This laptop accessory comes with me every time I travel

One of my favorite PC accessories is small enough to toss in any backpack yet makes using your laptop cooler, quieter and more comfortable. You can pay $50 or more for a good one, but a cheap model can be yours for less than the cost of a fancy coffee.

I’m talking about the laptop stand, a humble little gadget that I never really appreciated until I started working remotely a decade ago. You can get one in all sorts of colors and shapes at retailers like Amazon (here’s their vast collection of laptop stands), so it’s fairly easy to find a model that fits your notebook and sense of style.

I prefer something sturdy and foldable, like the Roost V3. If I’m not using my laptop in my controlled home environment, the easiest way to make it more comfortable is by elevating it a few inches above the table — critical for unpredictable environments on the road. And if I’m really worried about comfort while working mobile, I’ll toss in a small ergonomic keyboard like the ZSA Voyager (which comes with a little traveling case). But just having the laptop on a stand can be a game-changer when working in a hotel room.

I’ve been thinking about laptops a lot after we got into a laptop versus desktop debate on The Full Nerd podcast. Laptops offer a lot of upsides, but they’re also compromised computers of convenience. We accept the fact they’re more expensive and limited than a desktop because they’re more convenient to use than a big ol’ PC plugged into a bunch of peripherals.

But one big problem is they usually force you to hunch over and cramp yourself up. That’s no biggie during the occasional commute, or a work session in the garden, but years of doing this over and over can cause real stress and pain.

I know, because I stand roughly 6’4″ and I swear I’ve shrunk nearly an inch after decades of hunching over laptops, writing up articles at home and abroad. But once I started regularly using a cheap laptop stand, I found my neck, back and shoulders felt a lot better while working on the go.

What’s more, I found having my laptop elevated a few inches above the table helped improve performance because you get much better airflow behind and beneath the machine. That can help you eke out a few more frames per second when gaming, or a little extra battery life when you’re jamming on a work project. Plus, your laptop runs cooler and quieter than it would if it was suffocating on your lap.

While the Roost stand I prefer does cost nearly $100, that’s partly because I like to use big, hefty laptops like the Framework Laptop 16. By necessity, I went with a portable, adjustable stand that’s big and sturdy enough to support 16-inch gaming laptops. Most folks own laptops that don’t need that kind of support, so you can probably get a lot of the same benefits in a cheap laptop stand that costs between $20 to $30.

So, consider buying a laptop stand. You may find elevating your screen a few inches pays big dividends in terms of comfort.

This week on The Full Nerd I joined regular cohosts Adam Patrick Murray and Alaina Yee to catch up on the state of computing news and dig deeper into the eternal debate: laptop or desktop?

Between the wild state of the PC market and Adam’s experience glimpsing what the future may look like at Computex, we had a lot of fresh data to discuss, and we wrapped up by taking a few questions from the audience. Also, cat pics!

We’re deep in the dog days of summer, but there arestill a few hot stories in tech that you should check out!

That’s all from me this week, but make sure to bookmark PCWorld and check back regularly for more nerd news you can (hopefully) use.

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.