Best Monitor Risers of 2026

This is the cheapest riser in the set by a comfortable margin, and it also reaches highest: 6.1 inches at the top setting, above everything else we picked. For a first desk, a dorm room, or a second screen on a shared table, that combination is hard to argue with.

We think the height range is the real feature. At 4.5, 5.3, and 6.1 inches it covers desks where a monitor's own stand leaves the screen too low, and it clears a laptop parked in front. The trade for that reach is material: the shelf and legs are plastic, and at the top setting we noticed more movement when the desk was bumped than with the steel stands here. It handles a normal monitor at any of the three positions, and the vented platform is good for a laptop or a mini PC that needs airflow.

Setup is four legs and no tools, and the 14.6 by 9.3 inch platform leaves room underneath for a keyboard or a stack of papers. Because it is plastic it also weighs almost nothing, which makes moving it to another room a one-hand job. Just don't expect steel rigidity at 6.1 inches.

Two curved 27-inch monitors sharing a desk is the setup this stand was drawn for. The two steel plates tilt and slide so each screen can angle toward you, the frame extends to 39 inches, and the curve in the middle lets the monitors sit closer together than they would on two separate risers.

It arrives assembled, which we appreciated more than we expected — no legs to thread, no bag of hardware. A drawer runs under the center section, two pen holders hang off the sides, and the gap beneath the plates swallows a keyboard. The middle is where it proves useful: a phone, a notepad, the small things that normally occupy the six inches in front of the monitor.

The limit is height. The rise is 3.78 inches, the smallest lift in this set, so if your monitor sits low or you are tall, this will not get the screen to eye level on its own. The width and the tilt are what earn it a place, not the elevation, and we would measure the space behind it before ordering, since the angled plates swing backward as you turn them.

Six dividers come loose in the box, and where you put them decides what this stand does for your desk. Slot three in and you have a row of shallow trays for pens and sticky notes; pull them all and it becomes one long trough. Between the dividers, two side caddies, a sliding drawer, and a phone slot, the storage is the point of this one.

The shelf runs 33.3 inches wide and slides out to 45, enough for two monitors and a laptop, or a monitor and a printer. Height is 5 inches and depth is 10.9, so it wants a reasonably deep desk. The finish is rustic brown engineered wood, warmer than the black metal stands here, and it sits comfortably on a wood desk instead of fighting it.

It earns its place on a desk where clutter is the actual problem. It is also the least rigid stand we recommend: the shelf has some give, and assembly runs to a long list of fasteners and pre-drilled holes — a real session rather than two minutes. Want a riser you screw together once and never think about again? The metal picks are better. Want the top of the desk organized? This does more than any of them.

The adjustable width is what makes it fit awkward rooms: pull it out over a corner, tuck one side against a wall, keep the phone slot within reach of your chair. That flexibility, more than the wood finish, is the reason it stayed in the roundup.

A support leg sits in the middle of the open space under this stand. That is the first thing to know about it, and it is the price of the width: a 35.8-inch wood top on alloy steel legs, 10.2 inches deep, which puts it a foot or more wider than the single-platform risers here.

The top is a rustic brown wood finish with anti-slip pads underneath, and the stated capacity is 68 kg — far more than two monitors need. So the practical question is not weight but what you want to slide beneath it. A flat object fits on either side of the center leg; a keyboard tray that spans the full width does not.

Assembly is the usual pre-drilled holes and included hardware, with a screwdriver in the box as a small kindness. Height is fixed at about 4.9 inches and there are no alternate leg positions, so measure before committing if your screen sits unusually low or your chair sits high.

We recommend it where the desk doubles as furniture: two screens land at exactly the same height on one continuous surface, and the wood reads warmer than black steel in a room people actually sit in. If a clear span underneath matters more than the width, this is the wrong shape — the center leg is what makes a 36-inch span rigid in the first place.

Glass is the reason to pick this pair. The quarter-inch tempered top on stainless steel legs nearly disappears against a light desk, and the effect is a workspace that looks emptier than it is — useful when the riser sits in a room guests see. Two stands come in the pack, each rated to 88 pounds, and the legs thread in by hand in a couple of minutes at any height between 3.4 and 4.9 inches.

The tilt is the feature we did not expect to care about: the top angles forward up to 15 degrees, which helps when the monitor's own stand cannot tilt and the screen ends up above your eye line. The catch is the ceiling. At 4.9 inches this is one of the lower maximums in the set, and three picks here reach higher, so tall users and monitors with short stands should look at those first. Glass is also the one surface here that shows dust and fingerprints.

Four legs thread into the platform by hand, and the height comes from which set of holes they go into: 3.94, 4.72, or 5.51 inches. Underneath, the clearance measures 12.40 by 7.09 inches, which takes a compact keyboard, a dock, or a stack of notebooks. The platform is perforated for airflow and rated to 44 pounds, the listing puts the laptop limit at 15.6 inches with a base narrower than 9.25 inches, and two of these can be stacked if you want the storage doubled.

This is the plain single riser we point people to most often: nothing to configure, nothing to explain, and a price lower than most of the stands here. It comes with a two-year warranty, which is more than the others offer. It is also a little less steady at the 5.51-inch setting, and a monitor with a narrow foot can wobble there if you type hard. Running it one notch down, or setting the widest part of the monitor's base over the center of the platform, fixes that.

Twenty-two pounds is the number to start with. That is the stated limit, and it rules out the larger monitors in favor of a laptop, a small second screen, a printer, or a console.

The top is tapered — about 11.6 inches across the center, narrower at the edges — and the legs detach and stack into three heights: 2.87, 4.2, and 4.8 inches. The stacking is the clever part. The extra sections come off and go back on in seconds, so changing the height later takes less time than clearing the desk does.

It is light ABS plastic with non-skid feet, which makes it the one here you can pick up with one hand and park on a shelf when the desk needs to be something else. The plastic is also why we would not put it under an expensive monitor: this is the lightest-duty riser in the roundup.

We recommend it for the jobs where 22 pounds is plenty: the second screen, the laptop that needs four more inches, the printer that has to sit above a ream of paper. Measure the monitor's foot first — the top is smaller than the platform of every steel stand here, and a wide V-shaped base will overhang it.