The Cheap Desktop Upgrade That Transformed My Entire Home Office

Sitting at your desk can come with all kinds of focus-destroying indignities. A squeaky chair. Perpetual clutter. Wires that tangle and come loose. But the absolute worst, in my book, is a monitor that wobbles.

If your floor is uneven (like mine) or you have a rug that doesn’t extend under every inch of your desk’s footprint (like mine), you’ve no doubt been on your hands and knees with pieces of cardboard or adjustable feet, fruitlessly trying to get everything perfectly even.

Maybe the desk itself isn’t even square. The variables are too many to address. So give up! Don’t bother. Just do what I did and attach your monitor to the damn wall. Here’s why.

Photo by Eric Limer for Gear Patrol

The benefits of wall-mounting your monitor

When I bought my monitor arm, I had a whole bunch of fanciful use cases in mind: Positioning the display in the corner of the room where it could never perch naturally on its stand. Moving it up and down to make free space on the desk surface for taking written notes. Twisting it 90 degrees for … reasons I never actually came up with.

In practice, I do none of those things regularly but that hardly matters. The freedom from wobble has justified the purchase and the trouble alone. Being able to effortlessly lift and tilt the display for easy access to the back and underside? That’s just gravy.

The affordable wall mount I recommend

The one I use, made by Vivo, is simple: a single arm that can support up to a 27-inch screen. I bought it because it was cheap and it matches my decor. It supports my 27-inch Dell monitor quite admirably (though I occasionally have to tighten some nuts).

Amazon

Vivo Height-Adjustable Pneumatic Single-Monitor Wall Mount

• $38 at Amazon
  $45 (16% off)

You can go more extreme if you like. Dual arms(!) aren’t much more expensive, while various, burlier models can support larger screens if you need.

Vesa mounts are fairly universal, so attaching a display is pretty trivial if you’re handy in the slightest.

If you’re a renter, or generally averse to power tools, it can be a little daunting to drill holes in your hole — especially because a monitor mount really needs to be mounted into studs, which means you have to find them, and the lag bolts you’ll use to attach it are hefty boys.

But patching a few holes in the wall with some spackle and a putty knife is well worth the trouble for a setup that feels rock solid and takes at least some of the ambient stress out of sitting at your desk.

My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

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