Recommendations for an adjustable ergonomic keyboard arm/tray?

August 24, 2009 10:16 AM

Recommendations for an adjustable ergonomic keyboard arm/tray? This seems to be such a niche market that there is little to no advice to find through searching. An Amazon search yields items with one or (mostly) zero reviews, and not even nerd-frequented sites (MeFi, reddit, etc.) seem to have any posts related to this subject. There are some about desks but that's about it. So, does anyone here have recommendations?
posted by mackstann to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

office depot?
posted by bunny hugger at 10:23 AM on August 24, 2009

My partner and I each have RSI and so I did extensive research in setting up her home office. We settled on equipment from HumanScale. It was fairly easy to install and unlike the models I saw at Office Depot et all, it has a much broader range of adjustment. It's also incredibly sturdy and quite spendy. (But if you're an information worker and don't want to destroy your body, it's definitely worth it).
posted by donovan at 10:44 AM on August 24, 2009

Check out the Stella mechanism, which is a mechanism for a keyboard tray made by Steelcase. I've used it to support a laptop and its keyboard, but they're originally designed for keyboards. It's a tray on an arm that also runs on a rack, and it's very adjustable, stable, and quickly retracted/extended. Here's a tray that uses the mechanism -- there are many others out there, too.
posted by suedehead at 10:46 AM on August 24, 2009

I have a Humanscale G4 (I think) here on my desk, with a swing-out mousing surface on each side. The $work paid for it, so I got to choose without looking at prices. (But that was a couple of years ago, sadly...)

I've since heard good stuff about Steelcase, but they're also pretty pricey.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:26 AM on August 24, 2009

Response by poster: One I've been looking at is the Kinesis Solution, which is $200. The Humanscale and Steelcase are much more expensive, which might be understandable if there were clear benefits, but it's not clear to me what those benefits might be.
posted by mackstann at 11:37 AM on August 24, 2009

HumanScale here also. It's very solid and easily adjustable. Even raises high enough to work standing up. But I didn't have to pay for it.
posted by teg at 11:45 AM on August 24, 2009

I have a Banana board and like it. Looking at the desciprtion of the Kinesis Solution, it's not obvious if it has disadvantages relative to the (more expensive) Banana Board.
posted by Zed at 12:18 PM on August 24, 2009

Response by poster: Well, I bought a Humanscale 4G for pretty cheap ($85) on ebay. We'll see how it turns out...

Thanks for the suggestions!
posted by mackstann at 12:01 PM on August 25, 2009