Prop-Forward laptop stand

An external mouse and keyboard can work ergonomic wonders for a desk-bound laptop, but you’ll still be left looking down at the screen. If you’d like to avoid a stiff neck, one solution is a laptop stand, but while most simply angle the laptop just a little and leave it hogging valuable desk space, the Prop-Forward takes a different tack altogether.

It might be little more than a bent piece of powder-coated aluminium, but like all great ideas, the Prop-Forward’s simplicity belies its genuine usefulness. With a laptop opened up and dropped into place, the Prop-Forward props it up at a near-vertical angle, leaving the screen at much the same height as that of a normal TFT monitor -- perfect for using with an external keyboard and mouse, in other words.

Better still, unlike other laptop stands, the Prop-Forward has no moving parts to fiddle with or break, and it can be moved around the desk top with a laptop in-situ without worrying about the whole arrangement collapsing. It’s also worth noting that the Prop-Forward is almost invisble in use and takes up about the same amount of desk space as a box of tissues – though the laptop’s width obviously adds a little to this.

Alas, there are a few caveats, though these are really more the fault of certain laptop designs than the Prop-Forward. First, the Prop-Forward can only be used with laptop’s with a screen that tilts back to at least 160 degrees – anything less and it will sit too far forward when the laptop is propped up. The screen also needs relatively stiff hinges so that the screen doesn’t drop out of position when the laptop is jogged.

Less pressing is the fact that the design of the Prop-Forward makes it less than ideal for use with laptops that have front-mounted ports, though this doesn’t stop the laptop being propped up by it. Laptops with front-mounted buttons or an optical drive are less well-suited, for obvious reasons.

At £29.50, the Prop-Forward is a little pricey compared to other more sophisticated laptop stands, but none take up so little desk space or prop the laptop up at so steep an angle. And it should last a lifetime, too – and we mean yours, not the laptop’s.