Moft Sit/Stand desk
Best home office standing desk converter
Apple Magic Keyboard
Best home office keyboard for Mac
Logitech K380
Budget friendly home office multidevice keyboard
Sennheiser CX True Wireless Earbuds
Affordable Sennheiser
Epson Expression Home 4100
An excellent balance of cost and performance
More than ever, people are finding jobs that offer remote work. Whether you work a hybrid schedule — a few days in the office, the rest at home — or a fully remote job, you need the right equipment to make it comfortable. We’ve gathered some of our favorite webcams, desk stands, USB mics and other devices that help make remote working that much easier. Add these essentials to your home office and see how your work-from-home experience improves.
Watch this: Gifts to make working from home easier
What’s the best home office essential?
If you are working from home but as part of a team a really good webcam is essential. We like the Dell Pro 2K webcam for its face tracking and high-quality visuals. it also comes with a magnetic cap to cover it when not in use, just in case you are security conscious.
The home office must-haves for a remote worker are obvious: a full-size keyboard, a wireless mouse and an external monitor. But there’s a handful of other gear — from the best desk, blue-light-blocking glasses or a good pair of noise-canceling headphones — that can make your workday less frustrating, more productive and comfortable. Our recommendations for the best home office essentials for your home office setup are below. We’ll update this list periodically as we review new products.
When you’re presenting a meeting or actively participating in one, you need to be front and center on the screen. The Dell Pro webcam uses some clever software to keep you centered in the frame as you move around a whiteboard or wheel around your office.
This Logitech mouse is ostensibly geared for travel, but it’s really just a good all-around mouse for anyone who finds the step-up
It’s not my favorite webcam, but the C920S will get the job done. The image quality and sound pickup are pretty good, and the clip-on design makes it suitable for an external monitor or laptop computer. The physical privacy shutter is a confidence-inspiring flourish that protects you and your office space from prying eyes.
The Shure MV5 digital condenser microphone combines an unfussy setup and high-quality audio with a compact design. I wouldn’t recommend it for high-stakes recording projects, but it will certainly boost the sound quality of your Zoom meetings and other web conferencing interactions. It comes with both USB-C and Lightning cables.
Moft’s sit/stand desk converter is stable, easy to use, and easy to store. If you are thinking about a standing desk, but aren’t quite ready to take the plunge, then this cheaper alternative will give you a taste of the standing desk life. The best thing? If you are working in a hybrid environment you can take your Moft sit/stand desk with you in your backpack.
Apple’s Magic Keyboard is awesome. It has the old-school Mac keyboard design and space, with the pleasing scissor key mechanism, and it’s wireless, connecting via Bluetooth. Best of all, the battery, which is rechargeable via USB, lasts for months on a charge.
You can use Apple’s peripherals with Windows machines, but if you’re looking for an alternative Bluetooth keyboard that will work with anything from Windows PCs to Macs to iPads to phones, the Logitech K380 is a great choice and runs about $30. Pair it with up to three devices and toggle between each of them with the click of a button.
Product details
Battery Life Rated up to 9 hoursNoise Canceling NoMultipoint NoHeadphone Type Wireless earbudsWater-Resistant Yes (IPX4 — splash-proof)
The Sennheiser CX buds sound excellent for their price point but do stick out of your ears a little more than some buds. (Note that there’s also the new
When you work from home, making coffee becomes a sacramental practice. Think of this kitchen appliance as the Swiss army knife of the drip coffee maker world. The Ninja programmable brewer (with frother, thermal carafe and reusable filter) offers an uncanny degree of flexibility, making it the best coffee maker for those who don’t always want the same cup. It can create everything from solid drip, to perfect cold brew, to iced coffee, to latte-style drinks with its milk frother, and it will adjust the temperature according to your choice. Its thermal carafe will keep tea or coffee hot up to two hours.
When you’re not commuting, there may be some more time for dinner prep. Dinnerly rolls out exciting-sounding and delicious meals such as summery chicken panzanella and risotto with asparagus and cannellini beans. But with no more than six ingredients per recipe, the damage done to your time and kitchen is minimized. The price tag for Dinnerly puts it squarely in the budget-friendly category, clocking in with a cost per serving of around $5. The subscription options include a Two-Person Box for $30, or a Family Box for $60, each with three recipes for the week. Looking for more options? Check out our list of best mealkit services.
After testing the Expression I was pleasantly surprised at how well this printer did. Being Epson’s budget option it could have been poor, but instead performed excellently at text reproduction and about average on the image quality.
At first glance, the Branch standing desk looks pretty generic, but the level of craftsmanship is apparent on closer inspection. All of the materials feel premium, with a weight that only comes from good engineering.
How we test home office essentials
Because home office essentials are a healthy amalgam of tech, and other services our testing will depend on the product. Each of our products has its own testing schedule and more explanations of how we test products can be found on the best list article for that product. Suffice it to say, in our decades of testing products we’ve learned a thing or two about every category that will touch your home office experience.