A simple, low-cost tablet accessory has made working in my home office more pleasurable.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of tablet stands available to buy online, so when I stumbled across one that turned out to be better than I expected, I wanted to tell others about it.
Here’s why my most recent blind buy, the Ugreen Tablet Stand Holder, worked out, and why I think it’s worth highlighting.
Second screen woes
One screen is never enough
When I work in my home office, I look at a 34-inch curved Huawei monitor, and it’s everything I need to work on.
I’m used to having two browser windows side-by-side, and either Apple Pages or a small Google Docs window floating over them, with various other apps running in the background or on different Spaces in macOS.
The geek in me then wants different devices to do different things. For example, I stream radio through an Amazon Echo Hub, which also takes care of my smart home devices while I’m in the office.
It’s great, and fits perfectly in a little spot next to my desk, but it’s not good for watching videos.
Sometimes, I just want a long-form YouTube video or some streaming comedy as background noise, and this is where I hit a problem.
It’s too distracting to play a video on my monitor, where I really should be looking at my work, plus YouTube audio can sometimes cut out when running in the background in Chrome, which causes further distraction.
Finding the solution
But would it be yet another mistake?
For a while, I dealt with it, but when my office was slightly remodeled, I suddenly had space next to my desk for another screen.
A tablet was ideal, but I needed a new stand for one. I spent a while looking for the right stand.
It needed to be suitable for any tablet, in both portrait and landscape orientation, not take up an excessive amount of space, yet still be sufficiently adjustable to make viewing the screen effortless.
It’s a tall order, and like many others, I’ve taken many risks blindly buying “cheap” accessories, only to be disappointed when they arrived.
Not that this puts me off, just like it hasn’t any other time either. But if I could avoid buying yet another accessory that I soon put in a drawer and never use it again, it would be good.
I found the Ugreen Tablet Stand Holder mostly by chance as I browsed Amazon.
It wasn’t expensive, and I know the brand, so it felt somewhat safe, but the clunky name didn’t fill me with confidence, so I still wasn’t expecting all that much from it.
However, when it arrived and practically right from the moment I felt the weight of the box, I knew I’d made a good choice.
The perfect stand?
All the adjustments
Made from aluminum, the stand looks and feels high quality, and the matte finish ensures it’s modern and stylish even when a tablet isn’t on the front.
The tablet support plate has two grippy pads and a vented section, and it has kept my iPad Air and the OnePlus Pad Lite securely in place.
The real star of the show is the 360-degree rotation built into the base. It rotates with a satisfying, precise click, and it doesn’t stray from the spot you leave it in.
The scissor-style arms are adjustable for height and angle, plus you get a hex key in the box to lock the arms in a fixed position if you want.
It’s heavy enough that the pads under the base keep it in place, yet still small and light enough so I can carry it around and use it elsewhere in the house.
There are so many tablet stands available, and many likely do something similar, but after a week of use, I haven’t come across any downsides to this one.
Minimal fuss, low price
What more could I want?
What the Ugreen Tablet Stand Holder does differently from the other, more compact stands I have lying around is look good, provide plenty of adjustability, and isn’t in danger of being knocked over by my still-adventurous kitten.
Few impulse purchases work out quite so well, especially when there’s a sea of alternative products around it, which is why I felt this one was worthwhile highlighting.
It’s a polished solution to using a second screen, primarily for video, in my home office.
The Ugreen Tablet Stand Holder is $23 from Amazon at the time of writing, plus there seem to be other, very similar models from less well-known manufacturers on the site too, but this is the one I purchased, and I consider it one of the better blind-buy tech accessories I’ve gambled on.
