What’s on my home office desk

Now more than ever, it seems like people are really enjoying talking about remote work. Every single day a new comparison post comes up putting side by side the benefits of work-from-home vs work-from-office. Although this discussion may become silly at some point, the truth is that a distraction free setup is a must have whether you’re working from home or in an office.

My personal setup has plenty of elements. Some of them that have been with me for a few years. They are reliable and I don’t really feel the need to upgrade them. Others, I wouldn’t mind replacing.

Desk

Let’s start with the most obvious one, the surface you’ll be working on.
I was never a fan of standup desks. I already spend a good portion of my day standing up. The last thing I need is to be uncomfortable while working.

I went the simple route here and got an IKEA LINNMON—200 by 60 cm—worktop with a couple of IKEA ALEX drawer sets. Both white.

In the past I had a similar setup but with a solid wood top. And that’s one of the things I would like to replace, the desk top. The all-white one looks dirty all the time and it may be distracting at times. I don’t mind having a bit of dust on it as much as I do noticing it.

One day, I might end up building a solid wood desk. One day™.

Chair

Arguably, one of the most important elements of any setup—unless you’re standing—is where you sit. After using a bunch of chairs in the past, starting with some cheap ones from the local office center and then quickly jumping on an IKEA one that seemed like a huge upgrade at the time, I decided I wouldn’t be switching chairs every couple of years anymore.

So I bit the bullet and got myself a Herman Miller Aeron.

Yes, it is expensive. But it is so comfortable that I don’t even imagine ever going back to another chair.
There are 3 aspects of a chair I have special attention to: material, ventilation and armrests.

The Aeron tackles the first two at the same time. It’s a synthetic material, unfortunately, but the good thing is that it’s plenty strong and because it’s just a mesh, it naturally conforms to your body and ventilates at the same time. Making it one of the most comfortable chairs I’ve ever sat on.

As for the armrests, they have plenty of cushion to not become uncomfortably stiff and are configurable in many ways. Can’t complain.

Keyboard

Just like the chair, I have gone through plenty of keyboards in the past. Ever since I started getting into mechanical keyboards I tried a tenkeyless layout, then a 60% layout, then a 75% layout and lastly, the one I’m currently using, a 65% layout.

It’s the NuPhy Halo 65.
It’s still not the perfect one, as I think I would like to experiment with different switches a little bit. But it’s compact enough to carry in a backpack if needed, while providing plenty of keys to work with.

My main issue with the 60% layout was the fact that it lacked some keys I use a lot on a daily basis. Especially the cursor keys. I had to rely on key combinations for those. After 1 year of trying to get used to it, I got tired of it and switched.

The Halo 65 also comes with a frosted acrylic palm rest, and since both the keyboard and desk top are white, it works really well together. Connects via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi dongle or even a cable, whatever works best for you.

Mouse

The mouse is one of those things that it’s not really an exciting part of my setup, but I need one. I was never into the Magic Mouse from Apple. My hand doesn’t like it at all. It always felt like I had my hand as if I was holding something really hot just with the tips of my fingers.

The one I’m currently using is a Logitech MX Master 3.
I’ve used plenty of Logitech mice in the past and always liked them. This one is no exception. But it’s far from perfect. For instance, the skid plates are constantly dirty—not sure if it’s just me. So much so that it starts to become sticky at some point and doesn’t glide on my desk as it should. Oh, I don’t use any mousepad, that might just be it, I don’t know.

But it is comfy to hold and I really appreciate the horizontal scrolling next to the thumb. Then the free wheel scrolling, or whatever they call it, makes for a really smooth scrolling experience, which I also like. It also has plenty of buttons I don’t take advantage of. If anything, I would like it to be a bit bigger, heavier and with friction-less skid plates.

I do like the fact that it charges up really fast and then takes a bunch of weeks to need a new charge again.

Laptop

Being completely honest with you, if I were to buy a new computer right now, I wouldn’t get a laptop. It’s true that the versatility of having a laptop is great. You can lift it from your desk and go work on the couch. Or fold it down, put it in your backpack and work from the local library.

Truthfully, I’ve done this a total of zero times over the years.

My laptop lives on my desk. I close the lid at the end of the day and lift it on the next day. That’s it. It’s constantly connected to power. It’s a desktop computer in a shell of a laptop.

It’s a 14 inch MacBook Pro M1 Pro from 2021 and I got it from my last job at Sketch. Can’t really complain about these M1 Pro chips. Takes care of pretty much everything I throw at it, even though I don’t play games nor do I use very graphics intensive software such as 3D modeling or video editing—there was a time. I use it mainly for web development and photo editing. The size is the sweet spot for me. Not too small and not too big.

But again, if I were to buy a new one today, I would likely go for a Mac mini. Smaller footprint, plenty of juice for what I need, and since I already have a keyboard, mouse and display, I wouldn’t need to buy anything else.

Laptop stand

Most people I worked with didn’t have a laptop stand. They improvised with small boxes or printer paper packages. From my personal experience, if you work with a laptop and actually use its screen, it’s just as important to lift that screen from your desk as your main monitor.

Of course it depends on the setup you’re going with, but most people, just like me, have the main monitor front and center and then the laptop to the side. For instance, my main monitor is lifted 26 cm off the desk so that I don’t need to look down and strain my neck while doing so.

Then I use the laptop stand—the Boyata N19—to align the screen of the laptop with the main monitor. The stand itself is very robust. It’s 4 mm thick aluminum throughout. And the hinges are so strong that you need quite a bit of force to move them, which is nice because it guarantees they won’t move on their own or just because you’re typing on your laptop’s keyboard.

I just don’t like the too in-your-face poor branding but I got used to it by now. Likely the cheapest item on my desk and the one I would recommend the quickest.

Monitor

A good monitor makes a big difference in the life of a designer. The one I’m using is not perfect and could be improved in many ways—color spectrum is not the best, resolution could be better and I would personally appreciate thinner bezels.

It’s the LG 34UC88W.
It’s a 34 inch super wide curved display. The curve might not be for everyone, but when I’m sitting in front of it I don’t even notice it. 34 inch is not a small size by any means, but I think I would go for a bigger one the next time, 39 inch perhaps.

But the thing I would like to improve on this is the resolution. This is a 3440x1440 screen, so around 110 PPI. Compared to the MacBook Pro I’m using, which has a value of 250 PPI, it’s a very noticeable difference! Especially when you have them side by side as I do. And this is matte while the MacBook is glossy.

Either way, I like this! The fact that I don’t have the weird double bezel situation of a double monitor setup is quite nice! I was never too fond of the double monitor setup because I spent a humongous amount of time perfectly aligning them so that I wouldn’t see anything through the joined edges.

A wide monitor is way better for a seamless experience, and on this one I can also feed the laptop with a single cable (Thunderbolt) through the monitor stand, which makes for a very clean desk too.

Monitor stand

The reason for this element to be relevant in the first place is the same reason the laptop stand is: ergonomics. I could have just used the default monitor stand and I would be set. In fact, I worked like this for years before investing in a monitor stand.

The stand I’m using is the Fully Jarvis Single Monitor Arm—so not a stand, but an arm.
It clamps to your desk and holds the monitor through the VESA mount. It’s then easily positioned where you want. You can move it left or right, up or down and even rotate, which I never do.

It’s also white so it goes hand in hand with all the other white elements on my desk.

Lamp

Sometimes, especially during winter, it’s dark but we’re still working. For those moments you will need some lights in the office. Some opt for top-down lighting, others opt for monitor lights. I myself have always been a fan of a good desk lamp. It illuminates just what’s needed without creating such a bright atmosphere that it becomes hard to focus on what you’re doing.

The one I have—Mi Desk Lamp 1S—is just what I needed.
It really is just a light strip on top of a stand pointing down at your desk. I have mine at the side of the desk so that I don’t even get bothered by the light. It’s just there to bring some light but not in my face.

As you might have guessed, this one is a smart lamp, which makes it easy to control remotely or integrate with some kind of automation you might want. Mine, for instance, gets turned on when I start working and it’s dark in the office. And then turned off when I got to sleep. All within Home Assistant.

The lamp supports a wide white spectrum color range and can be fully controlled with just 1 dial on the base of the lamp. I personally only use it in the warm white setting.

Headphones

If you’re like me, you need music to be able to focus. And sometimes the wrong kind of music will do more harm than good. It’s not always the same kind of music. That’s the reason why I listen to stuff ranging from what some would consider “death metal” to things like “chill hop” and “lofi beats”.

What I use to listen to music most of the time are the Sony WH-1000XM4.
The noise canceling is good, but it won’t stop you from listening to your doorbell ringing. They are very light and comfortable to wear for hours. As for the battery, just like the mouse, I don’t even bother. It charges so quickly and lasts so long that it’s just like it doesn’t have one.

The fact that these charge from USB-C is perfect for me because my keyboard and mouse also do. So effectively I only need a single cable to charge any of these peripherals. Quite a dream!

Speakers

There are days, when you’re alone at home, and you don’t want small pancakes over your ears heating them up. This is exactly why I have the old Edifier S330D 2.1 set of speakers on my desk. These come with a woofer that’s sitting on the floor too.

I’m not the best person to talk about them, sound wise. These are fairly small, so no miracles can come out of it. But they can get me blasting some tunes from time to time! And the woofer adds a nice kick to the otherwise uninspiring sound the small speakers produce.

Webcam

There was a time when a webcam was an absolute must for me. Not right now. I haven’t been employed in more than 2 years, so I don’t really have a need for one right now. But the one I have was plenty at the time. It’s a Logitech C920, a small 1080p camera that clamps at the top of the monitor and lights up blue when it’s being used.

Not amazing quality, but I’m not trying to shoot a movie with it either. For showing my face on meetings it’s more than enough. Especially considering that behind me is a very clean wall, so I didn’t even need to use any artificial backgrounds. Perhaps nowadays there are better quality ones like 2K or even 4K. But again, it’s just so that your team can see your face in a 200px wide square on their end. You don’t really need high resolution for that, do you?

Microphone

And just like the webcam, the microphone is also catching up dust on my desk as of lately. It’s a small Blue Snowball, with which one can get a pretty decent and clear cardioid voice pattern out of but nothing worth writing home about.

I mean, it’s clear, especially if you talk directly into it and have it close to your face. Most of the time, mine is just sitting right after my keyboard, so there’s a small distance between the microphone and me.

People never complained about it on the other end, but it’s true that I could have used a better setup. Perhaps a microphone stand that would allow me to position it next to my face when I need it and then move away when I don’t. But it always felt overkill for the amount of meetings I had, to be honest.

There is, however, one small nitpick I have with this microphone. The red LED that turns on when the microphone is connected to power. There is no way to turn it off. And it’s just too bright. So much so that I usually have the microphone turned off, not for privacy reasons, but actually to not have a bright LED shining on my face all the time. I wish there was a physical switch for this, but instead I have to take the cable out every single time. It’s USB-B by the way. Not a common interface, but that’s what it is.

Bottom line

I hope this long post helped you in any way in case you’re interested in any of these. I can’t complain too much about any of them, but as I said, things like the desk top and perhaps the microphone and the camera could see some upgrades. But it’s not like these aren’t working anymore, so they will have to wait…