Tried a clamp-on monitor arm after years of using the stock stand

I finally got tired of my old monitor taking up half my desk so I grabbed a $40 arm off Amazon. Within 10 minutes I realized my desk was way more warped than I thought, the clamp barely held on. Learned I need a solid wood desk before I can go fancy with arms. Anyone else run into this with cheap particle board desks?

3 comments

3 Comments

milacraig9d ago

See @smith.anna, this is why I actually prefer the stock stands. Clamp arms feel like an overengineered fix for a problem that wasn't really there. That stock stand keeps the monitor at eye level and takes up maybe an extra inch of desk space. Having to drill holes or rig up plywood just to mount a screen seems like a lot of work for zero payoff. Those $40 arms wobble anyway after a month, it's just a different kind of wobble. Sometimes the simple solution is the one they shipped with the monitor.

susan_wright3411d ago

Oh man, that's the worst. I had the exact same issue with my old desk from IKEA. So did you end up keeping the arm anyway (like just resting it on the desk instead of clamping) or did you send it back? I'm curious if you tried flipping the desk over to see if the bottom was any flatter, because sometimes they're kind of hollow on the other side. I ended up screwing a piece of plywood to the underside of my desk to give the clamp something solid to bite into, which worked okay but looked kinda janky. How thick is your desk anyway? I heard some of those cheap clamps have a size limit.

smith.anna11d ago

@susan_wright34 yeah I ended up keeping it and just resting it on the desk, works fine for now but the wobble drives me crazy sometimes. It's funny how we'll rig up all these janky fixes instead of just returning something, isn't it? Like we're just used to making do with what doesn't quite work in life.