New house with Tesla, new home office with Tesla toys [Setups]

By

A new house calls for a first-time home office with an ultrawide monitor and plenty of toys.
A new house calls for a first-time home office with an ultrawide monitor and plenty of toys.
Photo: StevenJ95

Redditor StevenJ95 recently moved from an apartment to a house, allowing him to have a new home office. For the first time. He’s got room enough in there for his MacBook Pro, his Samsung curved ultrawide monitor and even his Tesla Model S, Cybertruck and Supercharger.

OK, those last three are two diecast model cars and a cute little desktop Tesla charger for phones and such. But he does have a real Tesla Model 3 — which he sensibly parks elsewhere — as well as a lot of enthusiasm for the brand, judging by how he decorates his setup.

This post contains affiliate links. Cult of Mac may earn a commission when you use our links to buy items.

New home office with MBP and ultrawide display

While he waits to get an M1-powered MacBook Pro — gotta finish paying off all those Teslas first — Steven uses a 2015 16-inch MPB with an Intel i7 chip and 16 GB of RAM.

For his new space, he added a Samsung 34-inch curved ultrawide external display with two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Centered on top he has a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 clamped to the USB cable of a Xiaomi monitor light bar.

To complete the lighting, he ran an LED light strip behind the desk.

Semi-DIY desk

Speaking of the desk, to create it for his new home office Steven attached an IKEA Karlby countertop to Autonomous standing desk legs.

Commenters were impressed with the look, though theories that he must have stained the desktop proved to be false – a trick of the lighting.

As for the depth of the desktop, it’s big enough to fit the hardware, but only just.

To be fair it is a bit shallow,” Steven replied to a question. “That’s why I opted for a monitor arm to gain some space. Works for me but a bit deeper would be preferable.”

He had more praise for his Orbitkey desk mat, which has space under a top layer for papers – in his case, Post-It notes.

Elgato Stream Deck Mini

Observers were curious about a secondary small screen that turned out to be an Elgato Stream Deck Mini Production Controller for optimizing content and triggering actions in other tools.

“I’m not a streamer myself but I programmed the macro keys to use in UX design apps for work,” Steven explained.

He said for his UX design work in Figma he mapped macros to plugins to automatically arrange and numerically name artboards.

He added he also uses the Elgato to quickly turn on and off smart home devices. We’ve also seen it used in podcasting.

Choice audio

Completing the setup are some solid choices for quality audio. Steven has a pair of Kanto YU2 powered speakers as well as Airpods Pro and Airpods Max.

“The Pros are great when on the move, the noise cancellation is great,” he said. “The Max I mostly use at my desk since it’s not easy to take along due to its size.”

He added he really likes using his Airpods Max with other Apple products, but there is one down side. They clamp his neck whenever he pulls them off his ears briefly.

All the Tesla toys in the world aren’t going to fix that, but at least it’s a minor problem.

Shop these items now:

Computer and peripherals:

Audio:

Furniture, lighting and accessories:

If you would like to see your setup featured on Cult of Mac, send some high-res pictures to info+setups@cultofmac.com. Please provide a detailed list of your equipment. Tell us what you like or dislike about your setup, and fill us in on any special touches or challenges.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.