8 ways to prevent your laptop from hurting your back

Laptops are small technical miracles, easy to get, but they can make real numbers. Here's how to get around this:

Do not use your laptop on your lap

Yes it is called a laptop. Yes, you can put it on your lap and write it down. For short missions, this is not the end of the world. But to complete the long working hours, I do a shortcut for my back pain.

Relying on a laptop is neither natural nor convenient. For some reason, we don't design desktop computers with the keyboard on your lap and the monitor near your lap. Laptop design is a compromise based on size and portability rather than ergonomics.

As you may have guessed, the rest of our suggestions will focus on all the ways you can step out of your sofa position and use your laptop comfortably.

Use with a suitable height chart

Whether you are standing at the dining room table, your office at home, or the very high window between the kitchen and dining room, the table there is at the perfect height for a comfortable height.

Place the keyboard so that your elbows are at approximately 90 degrees whether you are sitting or standing. I don't want to hang my arm, I don't want to stretch out your hand. Both positions lead to bending of your wrists and worsening of the carpal tunnel over time.

If you want to use your laptop as is without the additional features suggested later in the article, you can put things under your laptop to adjust the height of the table (the Strong Coffee Table pattern book helps with this). Or if your seat is too low, you can lift yourself by changing chairs or putting on pillows to lift your body.

Wear it with a comfortable chair

You don't have to spend more than $1000 on an ergonomic chair (although I'm sitting in my Steelcase Leap to write this article, and I can assure you it's worth it). A home office chair may look like a home office, but if you work at the dining room table, it certainly looks out of place.

Whatever type of chair you sit on, you should do everything you can to be as supportive as possible. This means not sitting on a wooden chair until the back of your legs is numb, or sitting on a chair with weak back support for hours.

If your chair is uncomfortable, or if you can't properly support your lower back to avoid lumbar humps, it's a good idea to invest in an inexpensive pillow to remedy the situation.

If the chair seat is comfortable enough but your back is not particularly supportive, get a lumbar pillow. If both your seat and back are uncomfortable, get a combo pack that includes a lumbar cushion and a comfortable seat to relieve pressure.

Raise your feet

If you don't use a height-adjustable office chair, your work surface probably won't fit perfectly with your seat.

Sitting with your knees slightly higher than the chair seat is not ideal, but it doesn't stop there. However, if the chair is tall enough and your feet do not sit flat on the floor or press on the back of your feet, you will feel a lot of discomfort.

In such a situation, you want something that will comfort your feet. Whether it's an old Wii balance pad pulled from the back of the lounge cabinet, or a comfortable footrest like this, it helps keep your legs in place and your blood circulation.

Increase screen height

Keeping your laptop away from your lap is one of the best things you can do to dramatically increase your comfort. The second biggest problem is that the screen is raised so you don't look down all the time causing neck cramps when using the laptop.

Putting your laptop in an appropriately sized Amazon box or pile of old textbooks is a classic and inexpensive way to raise your laptop to eye level.

This is a good temporary solution, but if you want something more beautiful and adjustable, we recommend a laptop stand.

This lightweight and portable laptop stand helps keep your laptop in a comfortable position at home, office, or on the go. Check out our favorite laptop mounts for more options.

Use an external mouse and keyboard

If you raise the laptop so that the screen is at eye level, you will have problems with the interface. The screen is raised where it needs to be, which means the built-in keyboard and touchpad are 10 inches above the table in front of you.

Naturally, you don't want to raise your arm or at an odd angle to use the mouse and touchpad. The solution is simple. Just connect the mouse and keyboard to your laptop.

I can't speak for everyone, but as a lifelong mechanical keyboard and trackball enthusiast, I felt at home once both devices were connected to my laptop and the small keyboard and trackpad of my laptop. Use. Why bother using the trackpad when you can enjoy the smooth, fast and accurate movement of the trackball?

Consider an external monitor

Sure, you can buy a larger laptop for a larger screen, but this is not very practical. My favorite is the Dell XPS Mini laptop. Because they are very small and can be easily carried anywhere. I don't want a laptop with a huge screen (and a similar massive body). Also, if you're using your laptop for work, replacing it with a giant widescreen model probably won't be an option.

Alternatively, you can use an external monitor with your laptop. After adding the mouse and external keyboard that I mentioned earlier, the screen is the last step in making your laptop look like a decent desktop computer.

You get a nice big screen, a comfortable keyboard and mouse. If you really want it (and your laptop supports it), you can even place your laptop next to an external monitor to act as a secondary screen for your email, Slack list, or to-do list.

Although it may be tempting to buy an older monitor, we recommend that you consider buying a 27-inch "gaming" type monitor with a high refresh rate and at least 1440p resolution. Maybe you haven't thought to look at them, but as someone who uses these monitors every day for office work, how clear and up-to-date the screen is even when performing basic tasks, I can't recommend experimenting enough based on how smoothly the prices we are.

Make life easier with the docking station

After following all the suggestions above, if you often need to disconnect your laptop to take it to work, visit customers, or travel in any other way, disconnect the cable and you will quickly get tired of reconnecting.

Here can help a laptop base. Instead of connecting all the cables you need for your workstation (keyboard, mouse, monitor, possibly Ethernet and other terminal cables, etc.), plug them all into the base and run one cable from the dock to your laptop. Need to call

There are many universal laptop bases on the market. It works well enough, but I recommend looking for a laptop base that is compatible with your laptop.

For example, the HP or Dell laptop you brought to work is too specialized for the docking station and you need a first-party laptop dock (and any of them) for full functionality.

By adopting some or all of the suggestions above, you can easily transform working on your laptop from an experience that causes back pain to a more relaxing one.