4 ways a monitor arm changed the way I work

Over the years, I’ve added and swapped out several peripherals from my setup. While I’ve always appreciated a good mouse or a high-quality mechanical keyboard, I used to shy away from monitor mounting arms because they seemed like a lot of trouble to set up.

However, I recently decided to bite the bullet and ordered a monitor arm for my dual-screen workspace. Surprisingly, setting everything up took less than an hour. After I had attached my monitors, I finally realized my folly: I should have invested in a monitor arm a lot sooner! If, like me, you’re still on the fence about this incredible accessory, then here are four reasons why you ditch your monitor stand in favor of a mounting arm.

4 Solid swivel and height adjustment

I couldn’t even pan my monitors around when I used their official stands

Although premium displays like the Dell UltraSharp U2723QE and LG UltraWide 49WQ95C tend to possess high-quality stands that come with decent swivel, height, and tilt ranges, they are far from the norm. In fact, the stands included in most budget displays can barely support tilting, let alone allow you to adjust the monitor height.

My old Acer monitors, too, came with your run-of-the-mill stands, so I was used to their standard orientation and positioning. Imagine my joy when I was finally able to position the monitors to my liking. Plus, even the most affordable mounting arms provide significantly larger tilt, swivel, rotation, and height adjustments than your average monitor stand.

3 More desk space

Monitor stands can occupy more space than you might imagine

Confession time: With my Raspberry Pi projects and PCs requiring loads of cables, my workspace isn’t exactly what you’d call organized. The lack of space on my desk was the very reason why I purchased a mounting arm. Turns out, getting rid of the monitor stands is easily the best way to reclaim a lot of space, especially if the stands have triangular bases that occupy a lot more area than round or square ones.

In fact, propping my displays up on a mounting arm freed up so much desk space underneath them, that I could add two or three more peripherals, and still have a clean-looking setup.

2 Better cable management

You can even hide the cables inside the arm!

Besides the extra space, monitor arms are way better at hiding cables than your average stand. For starters, many arms ship with cable management hooks and supports. With a few Velcro straps, you can bundle all the display and power cables, and use the hooks to secure them behind the monitor arm.

And that’s before we consider the mounting arms that feature built-in cable channels, allowing you to route all your monitor wires through them, thereby getting rid of most of the cable clutter in your workspace.

1 Being able to position my monitors in portrait mode

Truly a godsend for coding

Although stands with swivel and height adjustments are uncommon, those that let you rotate your monitor by 90 degrees are far rarer. This is where a mounting arm excels; once you’ve attached the monitor to the arm, you can rotate one (or even all) of your monitors and turn it into a vertical display.

If you’re someone with a dual-screen setup, I’d advise trying out a monitor in portrait mode at least once. From checking Discord and Slack messages to reading PDF files and editing spreadsheets, running your secondary monitor as a vertical display can make your workflow a lot smoother. But coding is easily the field that benefits the most from a monitor in portrait orientation. Trust me, being able to see almost twice as many lines of your code is a game-changer when you’re working with a project that has hundreds of lines of code.

Should you make the switch to a monitor arm?

While I’ve highlighted many reasons to go for a gas spring or wall-mounted monitor arms, there are a couple of situations when you might want to stick to the official stand. Ultrawide monitors, for instance, can cause the arm to become encumbered and start sagging. If you’re using a particularly large ultrawide display, it’s even possible for the monitor arm to fail and damage the screen. Otherwise, a monitor arm is easily one of the best non-essential PC components for gamers and professionals alike.

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