Be more productive while still in your PJs
Thanks to a global pandemic, it seems that working from home is here to stay for a lot of people. You may benefit from investing in your workspace a little to make life easier and more comfortable. There are several gadgets that can turn blue Mondays into, well, not a party exactly but much less exhausting than things might otherwise be. Here are the best work-from-home gadgets you can buy.
We also made a short video on our YouTube channel where we give some simple tips if you’re working from home, so be sure to check it out:
Table of Contents
The Best Work from Home Chairs
Despite not strictly being a “gadget”, your office chair is one of the most important components of your work from home setup. It’s got a direct effect on your stamina, comfort and health. There’s a staggering number of choices out there, but these are the three we’d recommend at every major budget tier.
Best Budget Chair: Hbada Chair With Flip-up Armrests
This chair has a price so low, it might be a point of concern. Yet with over 12,000 reviews and an average 4-star rating, it’s one of the best deals we’ve seen. According to Hbada, this stylish chair has been through some thorough quality testing as well.
Apart from looking stylish, the other neat feature of this chair is its flip-up armrests. That allows the chair to be easily slid under low desks, saving you space. A very solid choice for the money!
Best Mid-range Chair: Nouhaus Ergo3D
The Ergo3D is probably at the upper limit of what most people would feel comfortable spending on an office chair. However, by stepping up your budget a little you could improve your productivity significantly.
The Ergo3D offers ergonomic features we’d expect to see in more expensive products, with high levels of adjustability to fit your body and posture as well as possible. It’s a great compromise between ergonomic features and price.
Best High-end Chair: Ergohuman High Back Swivel Chair with Headrest
While the price of this high-back chair may be eye-popping, you have to weigh it up against the value of a pain-free spine and muscles that don’t feel like you’ve gone a few rounds with a professional boxer.
This Ergohuman chair has a mesh back, to keep things cool and dry. The materials are almost all recycled, in case you’re worried about your chair’s environmental impact.
The most impressive trick is, however, the synchro-tilt system. It makes sure that all of the supporting components are at the right angle to keep your posture right whether you’re sitting upright or have the chair tilted back. So you can relax and take care of your body at the same time. It’s a win-win!
The Best Work from Home Headsets and Mics
Isolating yourself from the noise around you at home is essential for a productive workday. You also need to be heard clearly in video conferencing meetings. We think these are two of the best headset and mic options for the work from home user.
Best Budget Noise-Cancelling Headset: Sony WH-CH710N
Sony’s noise cancellation technology is widely regarded as one of the best in the industry. Headsets like the WH-1000XM4 come highly recommended from major review publications. However, at over $300 it can be a hard pill to swallow for general office use.
That’s where the much more reasonable WHCH710N comes in. While it has an equally incomprehensible name, it has a much lower price tag. The main sacrifice is audio performance for music or movies, but these cheaper phones still sound great by all accounts. You get smart environmentally adaptive noise cancellation, 35 hours of battery life and a built-in microphone for calls. We think it’s the best deal in its class.
The Samson Go Mic
The Samson Go is a mic we’ve used and loved for many years. It’s a massive upgrade over the microphone in any headset or device. It offers condenser microphone quality while being incredibly compact. It has an integrated stand, but you can also mount it on a mic stand or clip it to your laptop screen.
Best of all, it has a headphone jack, so you can use it with any wired headphones of your choice. It’s competitively priced and is one of the most impactful upgrades you can make to your video conferencing audio equipment setup.
The Best Work from Home Webcams
Most laptops, smartphones, and tablets have cameras built into them, but in terms of quality, these are usually an afterthought. This is especially true for the many Apple MacBook computers out there with paltry 720p webcams!
These days there’s a lot more video conferencing going on, so it’s the right time to upgrade your camera to something with a higher resolution and better optics. While there are plenty of companies making standalone webcams, Logitech has it all sewn up in our view.
Best HD All-round Webcam: Logitech C922x Pro
Beloved by gaming streamers all over the world, there’s little negative we can say about the C922x Pro. You can buy it for under $100 and get a full 1080p webcam with excellent built-in stereo microphones and snappy autofocus.
It has automatic light correction and is specially designed to make the image look great even in low-light situations. This is doubtlessly the best general webcam for both work and play.
Best Professional 4K Webcam: Logitech BRIO Ultra HD Webcam
If you think that 1080p is a little last-decade and really want to blow away your coworkers with your fabulous video quality, consider doubling the budget and getting the Logitech BRIO.
It’s a 4K webcam with a better lens and similar automatic focus and lighting compensation technology to the C922x Pro. Since the BRIO is designed for video conferencing specifically, it has several neat functions that make video meetings more comfortable.
For example, you can digitally zoom and pan, while also having three different fields of view to choose from. The camera is also certified for Skype for Business and is meant to comply with enterprise standards.
The Best Work from Home Monitors
Apart from your chair, your monitor is the component you spend the most time with. If you’re using an outdated model that stabs your eyes with its ugliness, then either of these two options will soothe your eyeballs and make you much less likely to go blind from overwork.
Best Ergonomic Business Monitor: Dell Ultrasharp U2719DX 27-Inch
We’ve used various Dell Ultrasharp monitors over the years and there’s a reason you’ll find these screens in so many large businesses all over the world. Its picture quality is fantastic and the monitor has great factory calibration to get you going with color-sensitive work right off the bat.
The best feature, however, is perhaps the stand. You can rotate the monitor to use it in portrait mode, tilt it, swivel it and crucially adjust its height. These are features you almost never get in consumer-grade screens and turn it into a killer tool for work and general productivity.
Ultimate Multitasking Monster Monitor: Samsung Business CH890 Series 34 inch
Our final work from home recommendation is this massive CH890 business class monitor from Samsung. With a large, 34” ultrawide curved panel, you’ll be multitasking in comfort with one seamless image and easy cable management.
While it may look like similar gaming-focused screens at first glance, Samsung has built-in features aimed at making work easier, although nothing stops you from enjoying a gaming break on the side!
Native split-screen and picture-in-picture functionality offer many different productivity options and support for USB-C display input makes it easy to find the right spot for your screen. The stand is also height, tilt and swivel capable, setting it apart from gaming monitors in this class. It’s a little more expensive than most monitors, but you’ll never want to go back to the old ways.
That’s it for your work-from-home roundup, but we’d love to hear your own suggestions for gadgets and accessories that help you get more done while away from the office.
