Bought a $15 monitor riser from IKEA and now my neck doesn't hurt anymore

I was over at the IKEA in Portland last weekend just grabbing some shelves and saw those little wooden leg stands they sell for like $4 each. Picked up two of them and a bamboo board from the as-is section for $7. Put it together in 10 minutes and now my monitor sits about 4 inches higher. Been dealing with this nagging neck pain for 8 months and thought I needed a $400 ergonomic arm. Has anyone else fixed a long term issue with a super cheap hack like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

nathan_barnes5h agoOG Member

Flip the whole thing around and tell you it's probably just coincidence or the placebo effect working itself out. I mean, don't get me wrong, I get that a lot of people swear by it, but I've seen guys in shops cranking monitors up and down and still walking out with ice packs on their necks. @alice_harris35 mentioned that 90% thing - that sounds like one of those made up stats someone threw on a blog to sell you a $30 arm. The real issue for me was chair depth and how far forward my keyboard was, not screen height. Moved the keyboard closer and my shoulders dropped an inch, neck pain disappeared. The monitor was fine where it was the whole time.

alice_harris355h ago

Yeah I read a piece somewhere that said something like 90% of desk setup problems are just a height issue. Makes sense. I got a cheap monitor arm off Amazon for like 30 bucks and it did the same thing for me. Neck pain went away in a week after I raised my screen so the top of it was at eye level. It's wild how much a few inches can change how you sit all day.