Hey,

It’s Pete Matheson with a new issue of Experiments in Progress.

I've been testing monitors and desk gear on YouTube for a very long time.

There's always a bigger monitor, a better chair, one more cable you swear will fix everything.

Except… I think I've finally hit the end of it.

Here's every piece, why it's here, and what it'd take to make me replace it:

I bought the monstrous 52" Dell UltraSharp 6K Thunderbolt Hub Monitor — a 120Hz, 21:9 ultrawide that Dell reckons is the world's first 52-inch curved 6K.

Here's what makes it the productivity centrepiece:

It's not OLED, it's an IPS Black panel. No haloing, no blooming, none of the stuff I saw on my old 57" Samsung ultrawide.

And at 52" it's huge (some would say too huge) but there's still room on the desk for a proper pair of speakers without it feeling cluttered.

For years I ran a Herman Miller Embody. Great chair.

But recently two of us using the same Herman Millers kept getting static shocks every time we touched anything metal. So I went looking for a replacement…

…and Secretlab pulled back the curtain on something they hadn't announced yet: ATLAS — their brand new, first-ever task chair.

Here's why it stuck:

The honest bit: I never sit fully in either mode. I unlock it, set the tilt tension to setting two, and float somewhere between upright and reclined. ATLAS lets me do exactly that.

Powering all of this is the M4 MacBook Air.

But genuinely, after well over a year on it, there's little reason most people need a MacBook Pro anymore. Unless you're doing heavy video editing or AI work, the Air will happily be your daily machine.

Enter the CalDigit TS5+:

Mac connects to the CalDigit via a single Thunderbolt cable (which also charges it), then out to the Dell.

The clever connection: the CalDigit's headphone out supports up to 32-bit / 192kHz, so I run straight from there into the WiiM and get the highest-quality audio.

Rounding off the audio for voiceovers and calls:

The Heavy Duty Monitor Arm. A 52" monitor eats desk space, even on its own stand. Finding an arm that can hold that weight is genuinely hard.

Secretlab's takes it without drooping — meticulously designed, with cable channels, a VESA safety-catch system so you're not juggling a screwdriver and a monitor at once, and removable handles for positioning.

The Magnus Pro XL Desk. I've used cheap desks, expensive desks, IKEA, Herman Miller. None impressed me like this one. It's a sit/stand at heart, but the details win:

The gimbal-head version that tracks you around the room. I've bought a lot of webcams over the years, and nothing else comes close on picture quality. Most of the time I just leave the tracking off and use it fixed.

This is my go-to. 25W magnetic charging, Apple Watch charger on the back, earbuds underneath. Once a week I swap the USB-C cable over to charge my Ultrahuman ring. Keeps the phone in reach and at a glanceable angle.

📱 Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with a friend who’s as obsessed with tech as you are:

Three months in, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the best-selling Android flagship but is it actually pushing hardware forward, or just drip-feeding us Galaxy AI features while everyone else races ahead?

This is my honest long-term take.