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.
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VIVO Height Adjustable Pneumatic Single Monitor Wall Mount Read More
Maybe the desk itself isn’t even square. The variables are too many to address. So give up! Don’t bother. Just attach your monitor to the wall.
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.
Mine 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). You can go more extreme if you like. Dual arms(!) aren't much more expensive and 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 drilling holes in your wall, it can be a little daunting. 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 eventually 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.
