My Quirky Dual Monitor Setup

I recently had a consult call with Taran (the awesome former LTT editor) and he said that getting another monitor would be a big productivity booster. So after remembering that I had an old 22″ 1080p monitor in my cupboard, I set it up… in a slightly quirky way.

It’s mounted to a 360 degree articulating arm for future proofing, but I mainly use this in portrait mode to speed up my video editing. So after working with this dual monitor setup for a few weeks, I discuss my thoughts on itin this video.

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone there are some videos out there showing some really sleek, really stylish, really amazing dual monitor setups. This is not one of those videos! So, I was recently lucky enough to have a video call with Taran (the amazing former editor from LTT) and he advised me straight away to get a second monitor for my video editing. I remembered I had a really old LG 22-inch monitor in the back of a cupboard somewhere.

So I dug it out and I came up with this amazing thing. Isn’t it amazing…ly weird looking?

Well, yes, it is, but actually, I do mainly video editing on here. Although I do some gaming, it’s mainly video editing, and having a monitor in portrait mode is really useful for that. Whether I shoot using a script or just some bullet-pointed notes, I can have that in this monitor, and then I can do all my video editing without actually worrying about needing to Alt+Tab and constantly losing my flow.

But I was also eager when I did this to actually have future-proofing options, so I made sure I got a mount where I can actually bring this out, rotate it, and put it back to a fairly normal-looking setup if I wanted. Or at least, once I’ve gotten into Windows to put this from portrait to landscape mode again. And then when I want to go back to video editing, I can just put it back into portrait mode and move it on back. It actually works really well in this setup because I kind of get the best of both worlds.

So, I’ve been rocking this dual monitor setup for a few weeks now. In this video, I wanted to talk through how and why I did this, but also the pros and cons of this setup.

How I Set This Up

So how I did install this, and why did I choose THIS specific monitor mount?

Well I knew that I mainly wanted the second monitor in portrait mode BUT I still wanted to give myself some “future proofing” options, which I was interested in rotating mounts because I could always switch the monitor back to landscape mode when I needed to.

So I spend some time researching all the different monitor mounts and there WERE some good options that have360 degree rotation support– and even some thatslid up and downwhich was cool – BUT these would have meant that my second monitor was fixed right to the wall, and I would have then had to mount my monitor fairly high up to give it the necessary clearance from the desk to allow me to rotate it. Ideally I didn’t want that, I wanted a monitor that could be in portrait mode, fairly low down, and look like it was sitting on my desk… mainly to hide all the messy cables behind it, to be honest.

That’s where desk mounts could be useful, of course, because they would sit on the desk itself and give me a bit more flexibility about what height (and angle) I install my monitors at. These probably would have worked just fine, however I ended up comingacross a £12 – $16 – mountthat fit to my wall and was half the price of the other options.

It also has an articulating arm so I could freely move my second monitor around quite a lot. Yes this means that my other monitor is static (using the stand), but I like where it’s placed and I had no intention of moving that around to be honest, so the cheap wall mount (that I came up with for my second monitor) seemed fine to me… plus it gave me an opportunity to do drilling and make a mess, which is a bonus. So I bought it, and then got to work installing it.

I planned out the height that the mount should be at, which was basically a fraction from the desk (when in portrait mode) and I drilled the holes in the wall and added in the drywall plugs. Then it was just a case of connecting the vesa mount to the back ofmy monitorwith the four included screws, and connecting that onto the main wall mount. Simple. It all worked fairly easy – (1)it’s rock solid, it takes up less space than desk mounts and I have full control of its position.

My five year old son likes it too… or I should say, he likes trolling me with it. I come back into my study to work and I see that he’s left my monitor like THIS or something. I know I can tighten up the bolts a bit, but I’m actually pretty proud of him that he’s trolling me to be honest.

Pros And Cons Of This Setup

So I mentioned in the intro that I’ve been rocking this quirky two monitor setup for a few weeks now, but what are my general thoughts on it?

I’ll start with a negative. This is a really old monitor that’s literally been lying on the floor and then in a cupboard unused for quite a few years, and I think I remember why. The backlight is a bit… strange on it. I’m not sure if it’s just old or dying, but it looks a bit “wrong” to me. You can kinda see this when it’s in the background in some of my videos, it looks a bit different to my other monitor. Maybe I’m just used to my other monitor, but there is something in the back of my lizard brain telling me that I stopped using this monitor all those years ago for a reason… that I now can’t completely remember. Ah well, it’s good enough for now, to be honest and that brings me onto my second point.

Because I use this for my YouTube scripts to help speed things upwhen video editing, I don’t want it to distract me in any way. I want to be able to focus on my main monitor without an overly bright monitor glaring away in the corner of my eye. So the fact that this is a bit too dull and dim when I’m working is actually a POSITIVE for me. I have lowered the brightness down a fair amount (to 34%) and this actually works really well for me for my use case, but naturally if I needed two glossy 4K screens for graphics design… this wouldn’t really work.

Another disadvantage, and this is more of a nitpick, is that I often use the built in Windows screenshot tool to drag a box around the screen to gather broll to use in my videos (for example a screenshot of a website or from some software I’ve been using). I take these screenshots on my main monitor so that it’s in 4K resolution, but when I’m dragging it’s easy for my mouse to go off the screen, to the second monitor, which can be a bit jarring. Now this is common enough and something I just need to get used to, but it’s still one small downside that’s worth mentioning.

One final negative is the extra power usage. This LG monitor uses around 22 watts of power when it’s at full brightness – although admittedly this drops to 15 watts when I dim it down to the lower brightness levels I prefer (in other words, 34%). This might not seem like something worth worrying about, but this is only a 1080p screen. My main 4K monitor uses closer to 40 watts of power and that’s not even an OLED display. If you wanted two or three OLED 4K monitors then the power usage WOULD probably be noticeable, especially in a country like the UK which has sky-high energy bills.

That’s enough negatives though, I’m actually really happy generally with how this has turned out. While I DO mainly use this second monitor in portrait mode, I like having the flexibility to move it around as I would like… although granted there’s not loads of space here so that limits me a bit.

I have found myself using this second monitor loads over the past few weeks. Being able to refer to my notes or script when editing speeds things up a lot, because I can more quickly jump ahead when there’s a mistake and find the ‘next’ bit of footage that I’ll need to go to. Equally when I need to show something on the screen, like a video I’m referring to or a screenshare of a website, it can be a little annoying to juggle everything. I might need OBS open, then File Explorer to get the clips that OBS saves, then my script or notes, and finallythe video editingsoftware. Having a second monitor just naturally helps with this, because I naturally have more screen real estate for managing all of this.

I’m really happy with my desk set-up now, especially because I have ran a HDMI cable frommy Homelab NASin the corner over there, up into my loft, and over here to THIS main monitor. That means that I can easily switch over to it with my monitor’s menu, and then start controlling my Homelab NAS instead. I show offhow – and why – I did this in another videoif you wanted to check that out.

Tristan has been interested in computer hardware and software since he was 10 years old. He has built loads of computers over the years, along with installing, modifying and writing software (he’s a backend software developer ‘by trade’).Tristan also has an academic background in technology (in Math and Computer Science), so he enjoys drilling into the deeper aspects of technology.Tristan is also an avid PC gamer, with FFX and Rocket League being his favorite games.