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.
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.