The Setup

When it comes to building anything, I'm hopeless. There's really no nice way of saying it. For me a nightmare consists of moving into a house in which everything is flat packed from IKEA and I have to build it myself. Since it's not economical in any shape, way or form to send the monitor stands pre-built, it comes as no surprise that it has to be built.

When you look at the main parts you don't feel too worried for the simple reason it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot. Looking at the screws, bolts and washers, though, and this paints a bit of a different picture. Thinking the worst, it was time to get stuck into it.

When you start handling the parts you quickly realize the quality of the Proluma stand which is excellent. Considering that you're going to strap anything from a $1000 to $1000's worth of monitors, you want to know it's going to be sturdy and I can honestly say I feel safe strapping my three Dell U2410s onto it.

While the manual lacks any words, it's nice and colorful with plenty of pictures that do a good job of explaining what to do. To be honest, when you have the parts in front you'll probably have a fair idea of how everything goes together anyway. The manual just helps reaffirm everything while letting you know where some of the washers and bolts go.

While most of the setup can be done with just a single person, there's two points where an extra pair of hands will come in handy. The first is when it comes to where you have to attach the two side monitors. This is because as soon as you add one, the whole thing wants to fall over to one side due to the weight. You could probably do it yourself, but you'd have to have the monitors face down on a desk or whatever surface you're building on and the chances are you won't want to do that.

The only other time you're going to need help is when you place the stand and monitors on your desk. While the weight isn't too bad, the sheer size and the fact that the arms want to swing about make it a real pain to lift yourself.

As for the build time, it was reasonably quick. From the point I shut down my computer to turning it back on was just under an hour which included moving my monitors to another room, removing the stands from them, building the new stand, attaching the monitors to them, moving it to my desk, connecting the cables back up and getting back into Windows.