In the past I remember having a monitor that high and I think it created bad posture habit involving overstretching the cervical spine and I now have it lower.
I’m going off what it takes for me to sit up straight with my elbows 90 degrees and able to see my whole monitor without turning my head. I have a single high-res 32″ monitor with important stuff in all 4 quadrants so I really need my eyes vertically lined up with the middle of the screen or close.
I think even conventional ergonomics advice recommends boosting your monitor’s height a little bit and using a keyboard tray. That’s probably at least 20″ from keyboard to monitor center, even if you choose to line up your eyes with the top of the monitor rather than the center.
In your case, if you were overstretching your spine, I’d guess that lowering the monitor 1″ or so would have been helpful, and that would probably still leave your monitor’s height higher above the keyboard than most people’s.
In the website you linked to, I’m pretty sure the person in their video has not set themselves up right to optimally use the monitor. Imagine he often needed to refer to small text at the bottom of their screen where the MacOS dock is currently visible. Then I think he’d end up slouching.
I now have my 24″ monitor in a way where the eye level aligns with the top of the monitor. I find that I can look at my whole monitor just by using my eyes without adding any tension. On the other hand looking 10 cm over my monitor is an act that does add tension around the atlas.
Evolutionary, I imagine that it works that way because it’s quite important for hunter gathers to look down in front of them (you need to do that a lot when walking barefoot) but less often important to look up above themselves.
The image does show what those people who make a living selling ergonomics equipment consider to be good.
The best way to prevent slouching is to have some physical activity in your life and not try to force your body into looking up by requiring looking over the eye level.
It’s not just the website I linked. You find the same sentiment on all the top results for “optimal monitor height” on Google.
Ok I agree that aligning your eyes to the top of the monitor is best as long as you can read the bottom section of the monitor without slouching. I edited my original post to recommend putting the near-top of the monitor at 20-27″ above the keyboard instead of the center of the monitor.
I use a 32″ monitor, which seems to be the largest possible monitor that doesn’t require much head tilting. I use in a small high-resolution mode, as if it’s replacing an array of 4 monitors. I need my head to be somewhat below the top of the monitor in order to use the programming editor in the bottom half of the screen.
I still think something is wrong with the first picture I posted. That picture looks like most people’s default setup using the default Apple desktop computer stand. IMO the person in the picture above is most likely going to have a hard time with text near the bottom of their screen unless they slouch, use a keyboard tray, or lift their monitor.
Here’s a second picture that seems to me like a more realistic portrayal of the position associated with that setup:
I believe that lowering the keyboard and/or raising the monitor would cause the man not to slouch. That would be consistent with my own experience.
Yeah… I was reading the post you replied and I thought what kind of monitor OP had since now monitors are gigantic and the advice is to have to top at your eyes level, not the center. To you don’t have to rise it, but to low it.
Here on LW a lot of people don’t just follow the official advice and it’s generally fine to recommend things that differ from the official advice. In those cases I however think it’s important to explain why one considers the official advice wrong.
I would be surprised if the advice came out of having a smaller monitor. I used to believe monitors should be higher too. Human biomechanics are complicated. This reminds me of one dance teacher I had you had a professional training in dance and who went to learn from other dance teachers in New York. After she came back she had the idea that the impulse during dancing should always go forward. Four months later all the women in her dance classes were a lot more tense during dancing.
From an naive point of view having a monitor higher exerts a force on being more upright similar to having the impulse being forward in the dance example which is also making the dancer more upright. I think that argument got me started to increase the hight of my monitor before I understood anything about human biomechanics. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can easily explain the gear level of why it’s that way in a comment, so I just point to the official advice and the problem having a higher monitor caused for my cervical spine.
On what basis do you believe 20-27″ to be ideal?
It seems to conflict with common ergononic advice as found on websites like https://www.ergotron.com/en-us/ergonomics/ergonomic-equation that suggests the top of the monitor should be on eye level.
In the past I remember having a monitor that high and I think it created bad posture habit involving overstretching the cervical spine and I now have it lower.
I’m going off what it takes for me to sit up straight with my elbows 90 degrees and able to see my whole monitor without turning my head. I have a single high-res 32″ monitor with important stuff in all 4 quadrants so I really need my eyes vertically lined up with the middle of the screen or close.
I think even conventional ergonomics advice recommends boosting your monitor’s height a little bit and using a keyboard tray. That’s probably at least 20″ from keyboard to monitor center, even if you choose to line up your eyes with the top of the monitor rather than the center.
In your case, if you were overstretching your spine, I’d guess that lowering the monitor 1″ or so would have been helpful, and that would probably still leave your monitor’s height higher above the keyboard than most people’s.
In the website you linked to, I’m pretty sure the person in their video has not set themselves up right to optimally use the monitor. Imagine he often needed to refer to small text at the bottom of their screen where the MacOS dock is currently visible. Then I think he’d end up slouching.
I now have my 24″ monitor in a way where the eye level aligns with the top of the monitor. I find that I can look at my whole monitor just by using my eyes without adding any tension. On the other hand looking 10 cm over my monitor is an act that does add tension around the atlas.
Evolutionary, I imagine that it works that way because it’s quite important for hunter gathers to look down in front of them (you need to do that a lot when walking barefoot) but less often important to look up above themselves.
The image does show what those people who make a living selling ergonomics equipment consider to be good.
The best way to prevent slouching is to have some physical activity in your life and not try to force your body into looking up by requiring looking over the eye level.
It’s not just the website I linked. You find the same sentiment on all the top results for “optimal monitor height” on Google.
Ok I agree that aligning your eyes to the top of the monitor is best as long as you can read the bottom section of the monitor without slouching. I edited my original post to recommend putting the near-top of the monitor at 20-27″ above the keyboard instead of the center of the monitor.
I use a 32″ monitor, which seems to be the largest possible monitor that doesn’t require much head tilting. I use in a small high-resolution mode, as if it’s replacing an array of 4 monitors. I need my head to be somewhat below the top of the monitor in order to use the programming editor in the bottom half of the screen.
I still think something is wrong with the first picture I posted. That picture looks like most people’s default setup using the default Apple desktop computer stand. IMO the person in the picture above is most likely going to have a hard time with text near the bottom of their screen unless they slouch, use a keyboard tray, or lift their monitor.
Here’s a second picture that seems to me like a more realistic portrayal of the position associated with that setup:
I believe that lowering the keyboard and/or raising the monitor would cause the man not to slouch. That would be consistent with my own experience.
Yeah… I was reading the post you replied and I thought what kind of monitor OP had since now monitors are gigantic and the advice is to have to top at your eyes level, not the center. To you don’t have to rise it, but to low it.
Here on LW a lot of people don’t just follow the official advice and it’s generally fine to recommend things that differ from the official advice. In those cases I however think it’s important to explain why one considers the official advice wrong.
I would be surprised if the advice came out of having a smaller monitor. I used to believe monitors should be higher too. Human biomechanics are complicated. This reminds me of one dance teacher I had you had a professional training in dance and who went to learn from other dance teachers in New York. After she came back she had the idea that the impulse during dancing should always go forward. Four months later all the women in her dance classes were a lot more tense during dancing.
From an naive point of view having a monitor higher exerts a force on being more upright similar to having the impulse being forward in the dance example which is also making the dancer more upright. I think that argument got me started to increase the hight of my monitor before I understood anything about human biomechanics. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can easily explain the gear level of why it’s that way in a comment, so I just point to the official advice and the problem having a higher monitor caused for my cervical spine.