Monitor mounts and the like may not be terribly glamorous or exciting, but they can do an awful lot for a computer setup.
Today’s featured MacBook Pro workstation uses them to make the laptop and two other crucial pieces of hardware easy to move around. And they keep the hardware off the desk, creating space for other items.
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M2 MacBook Pro setup’s mounts make laptop, display and microphone mobile
Marketing professional and Redditor MDevonL (“Dev”) showcased the beautiful setup in a post entitled, “My home office mac setup (details in comments).” He noted he spent a lot of time “lurking” on related subreddits “and got my setup to a place where I’m super happy with it.”
On his standing desk, which has a bamboo top from Ikea with an Orbitkey slim desk mat on it, he’s got a 16-inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro driving a 32-inch LG QHD monitor.
Commenters wondered if the external display worked well enough for him.
“I work in marketing, and while I occasionally do some work with graphics, I mostly work in adveritsing, so spreadsheets, documents, and it’s fine for that,” Dev replied. “If I need high pixel density, I use my MacBook screen. Overall [the LG is] a great screen for the budget, but I may upgrade in the coming years.”
And folks wondered if the MacBook’s display badly outclasses the LG monitor in daily use.
“I use my LG as my primary screen, and I default Slack/Calendar/Spotify to the MacBook screen,” Dev said. “The MacBook is definitely a better screen, no sense around that, but the added size of the LG let’s me comfortably run multiple apps in side-by-side fullscreen mode, and that works really well for my workflow.”
Dual monitor mount for external display and MacBook Pro
In a somewhat unusual twist, the display and laptop are mounted on the same dual-monitor mount from Vivo. The MacBook sits on a Mount It! VESA Laptop Mount Tray attached to one of the arms and the LG display sits on the other.
“It’s so key,” he said. “It’s effectively two separate arms with a single base holding them together, but yeah was nervous when I set it up for the first time lol.”
Mounted like that, both items can be moved at will and are up off the desk, creating space for other items. There’s plenty of real estate there for the Keychron K4 mechanical keyboard and the Magic Trackpad, for example, not to mention the HomePod mini and the case for his very nice Bang & Olufson BeoPlay HX over-ear headphones.
Microphone sits on a mount, too
Even better, Dev’s Blue Yeti Nano Microphone is also mounted. It sits on an Elgato Wave LP microphone arm fastened near the upper right corner of the desk, well out of the way until needed.
“Do you need any software for the microphone or does it just plug and play?” someone asked.
“It’s pure plug and play!” Dev replied. “The only pain in the ass is that it came with a microUSB cable, so I had to buy a 10ft micro-USB / USB-c cable to feed through all the arms in the desk to get it working.”
And if you like the desktop wallpaper showing on the display, you can find it here.
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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, challenges and plans for new additions.
This heavy duty, fully adjustable steel stand holds two computer screens. Comes in black, STAND-V002.
