If you're looking to upgrade your home office setup, opting for an arm for your monitor or monitors can be a simple way to gain more screen space and desk space. Armatures are also more flexible than traditional monitor stands, allowing you to better adjust your monitor to the best ergonomic position.

However, there are a few major issues to watch out for when buying a monitor arm that you'll want to be aware of, mostly so you can avoid making mistakes and get the right monitor arm for your use.

VESA compliance

Make sure your monitor and arm use a standard mount

Not all monitors and monitor arms use the same mounting brackets, so make sure your monitor and the armature have the same mounting system. The VESA monitor standard is designed to facilitate the easy replacement of your monitor stand with a new one by providing a standardized monitor stand mount protocol.

While you don't need to stick to the VESA standard, many monitors have VESA mounts, and it's easy to find a quality VESA arm, which helps you avoid having a monitor and monitor arm that are incompatible. Nothing ruins your home office renovation plans faster than having a monitor and an armature that can't connect, after all.

Monitor weight

Make sure your arm can hold the weight of your displays.

You need to make sure your monitor arm can withstand the weight of your displays. While this is less of an issue for single-monitor mounts, if you've got a heavy ultra-wide monitor or you plan to connect multiple displays, make sure your monitor arm is rated for the weight and size of the monitors you plan to hook up to the arm.

For heavier monitors or multi-monitor setups, you might need to get a different mounting system to connect the arm to your desk, or you risk having your monitor arm fall over, which is a great way to get rid of an old display, but it's definitely a situation to be avoided.

Desk mount types

Make sure your desk can handle a monitor arm.

While you need to ensure that your monitor arm's mounting system can handle the weight of your displays, you also need to verify that your desk can support it. So, you'll want to take a good look at your desk prior to investing in a monitor arm, to make sure it's compatible with the mounting system of your monitor arm, and that your desk can handle the weight.

While a quality wooden desk should be able to handle the weight of a multi-monitor setup, you need to make sure you have clearance for the desktop mount. Some monitor mounts require a decent amount of room below the desk surface to secure the clamp mount, which can be a problem if your desk has any kind of shelving built in.

In that case, you'd want to opt for a grommet mount instead; however, you would then need to ensure that your desk has a grommet hole built in. Otherwise, you'll need to break out the power tools to create one yourself, and that might compromise the structural integrity of your desk. At which point you might need to mount your monitors to your wall instead.

Space requirements

Make sure you've got space to adjust your armature.

In addition to making sure your desk is monitor arm-friendly, you also need to make sure your space is friendly to the extra requirements of a monitor arm. While these can save space on your desk, they can also take up extra space around the sides or back of your desk to fit the complicated arm structures.

Static monitor arms require less extra space, but they're also a bit more limited in terms of how much you can raise or lower the arm, or if you can tilt or rotate it. However, static arms are generally much more affordable than dynamic arms. While dynamic monitor arms require more space to use, they offer better customization and thus better ergonomics. So be sure to measure the area around your desk before deciding on what kind of monitor arm you decide to purchase.

But if you're overhauling your home office space, you might as well consider moving your desk to give yourself some extra room for a fancy, dynamic monitor arm.

Hinge angle

If you want true versatility in your monitor arm, opt for one with a 360-degree hinge.

But it's not just static or dynamic height adjustments and space you need to consider. Hinge angles are also a factor.

Some monitor arms offer a 120-degree tilt angle, while others offer a 360-degree hinge. While you can get away with a 120-degree hinge, getting the full versatility of a 360-degree angle will offer you greater freedom of movement with your monitor arm and better customization of your workspace. It can also offer you better ergonomics, as well.

Learn from our mistakes

We know about these issues because we've made these mistakes. While a lot of these tips might seem like basic monitor arm purchases, they're common monitor arm mistakes because people frequently make them. Us included.

Sure, you can always return a poorly suited monitor arm, but then you need to start researching a new one all over again. Better to keep these tips in mind the first time around so you don't have to deal with the returns and exchanges process.