There’s no such thing as the perfect student desk setup, because everyone’s budget and
needs are different. But, there are a few key considerations and products that will
make your student life and study sessions a lot more enjoyable, not to mention also
saving your neck and back in the process. You might not have a cat to act as stress relief,
or maybe your current student desk setup looks something like this….. Or maybe even this.
Regardless, let me show you what in my opinion,
after spending 5 years at university is the ultimate budget student desk setup,
and what kind of gear and budget you need to create something similar for yourself.
Here’s a sneak peak at the equipment that makes up my student desk setup. This is everything you see
in this video, minus the laptop. The total cost is under $1000 USD which I know can be expensive for
students depending on your budget and situation, but this setup will last you years and years,
is comfortable and productive, and you don’t have to get it all in one go, you can start with
a single product or two and build your own custom setup over time using this video as inspiration.
Also, massive shout out to Notion for sponsoring this video. If you’re a student,
I definitely recommend using Notion for note taking, organisation, and studying,
but more on that later.
Now, you might have seen my minimal desk setup video previously,
so I’ll follow the same format as that. That desk setup was nice but it was a little too minimal
especially if space is limited and you’re going to be studying.
So how did I switch it up for the budget student desk? Well, first - I chose a cheap but good
quality standing desk from Amazon. There are a number of different desks with prices ranging
from around $200-$250 USD on the lower end, and I found these desks were more than adequate.
You can get cheaper standing desks that don’t need electricity and can be raised or lowered
by hand crank, but the sole purpose of a standing desk is to easily transition from sit to stand,
and cranking a handle for 2 minutes is not a fun process to do every half an hour.
A standing desk is super important for your neck and back. Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day is
not healthy, and being able to stand and work every now and then makes a huge difference.
Take it from a still relatively young 26 year old who’s spent the last 8 years
either studying or working in an office, and who’s back is starting to get a little bit
sore after a few hours of sitting… Another 10 years of that and I’d probably be facing some
serious issues. So, it makes sense to get on top of it now.
If you’re like me and don’t want to scratch your brand new desk, or you need a mouse pad,
and you also want it to look a little bit fancy, do invest in a leather desk
pad. They’re relatively inexpensive and they really do transform the entire way
your setup looks. By the way I will link all of these products down in the description below.
Next we have the brains of the operation - an M1 MacBook Air. This is the base model with 256GB SSD
and 8GB of RAM. It’s going to be more than enough for anything you throw at it,
like hardcore multi-tasking, 40+ tabs open in Google Chrome or even 100,000
Excel rows. Although, if you’re planning on doing 4K video editing,
coding, or running virtual machines, get the 16GB RAM version for the extra headroom.
As this is a budget desk setup, I wanted to get a laptop stand that had multiple uses. I found this
really cool metal stand that allows you to prop the MacBook up and raise the screen a bit higher.
This not only saves your neck by raising the height of the screen, but lets you use the MacBook
Air as a second screen - instantly transforming your setup into a dual monitor setup. Not only
that, but the stand is collapsible, adjustable, and very portable so you can take it with you
everywhere, including school or even travelling, like I did in a previous video on my channel.
So just real quick I want to talk about Notion and why it's such a good tool for collaborating with
your team or even just on your own individually. Now if you're a student I definitely recommend
checking out Ali Abdal's videos on Notion because he makes some great content and he uses Notion
as a part of his study routine. So what I might do first of all is I'll show you my
personal Notion setup and then I'll show you the Notion setup I use to run the youtube channel with
the rest of my team. So this is my personal page. Now I add things here like movies and
tv shows. I've also got other stuff in here so more personal things, so yearly goals,
my weekly agenda - which allows me to also drop down tasks for house cleaning on a Thursday for
example and all of this just allows me to get away from all of those to-do and organization
apps in the past. Now moving on to the Notion workspace I use for the Youtube channel this
is great because i'm actually working with about three or four other people at the moment - they're
all located overseas except for one and they're mainly helping me with the website at this stage.
Now in the past I used things like Asana and Monday but none of it really worked that well.
It didn't give me the level of customization I wanted. So if you guys are interested in Notion
whether you're a student or you're a content creator or you just want to organize your life
and increase productivity make sure you sign up using the link in the description.
So what about the main screen? After doing a ton of research, I settled on the LG
27UL850. At around $450 USD, it’s not the cheapest monitor out there,
but out of all the products in this video, I wanted to spend a little bit extra on the screen,
because it’s what you’ll be staring at for hours and hours every single day. It’s a 27” 4K
IPS panel which means the colors are really bright and vivid, and it has DisplayHDR 400.
But that’s not the main selling point of this monitor. It’s also a USB-C monitor,
which means you can plug your laptop directly into the monitor with a single cable,
and get charging, screen output, and access to any other devices plugged into the back port of the
monitor. This can be anything from keyboards to hard drives or anything else with a USB-A or USB-C
plug. A cool thing about having a USB-C monitor is that if I need to charge my mouse or keyboard
(which both charge via a USB-C port) I can simply plug them into the same cable I use
for my MacBook when I leave my desk, and leave them for an hour or two to charge.
If you’re after something cheaper and maybe an Ultrawide version, I recommend the LG 29WN600-W.
It’s a decent monitor but bear in mind it does not have the USB-C functionality of the more expensive
models, so you’ll need to charge and connect your MacBook separately with different cables.
Now you might be wondering, what is this weird thing on the top of the screen? Well,
that would be a lightbar. I recently invested in a lightbar and I’m never looking back. It comes
in super handy in dark rooms or at night if you’re writing or reading on your desk.
With traditional desk lamps, they would always cast a shadow because they would always be at
an angle, and depending how flat your book lays or which hand you write with, the shadows would
get really annoying. Lightbars plug into the back of your monitor via a USB cable,
and direct the light straight down onto your desk. You can adjust color temperature, brightness,
and also the angle of the light easily to give you the perfect setup. Even if you’re not reading
or writing, the additional light on the screen is great for your eyes and reduces eye fatigue.
For desk accessories, there are a number of cool and relatively inexpensive items
that I thought would be a good choice. The first is a monitor stand from IKEA,
which cost barely anything. You can get these from Amazon or other websites for cheap,
and it’s great for raising your monitor a bit higher to be more ergonomic, while also allowing
you to organize your desk, and push your keyboard underneath if you need to read or write something.
The keyboard I’m using is a Keychron K6 mechanical keyboard, and I thoroughly recommend
this keyboard if you’re looking to pick up a budget mechanical keyboard of some sort. It’s
wireless with a battery life up to 2000 hours, has a backlight if you need it, and charges via USB-C.
And yes, you can use it plugged directly into your monitor or MacBook if you prefer to.
I went with the K6 as it’s a 65% layout, which means the number pad and function keys on the top
have been removed. Let’s be honest though, most people almost never use those keys,
and having the extra room on the desk for a notepad or book is much appreciated. It also
makes it much easier to push the keyboard under the monitor mount. I didn’t notice
any disruption to my workflow removing those unnecessary keys, because there are function
buttons on the keyboard that still allow you to use the same shortcuts. By the way,
I went with red switches, but you can choose blue or brown or any other different type of switch.
However, the red switches are relatively quiet, which may be a factor if you live at home or in
a share house and work late at night. Here’s an idea of what the red switches sound like.
At just $69, the Keychron K6 was a no-brainer for me and I thoroughly enjoyed using this keyboard.
Moving onto the mouse, and no surprises here. I’m using the Logitech MX Master 3.
It’s a super ergonomic and comfortable wireless mouse and charges via USB C. You can also connect
it up to 3 different computers wirelessly and switch between all of them with a single flick
of a button. This mouse is incredibly helpful for students because of the scrolling features.
It has an infinite scroll feature which is great for long documents or word files,
and also has a side scroller on the side near your thumb for extra control.
Now if you also need a USB-C hub I definitely recommend the Anker eight in one hub.
It's got a great track record, it's from a great company - Anker - and
I've been using it on my channel for about six months now with zero issues,
and is pretty much essential in this day and age of macbooks only having a single USB-C port.
And that’s it, that is my budget student desk setup. Like I said before, you don’t need to
purchase everything in one go. However, I do recommend getting the lightbar and portable
laptop stand first because they are relatively cheap and will have a big impact on your workflow.
So what do you think? Is this setup something you’d love to have?
Is there anything you would change? Let me know in the comment section down below,
but apart from that, I’ll catch you in the next one!