has bright bands in red, yellow, green, and a weak band in blue, with dark bands between these colors; White LED flashlights, and the BlueMax both have banding similar to Flourescents, but the blue light is a little stronger (hence the bluish tint as compared to other lights - in reality it is probably more white, but we are used to other lights that are yellowish or just lacking in blue.) So, I HOPE, but I can't prove, that it will provide some extra blue spectrum to help my skin make vitamin D during winter months. Since it is low voltage (12volt at the lamp) and it hardly produces any heat at all, I feel comfortable laying on the bed, reading using the room light and using the BlueMax to shine on my pasty white legs! - not enough to tan by, but enough intensity to (supposedly) provide light therapy and maybe even give me some Vitamin D.
The controls are a little quirky, but once you learn what they do, it's okay. Otherwise, it does what it is supposed to do: Provide an alarm clock based light that will come on slowly to sort of simulate dawn, or slowly turn off to fall asleep by.
If you don't mind the cost, and you are not expecting miracles, I would recommend it to anyone who likes LED lights and wants a nice, versatile, house current powered LED light source.
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