A few people have asked me
what laptop stand I use in my videos.
Well, it's the mStand by Rain Design.
I bought it a couple of years ago
to use in the office after spending some time looking
at laptop stands online.
I figured this was one of the best ones
and several years later, I still think it is.
Let's take a closer look at it, shall we?
Starting with the design,
the mStand is made entirely from aluminum.
This is good for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it's very sturdy.
You can put a ton of weight on this thing
and it will not bend or shake.
It's designed to use with any kind of laptop
as long as the depth of the laptop
is less than about 11 inches.
Whatever laptop you end up using,
it's very stable thanks
to the rigid form and wide base.
mStand also claims that the aluminum stand acts
as a heat sink
and theory, I don't think you'll see much real-world benefit
from this but it would be something interesting
for me to test later on.
Another benefit of being made from aluminum
is that it's very lightweight,
so if you need to move the whole stand
with laptop on it closer
to your desk or simply transport the stand elsewhere,
it's really easy.
The top of the stand has four rubber grip feet
to hold your laptop in place
and a very secure lip
that stops your laptop from slipping off.
Hats off to Rain Design for this
because as you can see,
they've included a perfectly sized cutout
on the lip so you can open and close the screen
of your MacBook very easily.
The back has another cutout
that you can use to route cables through
and organize it neatly on your desk.
It's not perfect but it does do a good job
at keeping the cables all in one place.
Now, the mStand comes in three different colors
to match your laptop.
Space Gray, which is the one I have, silver and gold.
I have to say, the finish of mine
has held up very well over the years.
It's been through three different offices
and moving houses three or four times
and still looks really good,
apart from a bit of wear and tear.
Now, moving on to usage scenarios.
I use my mStand for two main things.
Let me go into the Created Labs studio
to show you in further detail.
Okay, so these are the main ways
that I actually use this stand in my everyday setup.
So the way I have it set up now
is just a really simple method.
So if you don't have a screen or you don't need one,
you can literally just put the stand here,
a keyboard and a mouse and you're good to go.
I found this really good as well for the webcam.
So if you need to elevate your webcam
so people on the Skype call aren't looking up your nostrils,
this is a really good way to do it.
It's also good for eye strain.
So being a little bit off the table like this,
your eyes are at more of a natural level
instead of just looking straight down.
So if you're spending hours and hours in this position,
it's much more comfortable.
Now, if you wanted to rest your palms here,
you definitely can.
As you can see, I'm resting my hands here and typing
and there's not really a lot of flex.
It's very, very comfortable.
So you can definitely type like this if you would like to.
So this setup here
is probably the most common way I use the stand
with my setup.
So I've worked exactly like this for about three years
at a previous nine-to-five office job.
I would have the laptop or MacBook
or whatever I'm using set up either the right side
or the left side.
And this is really cool
because you can actually just rest your hand
on the trackpad and you can just scroll.
It's a lot nicer to scroll on this trackpad.
And then you can also have your hand on the keyboard
or if the computer is over this way,
you can simply leave your left hand on the trackpad
and you've also got your right hand on the mouse as well.
And it's just a really comfortable way
of working and scrolling through Word documents
or Excel files.
Now, this is really good for multi-monitor setups obviously
because you can simple drag everything from left to right
and it's great because it elevates this particular screen up
'til about the middle here.
So when you do actually drag things across,
so you can see there,
it pretty much meets right in the middle
and it just means it's a very natural way
to transfer pages and programs between the two screens.
Now, yes, if you don't want to be using two screens,
you can simply shut the screen of the Mac
and you can see that the screen here has reverted
to a single screen.
Now, the other thing I really like about this stand
is you can store stuff underneath it.
So for example, if I wanted to put the keyboard under there
or the mouse, I could very easily
and now I've got all this space for writing
or having another laptop here or whatever.
This works even better if you have the Mac right
in front of you like this,
as I was showing you before
because when you're done with the Mac,
you can simply close the screen,
put your keyboard underneath it
and now again, you've got all of this space
in front of you ready to go
and everything over here is away nice and neat.
To me, the only negative of the stand
is that it's not adjustable or collapsible at all
but then again, you won't be buying a solid aluminum stand
if you wanted either of these things in the first place.
It's also a little bit pricier than other cheaper stands
but like I said before,
this thing is solid
and would probably survive a nuclear war.
Anyway, that's it for this video.
Hopefully you enjoyed.
There will be a link to the mStand
in the description of this video.
If you have any comments or questions,
make sure you leave them in the comments section below
but apart from that,
I will catch you guys in the next one.