Steve Workman's Blog

My Office Setup

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been working remotely. Over the last five years I’ve been slowly building up my perfect office, including moving house to get some more space. As of late 2025, I’m working from my home office 4 days a week, so it’s important to me to have a great setup. I’ve included Amazon links for the things that you can still get, and anything that is obsolete, I’ve included a link to what I’d get now.

My desk setup in 2025
My desk setup in 2025, excuse the mess

The Desk

This is a Fully Jarvis standing desk, 120cm wide. The desk was a purchase for the old house, so it’s the smallest of the desks that Fully offered, but was the one that I needed for the space that I had. The desk has a cable tidy underneath with two power blocks, and then there is are extra plugs on the left and a power grommet on the right. The sit/stand mechanism is great with presets for whatever I need.

Sadly, Fully was bought by Herman Miller in 2022 and these desks are now a lot more expensive and don’t have all the lovely extras that they used to come with. For example, you used to be able to get larger desk tops with pre-drilled holes and I was days away from buying a bigger one early this year – but then the website disappeared and folded into Herman Miller. If you can get them second hand, do, because they’re great.

The Chair

It’s a Herman Miller Aeron, bought refurbished at about 20% of the price new from a liquidation company at the start of the pandemic. It’s really comfy and adjustable, with some extra lumbar support too. Do look out for office liquidation companies as I got this for 1/3 of the list price and it’s as good as new.

For my feet, I’ve got a soft foot-rest, which helps get me in the right body position and stops me leaning too close to the monitor.

On the Desk

The monitor is a Dell Ultrasharp 34” Ultrawide. It’s only 1440p but I’ve never noticed any visual issues or a lack of definition with it not being 4K. Its colour is very accurate but the best thing about it is the hub inside the monitor. Connected via 1 USB-C cable, I get power, the screen, and 4 USB devices. Were I buying one today, I'd go for this 40" model with a 4K resolution and then I wouldn't use my laptop monitor at all - but I also don't have £1300 for an upgrade that I don't need!

The monitor itself is on a small stand from IKEA called a SIGFINN, which is bamboo and useful for putting the keyboard and mouse in when I’ve finished for the day.

The keyboard is a Keycheron K2 with the brown clicky keys. I bought this before the K3 came out and whilst this is an excellent keyboard, I’d prefer the lower profile of the K3 should I buy one now.

The mouse is a Logitech MX 3s for mac and is comfortable to use for long periods. It’s only for right-handed people so I can’t recommend it for lefties, but for 90% of the population it’s great and has a really long battery life.

My Mac is raised up to the same level as my monitor using a laptop stand. The stand is collapsible for travel but I don’t find myself taking it many places these days. However, it’s really important to have the second screen at the right level to not hurt my neck with long days at the desk.

AV setup

This is what Steve looks like when on a webcam
This is what Steve looks like on webcam

The microphone is a Blue Nessie, sadly retired in 2020. It was a similar product to the Blue Yeti microphone and a level up from the Snowball microphone that they had. It produces a really clear sound but can still have some popping if you get too close. It is directional though and can prioritise music or voices or a balance. To put how good this is into context, I had some scaffolding put up directly outside my office room window with some very loud drills and metal poles clanging around everywhere; the people on a call with me couldn’t hear it at all. I’ve also noticed that I can have music on in the room and that will be filtered out by the microphone. It’s an incredible device.

Blue is now owned by Logitech and these days I’d recommend a Rode Podcaster directional shotgun mic – it does much the same thing but you would also need a mic stand or arm to position it.

My “webcam” is a Nikon D7500. This, clearly, is not a webcam, but a prosumer mirrored DSLR from 2016. I’m using the standard 18-140mm lens (at approx. 24mm). To connect it to the laptop I have a mini-HDMI cable running to an Elgato CamLink 4K. The camera itself has a dummy battery. It’s mounted on a desk-clamped monopod, with an Artcise ball mount to control the pitch of the camera. Mounted on top of that is some lighting, an Elgato key light mini (they now sell a Key Light Neo).

Let’s be blunt – this is excessive for a webcam, but it looks absolutely gorgeous. The DSLR can record in 4K but the streamlink only supports 1080p60 for this model. This is still way above what any reasonable person needs for a webcam, but it allows me to

  1. Use some kit that would normally only come out on special assignments (2 kids = 0 hands free when out and about) and
  2. The lens gives me full control of depth of field so I can do many of the software-assisted tricks in-camera, like the blurred background.

I have one minor issue which is that on very hot days the camera can overheat and need to turn off for a bit, though it’s not common-enough to need to do anything about it.

Since Nikon doesn’t sell mirrored DSLRs any more, a regular Sony/Nikon/Canon mirrorless camera would be perfect – however, I’m not looking to upgrade any time soon so I don’t have any recommendations here.

Other controls

A very recent addition to my desk setup is an Elgato Stream Deck Mini – 6 little buttons to help me with things like Teams calls (need to reach for a reaction button quickly), playing music (via the Sonos speakers) or turning the key light on/off. I don’t have any other fancy coloured lighting in the rest of the room, but I’d definitely be controlling that through the stream deck if I could.

Other really little things

Around the rest of the room I’ve got some other things of note: