After-market monitor arms are one of those “upgrades” you can perform that I never saw the need for. I mean, I’ve already spent several hundred dollars on a nice monitor for work and gaming, why would I spend another $50 on a stand for it to replace the perfectly good one the screen came with?
It turns out that the answer is because they’re just better. And not in the $1,000-Apple-stand better kind of way. Just that bit better. And when you’re on a quest to reduce back pain in your office, you’ll try just about anything.
So my latest venture was replacing my monitor stands with a third-party solution. And I wish I’d done it years ago.
I’m a big fan of multi-monitor setups. They’re great for boosting productivity and for giving you a good look at Discord or a Wiki page while gaming. I love it so much that staff writer Jacob Roach and I even had a the tech-journo equivalent of a fight over whether ultrawides are better. But with the constant churn of new PC hardware through my office, I’m a stickler for making the most out of the hardware I have. I want whatever I’m working with to do just that: work. And that’s meant that I have some serious legacy hardware still in use. Like a 15-year-old monitor.
That 24-inch monitor isn’t just a bit bulky — it also has a chunky stand, with typical 2008-era lack of maneuverability. Combine that with a slightly more mobile Asus MG279Q from a more modern era, and I’ve simply gotten used to them being at mismatched heights and imperfect angles. Well, that’s no longer an issue with a third-party monitor arm. I’ve got them set up almost perfectly in line, and crucially, all at a comfortable height for me to work at, discouraging further slouching or eye strain.
They’re angled more comfortably, too, so everything feels about roughly the same distance from my eyeballs. Finally, I can enjoy something of an emulation of the curved screen wonders of Jacob’s ultrawides. I’m not jealous, honest.
With my myopic focus on improving posture and reducing pain, I didn’t even consider how much extra space using a desk clamp monitor arm would free up. While the old Dell’s stand was pretty big, the newer Asus one wasn’t much better. With a desk clamp dual-arm setup, I suddenly have a couple extra square feet of desk space, which makes a massive difference, especially when my desk is getting a bit messy.
When I got my fancy new Uplift desk, I told myself I’d finally route all the cables so they were out of sight and, ideally, out of mind. At the time, with my old monitor stands, that meant a lot of cable ties and double-sided tape tucked round the back of the desk. Over time, though, as the desk has gone up and down and the tape’s tackiness has waned, my tidied cables aren’t quite what they once were.
Switching over to a dual monitor arm made for a great opportunity to fix that and it helped a lot with it, too. The arms have their own built-in cable runners, covering the most important and inelegant portion of the cable run:from monitor back to under the desk. From there, it’s much easier to hide the cables from sight, making for a more negative space-filled office space, which feels like it aids productivity and reduces my ever-present drive to procrastination.
Intrigued by my monitor arm journey and want to join me in this new wondrous world of maneuverability? Here are the most important factors to consider when buying a monitor arm:
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.