For many, working from home is now a way of life, and nothing makes that more enjoyable (and tolerable) than a comfortable home office. With working from home likely to continue to be the norm throughout the year, updating your home office in 2021 is a great way to rejuvenate your work day and help you stay focused during trying times.
There are all sorts of handy desk organizers and cable tidiers that can make your existing setup more streamlined, but we can go further than that. Here are some of the best tech products to update your home office in 2021 to make it feel like new.
Get Moving While Making Moves
Monomi Electric Standing Desk
Without the office distractions, a home office can let you stay at your desk for hours at a time, boosting productivity to no end. But it can lead to back pain, posture problems and a more sedentary lifestyle than you’re used to. A standing desk can help alleviate all of those problems and improve productivity, according to some studies.
The Monomi electric standing desk is an affordable entry point into the standing work life, helping you to get up and moving while you work. You’ll want to take it easy to start with, and there’s no need to stand all day (indeed, that can cause health problems in its own right) but with the ability to easily raise and lower the desk as required, this office upgrade could change your working life for good, and for the better.
Don’t want to ditch your old desk? Consider a sit-stand desk converter instead.
Minimalist Mechanical Typing
Razer Pro Type
A good keyboard can go a long way to speeding up your typing and making tapping thousands of keystrokes a day all the more comfortable. Mechanical keyboards are the best for that, and though the market may be dominated by “gamer” keyboards, Razer’s Pro Type goes in the other direction whilst retaining all of the benefits of the underlying technology.
With fast, tactile and silent switches under each keycap, this clean-looking keyboard is both accurate, and far more affordable than a lot of its contemporaries. It’s also entirely wireless, whether you want to use its included dongle, or connect to a compatible Bluetooth device, or three; The Pro Type supports up to four paired device connections. Battery life easily allows you to make it through a work day and the USB-C charger makes giving it enough juice for the next a cinch.
A Wireless Mouse With a Wired Mousemat
Logitech G Pro and Powerplay Wireless Charging Mat
Logitech’s G Pro combined with the Powerplay wireless charging system is the pinnacle of the wireless mouse experience. Not only is the G Pro excellent, with a high-quality sensor, right and left-handed support (with button remapping) and comfortable ergonomics, you never have to charge it. That’s not because its battery lasts forever, but because the Powerplay mouse mat uses wireless Qi charging to keep it fully charged and ready for use.
You’ll need to plug the Powerplay mat itself in, so this solution doesn’t entirely remove a wire from your home office desk, but it does make for a very comfortable experience free of cable drag, and you never have to worry that you’ll forget to charge it over night.
Chat, Work, and Play With No Wires
Steelseries Arctis Pro Wireless Headset
There are wireless office headsets that are reasonably comfortable and others that have a good microphone, but for a great all round headset that ticks all the boxes, the SteelSeries Arctis Pro wireless headset is one of the best. It is supremely comfortable, has swappable batteries (so you never need to worry about charging) and it has excellent sound quality, whether you’re talking in a meeting, listening to music, or playing a game when you’re done for the day.
Although technically a gaming headset, the Arctis Pro is refined and understated, with a ski-mask-style headband that can fit any size of head whilst still offering excellent support and a comfortable fit.
Big Sound Without The Subwoofer
Sonos One Gen 2 Wireless Speaker(s)
The Sonos One is a great sounding wireless speaker with full Alexa support, and Bluetooth connectivity. You’ll still need a power cable for it, but that guarantees powerful sound and you don’t have to keep charging it every few hours. You can control it through the intuitive Sonos app, or if you’re an Apple fan, Airplay 2.
If you don’t find its standard sound quite fits your tastes, you can always pair it with a second Sonos One for stereo sound, or with a Sonos soundbar for a more immersive audio experience.
Conference on a Spare Screen
Lenovo ThinkSmart View
The Lenovo ThinkSmart is a miniature 1080p display with multiple microphones and speakers to give you clear audio and recording functions without using up your PC’s screen or onboard resources. For the times you’re not using it for calls and video chats, the built-in privacy protections let you shut down the camera and microphones, keeping yourself to yourself.
Although primarily designed as a tool for conference calls via Microsoft’s Teams platform, the Lenovo ThinkSmart View can be so much more. It’s a digital productivity assistant display and device, letting you display a to-do list, calendar, clock, Teams chats and more.
Ditch The Desk Stand With a VESA Monitor Mount
Eveo Monitor Arm
If your monitor is VESA compatible, you can ditch that cumbersome, space*wasting desk stand and switch to a monitor arm instead. This not only lifts the screen away from the desk itself, saving you space, but makes it easier than ever to adjust the screen’s position. Want it higher, tilted to the side, or just pushed out of the way entirely? There’s no need to lift it or fuss with cumbersome controls. Just give the relevant edge a push, and away it goes.
This particular mount from Eveo is affordable and supports screens between 17 and 32-inches in size (VESA compatible 100 x 100 or 75 x 75). It can handle up to 18.5 pounds, making it compatible with all but the oldest and heaviest of displays, and its sturdy design means it won’t sag even when fully extended.
Light up the room while you power up your phone
MChatte LED desk lamp with Qi charger
A good desk lamp can really make a room, letting you adjust the lighting to your tastes and act as an attractive accent to your desk accessories. The MChatte LED desk lamp does that in an extremely low profile. You can fold it away when it’s not in use, or use its many hinges to easily adjust the angle and direction of its flicker-free light.
Brightness and color temperature are entirely adjustable, so this lamp won’t harm your eyes or mess with your circadian rhythm. It also features multiple device charging options, including a built in USB-A port and Qi wireless charging pad in the base. The light itself can be powered from AC or via a desktop or laptop USB-port, helping to cut back on cable mess.
All your data on the go
Samsung T5 portable SSD
Local data backups are a great way to protect your most important files and folders, and some of the new-generation portable SSDs let you take that data with you when you’re out and about (or just going into another room). The Samsung T5 is one of the best examples of these high-speed drives, offering excellent read and write performance without breaking the bank.
The T5 portable SSD isn’t just fast—its durable too. With no built in moving parts, it isn’t as vulnerable to drops and bangs as traditional portable hard drives, and its compact size means you can slip it in your pocket if you want to take your data with you. This drive supports Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, Mac OS 10.9 and newer, as well as Android 4.4 and newer, and offers hardware-level encryption should you want to doubly protect your data.
Connect everything to everything
Kensington USB-C docking station
A docking station can be a great way to expand the connectivity of your laptop. It also makes plugging in and charging external devices easier than reaching behind your desktop. The Kensington SD4820P USB-C docking station combines everything you could need into a single hub.
It has dual DisplayPort 1.2 and single HDMI 2.0 output for managing multiple monitors, an Ethernet port for high-speed network connectivity, USB-C and USB-A connections for fast data transfer and device charging, and a headphone jack for audio outputs. Whatever you need to connect and however you plan to do it, this docking station will cover you.
A new or second screen
Dell Ultrasharp U2719DX
A bigger screen, or better yet, a second one, can make a world of difference to your productivity. If you’ve been stuck using a small laptop display, or your old 1080p screen is showing its age, an upgrade to this excellent Dell 1440p monitor can help rejuvenate your working experience.
The 2,560 x 1,440 resolution is a good middle ground between 1080p and 4K, which helps keeps the cost reasonable. Strong sRGB color spectrum support makes this a great screen for photo and video editing, and its IPS panel makes sure its viewing angles are broad, without compromising color or picture quality.
The miniature bezels make this screen look sleek and modern, and its heavily adjustable stand lets you lift, tilt and rotate the display exactly how you like it.
Light up your work life
Nanoleaf Light Squares
Brighten up your office space with a unique look and infinitely customizable colors with the Nanoleaf Canvas Smarter Kit. Featuring nine light squares that you can adjust the temperature, brightness and color of with the bundled application, these light squares will let you make your office space truly unique.
You can even integrate them with your music and other smart devices, so you can have your new lighting system pulse to music or set the mood through Alexa commands via your other compatible devices. They’re also infinitely expandable, so if you like the look of a few lit-up squares on your wall, you can add more and create some pixel art that can change as often as you like.
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