8 best laptop stands for better posture and comfort while working from home

This aluminium stand uses two pairs of hinges to raise your entire laptop off the desk, while also angling the screen for some extra height. Those few bonus inches make a real difference when you’re spending an entire day working on your laptop, placing your screen much nearer to shoulder height than more-basic folding laptop stands.

It’s continuously adjustable, requiring a bit of effort to manoeuvre it into shape, but those hinges are strong enough to keep a 16in MacBook Pro aloft without sagging. Being able to position your laptop in exactly the right spot helps with dual-screen desktop setups too.

You get a tool included to tighten up the hinges when they start to loosen, though our stand has shown no sign of slack during testing. There’s also a storage bag to stop it damaging anything in your bag during travel. Silicone padding covers every contact point, as well as protecting the laptop stand itself when it’s fully folded up.

The casa is a complete work-from-home setup comprising a wireless keyboard and trackpad, all stored neatly inside a bento-style box that unfolds to become its own laptop stand. When you’re finished working, you can pack the entire thing away and store it on a bookshelf or chuck it in your bag to take to the office. It has a moleskine-style band to keep it closed, and a textile-effect cover and spine to blend into your home decor.

The laptop stand element uses a clean and simple design, slotting firmly into position to raise your screen by about eight inches. There are grippy pads at every contact point to prevent slipping and sliding, too.

The casa is expensive, relative to other laptop stands in our list, but, for the money, you’re getting an excellent keyboard and a trackpad included, both essential accessories for use with any laptop stand.

Here’s your super-basic £20 option. This functional laptop stand doesn’t have a riser but is height adjustable by snapping it to one of five fixed angles. That raises your screen off the desk by about eight inches, depending on your device, creating enough elevation to keep you comfortable all day.

The material and finish are budget-grade flimsy, but that shouldn’t be an issue unless you plan on touching it a lot. A simple hooking mechanism holds the upper part in place, but under the weight of a laptop the setup becomes nice and sturdy. Foam padding in the bottom groove and along the top help protect from scratches and slipping, and that whopping great hole ensures optimal airflow around your device.

Made from a single piece of curved aluminium, this laptop stand is described by Apple’s own website as a “modern sculpture”, which we suppose is technically true, considering it was sculpted recently.

Art theory aside, it’s a neat-looking, minimalist laptop stand that doesn’t fuss around with adjustable angles and risers. Unlike more-complicated folding laptop stands, it doesn’t resemble a strange kitchen accessory when a laptop isn’t sitting on it. If you’re house proud about your home office, this will fit right in, though, unsurprisingly, it’s too awkwardly shaped for carrying around.

The modest 6in boost is ideal for a dual-monitor setup, and just about adequate for use with an external keyboard and mouse. If you want even more altitude, you should look elsewhere in this list.

The Z-shaped design of this laptop stand gives you a lot more height than a basic, angled option, and allows for greater flexibility when it comes to positioning your screen exactly the way you want it. That’s useful if you’re using your laptop side by side with your regular monitor, or if you want to get your display up to a height that will keep your neck muscles happier for longer.

The stand is made from lightweight aluminium, and collapses down to a size that’s easy to store away, though the lack of a carry bag means it could scratch anything with which it shares a backpack. There’s some wobbliness, too, particularly at full extension. You should avoid using the laptop’s own keyboard while it’s perched on a stand – it’s an ergonomic nightmare, for one – but if you insisted on trying, you’d find this laptop stand a bit bouncy.

The compact shape of this fixed-height, aluminium laptop stand effectively makes it disappear from view when your laptop is hanging out on top.

Designed for the MacBook, it even has the same cable tidying hole found on the iMac’s stand – though it’s less useful here for the obvious reason that all your laptop’s ports are on the sides, not the back. Still, it looks the part, whether it’s holding up a Windows or an Apple device.

This sleek-looking V-shaped laptop stand is designed around the MacBook, and uses a piston-style adjustable riser to elevate your display by up to six inches. So, what’s the big fuss about here? Well, this particular stand doesn’t use the usual lip to stop your laptop sliding off.

Instead, that V-shaped part has a seriously grippy non-slip surface, providing more than enough friction to hold your device in place. The result is your MacBook looks a tiny bit like it’s hovering above your clean, uncluttered desk. You can also grab your laptop from any direction, with no chance of catching the edge of the device on the stand.

Working from bed obviously isn’t the ideal way to get things done, but there are plenty of non-hangover-related reasons why you might need to in the short-term, such as injury or fatigue. Whatever your situation, a laptop tray makes working while reclined a lot more comfortable and safer.

This 2ft-wide stand from Habitat has adjustable legs and a tilting surface, so you can angle your laptop properly. It can also be used on a desk, like a traditional laptop riser. There’s a flat section at the side for your stuff. We tried putting a mouse there but the raised height quickly became uncomfortable – we found it was more useful for notes and snacks.

The leg adjusters are fiddly, and the simple MDF and metal construction won’t be winning any design awards, but the stand is functional enough and folds away neatly when you don’t need it.