Let us be clear about what this is

It is a wooden shelf on aluminium legs that sits on your desk with a monitor on top and a keyboard underneath. Prices run from about $180 for a small one to $380 for a large one, and a matching wool-felt desk pad is another $70 to $190.

Nothing about that sentence sounds like value. And yet we have had one on a desk for months and would not remove it, so it is worth explaining where the argument actually lies.

Where a shelf beats an arm

For a monitor: it does not. A $109 Uplift Enfield puts a screen at any height, any depth, any angle, and changes with you. A shelf puts it at one height forever. If you have a VESA-compatible monitor and a neck problem, buy the arm.

For a laptop: the shelf wins outright, and this is the real case for it. You cannot put a MacBook on a monitor arm. A laptop on a desk is at the worst possible height for both your neck and your wrists, and the standard advice — raise the laptop and use an external keyboard — needs something to raise it onto. A Grovemade shelf does that at a height that works, with the external keyboard stored underneath when you are not using it.

For the desk itself: the shelf creates a layer. A keyboard goes under it, a notebook goes on it, cables run behind it. The desk gets visually quieter without anything being thrown away. That is a real effect and it is why people keep them.

Build

This is where the money went and it is not a swindle. The solid hardwood versions are properly made: flat, consistent grain, edges eased by hand, finished on the underside. The aluminium is anodised and the fixings are machine screws into threaded inserts. It arrives in packaging that is itself over-engineered.

We have not been able to make it creak, rock or mark. In five years it will look the same.

The things that annoy us

One height. There is no adjustment. Grovemade have picked a height that suits a fairly standard desk-and-chair combination, and if you are unusually tall or short, or your desk is a non-standard height, there is nothing to do about it.

Depth. A shelf with legs occupies desk depth that you then cannot use for anything else. On a 24-inch-deep desk this is a real cost; on a 30-inch desk it is fine.

The price trajectory. Grovemade raise prices regularly, and at the time of writing their own site carries a banner warning of the next increase. That is a legitimate way to run a small manufacturing business and it also means any figure in this review is a snapshot.

Choosing a size

Grovemade sell the shelf in several widths and the choice matters more than the wood.

The small suits a laptop and nothing else. It is the one to buy if the shelf's job is purely to raise a MacBook.

The medium is the useful size: wide enough for a 27-inch monitor and with genuine storage either side, narrow enough not to dominate a 48-inch desk. This is the one we would buy.

The large takes two monitors or an ultrawide and looks magnificent in photographs. On a real desk it is a wall, and it eats the whole back half of a 60-inch surface.

The matching desk pad is sold separately and the sizes are designed to work together; buying the shelf and a pad from a different maker produces a visible mismatch in depth that is hard to unsee.

What we would actually buy

If you use a laptop as your main machine: the medium shelf, and an external keyboard to live underneath it. This is the configuration the product is best at and we recommend it without hesitation.

If you use a desktop monitor: a monitor arm, and put the difference towards a better chair.

If you want your desk to be a nice place to sit: buy the shelf, and do not pretend to yourself that it is an ergonomics purchase. It is furniture, it is good furniture, and wanting good furniture is allowed.