Ergotron LX Dual Arm Desk Mount Review

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by Kevin O'Brien

Computer users who multitask have always run into the problem of how to get multiple computers or displays running on a small desk surface. LCD stands take up precious space, and notebooks take a big footprint compared to just a keyboard. One solution, besides a larger desk, is purchasing a device stand that will attach to a single point on your desk, and allow devices to move around suspended above the desk surface. The LX Dual Arm Desk Mount is one option offered through Ergotron.

Specifications:

Design

The Ergotron LX Dual Arm Desk Mount has a very stylish design, not unlike Frenzy from the latest Michael Bay/Paramount film. As you can see in the following picture, you can see they share many design elements.

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Both designs have multiple pivot points for easy positioning of arms (or legs).
Both designs are very sturdy, supporting a great deal of weight.
Both designs have a futuristic look, as if they were made by some advanced civilization.
Both designs look as if they could destroy you at any time.

Build Quality

The Ergotron LX Dual Arm Desk Mount feels incredibly sturdy and overbuilt. The backbone and footing are solid, keeping the assembly planted firm against the desk surface once clamped into place. The footing is so strong that you can actually bend the desk surface by pushing on the stand. The arms have a great deal of mass, to keep items suspended in the air with minimal flex, and to reduce vibration. Joints are large, with many adjustments under spring tension, to let lightweight or heavy items float perfectly in the air.

 

The only part that feels somewhat cheesy, but not noticed under normal use is the plastic covering that hides all of the inner workings of the height adjusting bar. It is fairly thin and very flexible, but you never notice it unless you try to pinch the sides.

Installation

When you first open up the box you see a ton of parts that make most DIY projects appear to be a walk in the park. With so many arms and connecting screws I thought this was going to take forever to put together. Then I took a peak in the instruction manual and figured out that most of the small parts were for the optional mounts (one side can have laptop plate or LCD mount) as well as different size LCD mounts.

The main support section clamps onto your desk through 2 different methods. One is designed to clamp on to the edge of your desk, with the other designed to grip on from below through a hole drilled in your desk. This gives you a decent amount of flexibility depending on where on your desk you feel the stand might best fit in.

With backbone in place, the real fun begins. Each fixed arms gets installed first, with a metal donut to keep it at a height you choose. Then you attach the spring loaded height adjustment arms. After that you install the plates you need to the ends of the height adjustment arms. Next comes actually mounting your devices onto the ends of the arms, and adjusting the spring tension to the perfect level that keeps heavier items up in the air. This is adjusted using a huge allen wrench which was included with the kit. After that a few joints get tightened down with smaller allen set screws, and it's basically done. In all I think I spent about an hour getting the stand installed on my desk, devices mounted, and wires routed.

Daily Use

One reason I decided to pick this stand to review is my desk gets cluttered with an obscene amount of junk. Many review devices including laptops, accessories, wires, books, you name it... are all scattered around my desk. This stand was able to take my monitor stand off the middle of my desk, as well as elevate one laptop. This freed up a great deal of extra space, and kept a few wires off the middle of the desk with them wrapped around the arms of the stand.

Another benefit of this stand is the flexibility you have on where you want to position devices. The standard monitor stand had a limited height and rotating it around to show a coworker something meant moving the stand itself around my desk. With this stand I can easy get the LCD to almost twice the height above my desk, pivot it to face almost any direction, and tilt the LCD to face the ceiling if needed.

Slate notebook users might find this style of stand handy, being able to elevate their notebook off their desk, and use a keyboard and mouse (wired or wireless) below it.

Limitations

For use as a notebook stand, it can't really hold the notebook steady enough for typing. The entire stand ends up acting like a springboard against the desk surface and you end up having the keyboard bounce against your fingers. Another problem I noticed with notebooks specifically is the tiliting joint has no tension adjustment. Heavy notebooks will not stay at the angle that you originally set, and end up flopping down.

Conclusion

If your job requires multiple notebooks or monitors to be around your desk surface, the Ergotron LX Dual Arm Desk Mount might be worth looking into. I was able to free up the footprint of one LCD and one notebook from my desk, gaining some much needed clean space. Overall the quality of the stand was top notch, which you would expect of something designed for a business environment.

Pros

• Solid construction
• Lets you position displays over other equipment, which is not really possible with a standard fixed stand
• Compatible with a wide range of devices

Cons

• Does not provide a solid enough surface for typing on a notebook placed on the stand
• No internal routing for cables
• Giant, swinging multi-arm device annoys everyone in cubicles next to you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great for the day traders of the world who have multiple screens, actually almost any job is made easier with multi-screen viewing.

I like the fact this looks like a robot ready to pick you up and throw you as well.

 

It definitely looks like a robot and comes in handy for viewing multiple screens.

It is also a good item for tablet owners or slate tablet owners because it elevates the screen and gives you desk space. Great for anyone who gives a lot of presentations as well.

 

The product looks decent, maybe they should also offer a black version.

However, the price is a big turnoff for me. I haven't looked much into monitor mounts but at 200 bucks the stand costs nearly as much as a 22" lcd display itself. :O

 

Interesting idea, but way too expensive for me.

Somewhat off topic, but the notebooks pictured in the review (The old dell Latitue and the HP Compaq, but not the first picture) look a lot like what the Juniors and Seniors have at my school (Juniors have the Dell Precision M70, Seniors have the HP Compaq nw8000). I'm wondering if those pics originated from RHIT?

 

thats awesome, i want it.

 

oh man what a inflation.
I still use ~$50 Fellowes arm bought for CRT tube in past century.

 

Wow...nice review Kevin! I've been waiting for you to post this...

A few questions though...
1) Do you think it could realistically hold a 24" monitor even though it is advertised for 20"? My monitor is 18.3lbs...
2) How large of a notebook (with dock) could it hold? Could it hold my 17" beast? A picture of just the laptop mount thing would be nice...
3) With a laptop and monitor on it, would it be possible to 'collapse' it a little bit such that you would use only the monitor and minimize the desk space 'stolen'? (I'm hoping that makes sense to you...)
4) Answered my own question #4...but how well would that clamp work???
5) If you were to use the laptop mount, how far can it tilt? I think it would save more space if you could position the notebook at a someone downward angle...

This thing would be a HUGE space saver if it works for me!

EDIT AGAIN: Answered my own #6 with an image @ Buy.com:


I am SOOOOO thinking about ordering this, even if I feel that I'd have to drill a hole in my desk to make this fit right...still need to get #1-#4 answered though...

 

Thanks for the review. I might just get something like that for my office.

 

Bump to get answers...c'mon Kevin!

Oh, and my girlfriend said she'd rather see me not buy this...she'd rather I buy a Wii !

 

I will try tomorrow to see what the limits of the arms are. 20lb monitor... probably works, 20lb notebook... hope you had damage insurance.

Some 15" notebooks are pushing it for the holding platform. While the main suspension arm has a tension adjustment, the pivot section does not. This makes a laptop angle forward enough where its like the notebook is going to flip off the stand. The way the platform is designed I really dont see it holding notebook+docking station. Would be way too unstable.

I really think its best use is holding LCD's. I will try and get a shot of it in action on my desk tomorrow.

 

The notebook isn't 20lbs...sheesh!

I'd wager it is close to 9lbs with the dock though.

 

Bumpity Kevin? Got any info for me?

 

Some partial info, so bored today that I forgot about the other stuff

Here is a shot showing how big the platform is. On top is a 15.4" Tecra A9. Anything heavier by about a LB would make the tilting platform completely flop down. The height adjusting arm would stay in the right spot, but the spring tensioned tray would not.

 

Well today I did the unheard of, and opened the manual. Turns out there is an adjustment for that one pivot part! Cranked all the way it can hold up a closed 15" notebook (before it would flop unless the screen was open). Next will be trying to see if it can hold a open 17" notebook when we get one in.

 

Excellent! And I was starting to give up hope...!!!

Let me know when a 17" comes your way, as I'm CERTAINLY interested in how it fares. If possible, assume a dock stretches out 3" or so from the butt of the notebook. What'da'ya'think?

Weight-wise, I think I'd be okay as I have a relatively light 17" machine anyway. It's the dimensions of the dock that scare me right now...

 

Hey

Nice review

i'm looking at getting somthing that i can also fo typing is there any way of making it not so springy????

or do u have any other sugestions

thx in advance

 

Kevin?

Sorry to bump this, but I was wondering if any 17" notebooks had graced your desk recently?

 

Not yet, but will let you know if one finally comes my way.

 

My name is Riley McArdle and I work for Ergotron.

First off, I'd like to thank you for your review. I just wanted to respond to some of your concerns and some of the comments and questions from others.

Kevin:

I agree with you about the flimsiness of the plastic that covers the mechanics of the arm. I have brought this problem up to our Engineers but I'm not sure if it will be changed. Like you said, its really only something you notice while you are installing the arm and doesn't affect the function as the metal parts beneath the plastic are more than strong enough to hold things up.

The notebook arm isn't really designed to be used for typing on the notebook. The intention has always been that the user would use an external keyboard with the notebook while it is on the notebook arm. It would be not be ergonomic for the user to type on the notebook up so high from the desk and it would also limit the ability of the arm to be easily adjusted if it had to be stiff enough to type on.

The tilting joint you mentioned does have an adjustment. There is a large Phillips screw on the underside that you can turn to adjust the tension of the tilt. This should help hold heavier notebooks.

There are some channels on the underside of the arm for cable routing. Unless you have a lot of cables that need to run to your notebook, they should be big enough.

elfroggo:

We do have a black version of this product. Here's a link to the page on our website:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/26eqyd

Teraforce:

The pictures with the Dell Latitude and HP Compaq Evo notebooks were taken here at Ergotron.

Greg:

Some 24" monitors may work, it mainly depends on the weight and center of gravity. The notebook arm probably could not hold a 17" notebook and dock but again it depends on the weight and center of gravity. If you have the brand and model of the monitor and notebook you want to use, I could try and find out if they would work.

I think I understand what you are saying about collapsing things. You can adjust the arms so that the monitor overlaps the monitor of the notebook if you wanted to.

The notebook can be tilted down past straight up and down (e.g. the keyboard of the notebook would be perpendicular to the table). You wouldn't want to do that though because the notebook would fall forward, but it is possible.

elfroggo, Teraforce, a75user:

Our products may be a tad on the expensive side but I think if you try them out, you will see that you really do get what you pay for. "Feel the difference" was our tag line for a while and it really is true. Once you feel the smoothness and ease of adjusting your monitor or notebook, you will know how different our product is and that it is worth the price. The quality and functionality are not matched by anything else out there.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to PM here or E-Mail me at [email protected]. I'll also be watching this thread for replies.

 

I'm really sorry I haven't been to this thread in a while .

The 17" notebook was sold, but I have a 2407WFP monitor from Dell.

Hey Kevin, just a quick question or two...(1) are you still using this and (2) how has it held up to a few months usage?

 

It has held up great.

After adjusting the tension, it can hold up fairly large devices without any problem. I was using this for over a month with a much larger 22" LCD, and it was stable as can be. At this time I also had the Gateway FX 17" notebook on it, and worked fine as long as spring tension was maxed.

Right now the stand works as good as it did on day one, although I have had to retighten one of the pivot points more than once on the monitor side. I frequently spin my LCD around to show Jerry things from time to time, and one of the screws just gets kinda loose after a while. In a normal home setting this would never be a problem.

The dell 24" should be fine, as its weight is around the same as the Lenovo 22" I was using.

The only thing you need to worry about is the desk surface you are clamping this thing onto. My work desk is like 1"+ thick, and with the weight of LCD and notebook it can flex the entire desk surface. If you are putting it on some 1/2" pressed fiber Sauder desk surface it would have a high chance of ripping your desk in half and throwing your equipment on the floor

 

I would really like to know if the Dual Arm will support a 15.4" Widescreen Lenovo T61 and the new Dell 2408WFP.

The Lenovo t61 is rated at 5.9lbs but I have the extended battery so it's a little heavier. I will say the laptop weights 7 lbs at most to be generous.

The dell is rated at 15.5LBs without the stand. The Dual Arm says it supports a total weight of 20LBS if using the clamp, and 40lbs with the grommet.

I have an Ikea desk (Galant series for those ikea fanboys) which is only 3/4" thick and is made of (obviously) particlewood.

Do you think this combination of ~23lbs will push it to the point of instability?

I am not sure if drilling into this desk will ruin it. I've always heard that drilling into particlewood can damage it, but I am no carpenter.

Thanks for any information.

Jonathan

 

Anyone ?

 

Yes, the Erotron LX Dual Arm Desk Mount will support both the T61 and 2408WFP. Kevin uses this dual arm mount daily and often mounts more weight to it than this.

As for drilling into the particlewood ... I don't know. Kevin just has his clamped to his desk and it seems pretty secure, but ultimately it's your call since you'll be the one risking your equipment.

 

I would be weary if clamping this mount to a not-so-strong desk. My work desk is a fairly beefy Steelcase model about as thick as a door and it has some flex to it on heavier loads. If I were going to mount this on a standard consumer fiberboard desk, I would really consider looking at strengthening the desk with a section of plywood above and below the desk. Maybe something 1' x 1' to spread out the load on the bottom, and something a bit larger than the foot for up top.