Hey everyone. Welcome back to Permaslug. My name is Jonathan and this is a continuation of my product review series. Before this I set up the new ultrawide gaming desk that I bought and then after this I also have the boom-mic install that I cover as well. What I wanted to do today is talk to you about the dual monitor stand that I bought, which is a gas adjustable, really nice monitor stand that I got off of Amazon and it’s not terribly expensive.
There was really just a couple of things that I wanted in this new monitor stand and that is more desk space. I wanted to get the monitors up off the desk so I could put things underneath it and reclaim some desk space. I wanted to be able to easily adjust the monitors and have more than one set up configuration so that it could be more than side by side. We could be stacked on top of each other, or one be vertical, one be horizontal, et cetera. And then also have good cable management, which this product does.
First Impressions
My first impressions right out of the box are that the quality of each individual item is good and almost everything is metal. Everything was well packaged and appears to be sturdy. The hardware that’s included is big and bulky, so I wasn’t afraid that a bolt was too small or anything like that. I was impressed. The assembly process is pretty straightforward and the instructions are actually pretty decent.
Setup Process
You start by clamping the stand to the desk and there’s actually two different clamp styles. In this case there’s the C clamp that you screw to the desk and part of the reason why I bought the desk that I did in the previous product review is that the desktop was thick enough that I had no doubt the monitor stand could clamp to the desk. You can also do another clamp type, which I don’t think most people will do because it involves screwing stuff through the desk, but you certainly can do that if you want something that’s a bit more sturdy.
The next step after that is to screw in the vertical pole that the monitor arms will actually mount to. And then there’s these little circle shaped mounts that hold the arms up so you position it where you think you want it. You tighten that little clamp down and then you slide the monitor arm on top of that.
From there you are ready to put the arms together and that doesn’t take much. There’s just one little bolt that goes in on top of a washer and then there’s a cap to cover up the bolt, which is nice. And then you’ll want to attach the VESA mounts to your displays. From there it’s going to take a while to kind of adjust everything accordingly. All in all including the adjustment and assembly, it took me probably about three hours. So it is quite a bit of time, but once you kind of get the setup dialed in, you’ll be really happy with it and the time investment doesn’t seem at all negative. It was really worthwhile for me.
VESA Compatibility
One thing to note is to make sure your monitors are actually VESA capable because you’ll notice in the earlier photos in this review there’s a different monitor than the ones that this review ends up with. I thankfully had two other monitors at my office that matched that were VESA capable. And one of the two here at my home office was not VESA capable. So this actually works out better because these two monitors match and they’re both VESA capable and these other two will be going back to my office.
The VESA mounts come with a cool quick release mechanism. So if you need to get them off, it’s not very difficult. Although I’m not sure exactly why you would want to remove these monitors on a regular basis, but you have the ability to if you need to.
Ergonomics
The ergonomics I absolutely love. One thing that I think has been really tremendous for me that I hadn’t thought about was that the neck strain component of working on the computer all day. With my monitors too low, I felt a neck pain at the end of the day that I wasn’t really aware of until now.
Now what I can do with the monitors up higher on this monitor stand is I can sit back with my head on the head rest of my chair and look up at the screens instead of my head tilting down, which has been really great to help reduce the neck strain. Which again I didn’t really consider as something that would be a positive benefit of this product.
Adjustments
In terms of the ease of adjustment, you can tilt the monitors up and down. You can go left to right and the tensioner for raising and lowering the monitor stands is really nice. It’s super easy. To get that dialed in, there’s a little screw on the back of the arm to control the tension, either stronger or lighter depending on the monitors weight. I had to tighten mine what felt like quite a bit to get the arms to hold my monitors in place. Once you get that screwed in, then the monitors will hold themselves, but you can still move them up and down at whatever position you want without adjusting the tensioner further.
Like I mentioned earlier, you can do any configuration you want for these screens with some caveats depending on the screen size. I have two 24 inch monitors and I’m really easily able to stack these if I wanted. I can make them go side by side, I could do one vertical and one horizontal side by side. Lots of different configurations that you might want are possible with this, but you’ll need to consider the length of your cables and then also the size of your monitors. Although this product can support 27 inch monitors and more, I don’t think you’d be able to stack them vertically with that due to the height constraints of monitors that big.
It does take time to achieve the layout you want, especially with the component of cable management. But after that three hours that I mentioned earlier, it really is fantastic. I can’t actually see any of the cables because I took the time to do the cable management and there are actually a little cable management channels in the arms of the unit here, but I didn’t use those. I just used some zip ties to sort of lightly hold up the cable so I couldn’t see them beneath the monitors.
Things to Note
One thing to consider is the layout you’re going to have to achieve if your desk is right up against the wall. I actually had to pull my desk a little bit forward just due to the way that the monitor arms stick out in the back, but it wasn’t that big of a deal because it’s not like I’m sitting two feet from the wall. I’m maybe four or five inches from the wall.
Cable Management
What I love about this product is that I can’t see any of the cables at all underneath the monitor or even going down the vertical pole because of the fact that there are these little cable management clips and so they’re hidden behind that pole and they’re also hidden because I attached them to the monitor arms. That way I wouldn’t be able to see the cables really at all. Besides that center of vertical pole. It seems like the monitors are kind of floating, which is awesome, as a result of that cable management. If you take the time to do it, you definitely reap the rewards.
Overall Thoughts
I have more desk space now because things can go underneath the monitors, which is really awesome. That was a thing that I was really interested in, is reclaiming some desk space. I’ve been able to achieve that with this product. Again, the monitors are higher up now so the next drain isn’t nearly as bad. I can put my head back on the head rest of my chair and my desk looks way more clean and I love that. The fact that the monitors are up off the desk gives you a really nice look. You reclaim that desk space and all the other stuff that I mentioned still applies as well.
Click here to see this product on Amazon.
Overall, I think this is a really great product and great value for the price, so if you have any questions at all, just go ahead and buy this and you won’t be disappointed. Be sure to check out my other reviews on the gaming ultra wide desk and the blue snowball monitor boom arm. In addition to that, be sure to check out my YouTube channel at youtube.com/permaslug for WordPress and website design related content.