Working from home is great. You can spend all day in your pajamas, blast music at your desk, and your longest commute is from your chair to the kitchen to grab lunch. However, a home office is like a shrine to your productivity and making sure it’s an effective space is very important. There are almost always ways you can improve your setup to get more work done or, at least, be more comfortable while you work. So, we’ve assembled a list of tech essentials that we think can spruce up your home office.
Read more: Best gifts under $30: Cool tech on a budget
Speaking of desks and chairs, this specific list won’t cover which ones we’d recommend, but be sure to check out our dedicated guides for the best standing desks and best office chairs for more details on office essentials. That said, based on our personal work from home experience, here are the top eight products we’d recommend to elevate your – or your loves one’s WFH space, starting with the best remote work monitor- the ASUS Rog Swift PG279QM.
Best remote work tech essentials: Our top picks
ASUS / Pocket-lint
ASUS Rog Swift PG279QM
1. Best remote work monitor
A serviceable monitor that does everything well
$668 $749 Save $81
The ASUS ROG Swift PG279QM is a well-rounded monitor that does everything well from high refresh rates to accurate colors.
- 27-inches is big enough for most home office setups
- 100 per cent SRGB and ARGB make it great for creative work
- The IPS display has good pixel response times
- Expensive
- Don’t buy this for its HDR support
The ASUS ROG Swift PG279QM is a great all-around monitor. Its 27-inch screen should be large enough for most home office environments, and it’s small enough to double up if you want to run a dual-monitor setup. In terms of design, it has a bit of a gamer aesthetic, but you’re at home, so who’s going to judge you for it? It can be a tad pricey when it’s not on sale, but it also often goes on sale during big sales events like Black Friday.
This monitor does everything well, the 100 per cent SRGB and Adobe RGB support means you can use this for creative work while the high refresh rate gives you a smooth experience no matter what you’re doing.
Read more: What is the difference between Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync?
It also supports AMD FreeSync as well as Nvidia G-Sync, so it’ll support whatever graphics card you own. Like all IPS monitors, the contrast ratio isn’t great, but it’s not the biggest deal. About the only pitfall with this monitor is its HDR capabilities are fairly mediocre. Otherwise, it’s a great monitor.
Apple / Pocket-lint
Apple iPad (2022)
2. Best remote work companion device
Great as a second device to increase your productivity
$399 $449 Save $50
The 10th generation iPad works great in home offices as a secondary display capable of showing all kinds of stuff. You can take video calls or check email, and take it with you when you’re done with work.
- Affordable for an iPad
- Excellent display
- Front camera lets you take video calls
- Some home office work doesn’t need a second display
- You might end up goofing off and watching YouTube all day
It’s not a bad idea to keep a secondary device with you to help offload some of your work. One thing I always enjoyed when I had a secondary device was letting it take all of my email notifications, so my PC workspace was clear of distractions. The 10th generation iPad is a great device for these types of things. The screen is large enough to be useful while being small enough to fit on almost any desk. Plus, it opens up the App Store ecosystem to give you even more options.
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We’re pretty big fans of the 10th generation iPad, and lauded the tablet for its solid performance, good battery life, and USB-C port. Sure, there are more powerful iPads options out there, but they’re also more expensive and not everything needs to be top of the line. Of course, if you do pick up one of these, you might wind up distracted while watching YouTube all day. This may or may not have happened to me on occasion.
HyperX / Pocket-lint
HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless
3. Best remote work headset
Superior to webcam microphones in every conceivable way
$169 $200 Save $31
The HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless is an excellent wireless headset that works as well for video calls as it does for gaming. With long battery life and great sound quality, you can even use them as headphones.
- Great sound quality from headphones and microphone
- Solid battery life
- Mute light is on the mic boom, so you know if you forgot to mute
- Expensive
- Might be a bit much if you don’t do a lot of video calls
A good headset can serve you well in a variety of ways. The HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless is about as good as it gets unless you spend some big money. The headset is relatively light at 335g with a decently thick headband and reasonably comfortable ear cups. They come with red accents which helps add a splash of color to the home office experience. It boasts a ridiculous 300 hours per charge for battery, so you should only have to charge this thing once every couple of weeks or so if you use it all day every day.
The reason this is a good product is that it works with everything. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, whatever you need, this will do it. The microphone is a lot cleaner than you’ll get with wireless earbuds or your stock webcam microphone while the headset isolates outside noise well to help you focus. The end of the mic boom houses a red light that you can easily see in your peripheral vision to check if you’re muted or not. Yes, it’s designed for gaming, but there’s no law against using gaming accessories for professional work.
Elgato / Pocket-lint
Elgato Stream Deck MK.2
4. Best remote work productivity booster
Have you ever wanted to make your own buttons?
The Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 is another product that aims at gamers, but has excellent applications as a productivity tool as well. You can program the 15 buttons to do whatever you want. Really.
The Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 is designed for people who stream on Twitch. It’s a 15-key keypad with a lot of customization. In general, you’ll see people use this for things like volume or mute buttons for both audio and microphones. However, you can program these 15 keys to do basically anything you want. Yes, that includes productivity stuff as well.
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The software to control it takes a bit of practice, but fortunately you don’t have to spend a ton of time in there. I’ve used this product for hotkey shortcuts in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Firefox, which is my browser of choice. Each button is also an LCD screen, and you can assign icons to each one to remind you of what it does. These things are so cool and a wildly underrated productivity tool.
Logitech / Pocket-lint
Logitech Z207 Stereo Speaker
5. Best remote work budget PC speakers
Honestly not bad for budget speakers
$50 $60 Save $10
Wearing headphones or earbuds all the time can get fatiguing after a while. Free your head up with some good PC speakers. The Logitech Z207 have been great for a long time and newer models now have Bluetooth.
- Surprisingly decent sound for its price
- Includes Bluetooth functionality for use with your gadgets
- They look nice sitting next to a computer monitor
- Double the price and you can get some wicked great speakers
- Only has Bluetooth 4.2
The Logitech Z207 speakers are a rock solid investment in your office space. They work better than most speakers south of $50 and include helpful Bluetooth functionality for when you don’t want to plug them in, like with the iPad we recommended earlier. I’ve had the older, non-Bluetooth version of these speakers for eight years and haven’t had any major issues with it. The knob turns smoothly, and the sound quality is more than good enough.
Read more: Best mid-range headphones: Audiophile tested and reviewed
They aren’t exactly the cheapest PC speakers on the market that also sound good. That title goes to the Creative Pebble. However, the Logitech has larger speakers, extra functionality, and it uses the headphone jack as opposed to a USB port, which makes them a bit more versatile. They are rather large, but they fill in desk space well. It would be awesome of Logitech updated these with more modern Bluetooth, as this one supports 4.2, but other than that, these are a good purchase.
Kafri / Pocket-lint
KAFRI RGB Headphone Stand
6. Best remote work headphone stand
Can’t ask for more out of a headphone stand
$25 $27 Save $2
The Kafri RGB Headphone Stand gives you a place to stash your headset along with some snazzy lighting to brighten up your space and plenty of charging ports for your devices.
- Two USB-A ports and one USB-C port for connection
- Subtle RGB strip along the bottom adds a splash of color
- Two outlets let you charge everything simultaneously
- Not as good looking as those fancy wood headphone holders
- RGB isn’t as customizable as we’d like
The Kafri RGB Headphone Stand is a great all-around piece of tech for your desk. It holds your headset while also providing several charging options for your other devices. The base model has two outlets, two USB-A ports, and a USB-C port where you can charge your phone, your wireless headphones, or essentially anything else you have lying around. The USB-C port isn’t powerful enough to charge or power a laptop like a MacBook, but the outlets in the back are powerful enough if you want to go that route.
Read more: Best portable chargers for USB-C phones: Universal charging on the go
You do have some options as well. There is a pink variant that has all the same features as the black variant. There is another version that omits the outlets in the back in favor of a pen holder. However, we think the variant with the two outlets is the best one. About the only bad thing about it is that its simple, black plastic design doesn’t look as aesthetically pleasing as some of the high-end wood headphone holders, but that’s a minor nitpick.
APC / Pocket-lint
APC Performance Surge Protector with USB Ports
7. Best remote work surge protector
With surge protection energy rating
$43 $57 Save $14
Our homes are getting increasingly bloated with all the things we need to plug in. Do yourself a favor and make sure you have an actually good surge protector to keep your stuff safe.
- 2,630 joules of surge protection
- Eleven outlets and two USB ports
- Eight-foot cable lets you reach those far away wall outlets
- It can be expensive when not on sale
- It’s a rather large surge protector
The APC Performance Surge Protector is an excellent addition to a home office. You have to plug in your computer, probably a phone, and a few accessories and gadgets like a printer. Those items are what make you money and deserve protection from things like surges. This protector costs just over $50 when not on sale and comes with a 2,630 joule surge protection rating, meaning this thing will take the hit if your house gets struck by lightning.
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In addition, it comes with two USB ports, 11 total outlets, and an eight-foot cable. There are mounts on the back, so you can hang it on the wall or from something else if you don’t want to put it on the floor. There are several great surge protectors out there. However, APC offers a lifetime warranty with a $250,000 connected equipment protection policy so if this thing doesn’t take the surge, you’ll get reimbursed for your lost items unless it was caused by human error.
Lapgear / Pocket-lint
LapGear Home Office Lap Desk
8. Best remote work accessory
Makes working on the couch noticeably easier
$36 $40 Save $4
Having a home office with a desk is wonderful, but why bother working from home if you can’t move around a little? The Lapgear Home Office Lap Desk lets you comfortably work anywhere in your house.
- Big enought to support 15.6-inch laptops
- Includes an integrated mouse pad
- Slot to hold your phone
- The mouse pad section can be finicky sometimes
- Phone slot could be a tad deeper
One of the first things I bought after I purchased a laptop is one of these things. I’ve had mine for going on six or seven years now and while I don’t pull it out as often as I used to, I still enjoy having it. The Lapgear lap desk has two bean bag-style pads on the bottom that rests on your lap. You place your laptop and, optionally, a mouse on the top, pop your smartphone into the provided slot, and you can sit practically anywhere in the house with it.
On Amazon, you can find the one carbon black option. Surprisingly, Best Buy has several models that range from a fake wood grain to pink, silver, and, of course, the black carbon look. In my experience, you can fit a 17-inch laptop on here, but just barely, and it’s not comfortable enough to recommend. However, a lot of folks use MacBooks, and this will fit any MacBook ever made. It’s worth having so you’re not stuck at a desk all day long.
Best tech essentials for your home office: The bottom line
The best home office setup is one that gets the job done without being too crowded. Harvard Business Review did a study that showed that clean, uncluttered work space helps your productivity as much as any piece of tech. However, having a sweet monitor like the ASUS ROG Swift listed above certainly doesn’t hurt. Some of the other products, like the Elgato Stream Deck and the Kafri Headphone Stand, take up a small overall footprint for the extra functionality they provide.
It’s also nice to have a dedicated wireless headset for video calls that can steam music, such as the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless or solid speakers like the Logitech Z207s that bring surround sound to your desk.
How did we choose these home office tech essentials?
Well, it was mostly just looking around my own home office setup and seeing what would make for a good recommendation. I personally use an ultrawide monitor because I love them, but I know when I shopped for one, I needed a monitor with mostly accurate colors for creative work. Speakers, a headset, a headphone stand, all of these things are additions onto the basic home office setup that have the capacity to improve a person’s quality of life or help remove clutter while they’re at work.
Once a list was formed, it was just a matter of finding the best options in that space. Browsing monitors that had good color, speakers that sounded good, and, well, there’s only one Elgato Stream Deck, so that one was pretty easy. After a full list was assembled, it was looked over by our talented staff and now here we are.
Is there something I shouldn’t get for my home office space?
Obviously, if you don’t have a pair of headphones, you don’t need a headphone stand. A lot of people think they need an endless number of gizmos and gadgets to work from home. Depending on your job, it’s best to focus on the essentials. For me, I write for a living. My keyboard is the most expensive item on my entire desk that isn’t my PC tower or my monitor. My Elgato Stream Deck has buttons like undo and redo, along with macros for things like adding links to text.
In short, try to avoid buying things you don’t really need. It just adds clutter and complexity to your tasks, which makes for a bad work experience. Focus on and think about what would actually make your life better.
What tech do I absolutely require for my home office?
The tools necessary to do your job, probably a computer, a desk, and a chair are the bare minimums. From there, it’s mostly just following the advice above. If there’s a gadget that you believe will make your job easier, then it’s not a stretch to call such an item a requirement. I can do my job on a $15 dome keyboard, but I type much faster and more accurately on a mechanical keyboard. Thus, a better keyboard was a requirement for me. Use that logic to determine what’s a requirement for you.
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