All you need to know about monitor risers

• What is a monitor riser?
• How a high-quality monitor riser helps you avoid aches, pains, stress and worse.
• Getting the best out of your monitor riser.
• What to look for in a good monitor riser.
• Monitor riser, monitor stand or monitor arm?

What is a monitor riser?

Why do you need a monitor riser, many people ask, when your computer already comes with its own monitor stand? A fair question.

How a high-quality monitor riser helps you avoid aches, pains, stress and worse.

A monitor riser raises the top of your monitor screen to eye level, the optimal ergonomic position (see also below: Getting the best out of your monitor riser). But why is this so important?

1. The monitor stand that came with your computer is an ergonomic disaster:
   If your monitor screen is at an inappropriate height (usually too low), you have to strain your neck and assume a bad posture to view it. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of your computer has little choice but to design their monitor stand so your screen is at a height where it’s visible to every user. In practice, this means visible to the shortest potential user.

2. You want to avoid workplace injuries or chronic conditions:
   In practice, by being at the right height for the shortest potential user, this means your monitor screen is set too low for everybody else. As a result, 99% of people using only their delivered monitor stand without a monitor riser spend all day hunched towards their screen, with their spine out of natural alignment, and putting unnatural strain on their eyes and various other parts of their body. Quickly leading to all sorts of aches and pains for nearly every user; and for a sizable number, much more serious complaints, that may even include chronic conditions that could jeopardise your career.

3. A monitor riser can help you combat workplace stress:
   A well-designed monitor riser lets you neatly store away your keyboard and, where applicable, laptop under your monitor. This creates space and a feeling of order. Which many ergonomic experts believe is more than just a nice little bonus.

   Most of us are familiar with Physical Ergonomics: ensuring your physical environment is more conducive to healthy working through the use of ergonomic products such as ergonomically efficient desks, chairs, keyboards, mice, etc. But in addition, the relatively young fields of Organisational Ergonomics and Cognitive Ergonomics are increasingly being seen as important areas by employment and health & safety experts alike.

   Cognitive Ergonomics concerns issues such as work stress and mental well-being at work. Healthy work pressure can help motivate us to perform well at work, value good results and enjoy our achievements. But negative work stress does the opposite, making us feel overwhelmed, unable to enjoy successes and fearful of failure. It is something that we take outside the workplace and can negatively affect everything from eating habits to sleep.

   Such work stress is often accumulative, being made up of lots of small negative daily experiences and situations. And increasingly, research suggests that an unrestful work environment is one such ‘small’ but continuous factor that has a negative impact on our mood, nibbling away at our sense of well-being at work.

   So alongside things like plants and art in the workplace, these experts emphasise the positive effect of, for example, a tidy desk. A monitor riser, which is at the heart of your workspace and permanently in your eyeline, can play its part in creating that restful, anti-stress environment.

Monitor riser, monitor stand or monitor arm?

Sometimes the nature of your monitor means that only a monitor riser will do. But in most cases, besides a monitor riser, there are two other ways to upgrade from the basic monitor stand you got with your computer: a monitor arm or a monitor stand.

Which is your best option depends on your work situation and budget. Alongside a range of great monitor risers, at Dataflex we also have a top-quality monitor stand and wide range of versatile monitor arms.

A quick browse of the types of monitor-related products that are available will help decide which features are must-haves, nice-to-haves and less important for you.