After reading the myriad negative opinions on this product, I felt it was my duty to chip in with my story: the Fellowes Monitor Arm provided exactly the solution I was hoping it would, and nothing has crashed catastrophically to my desk in the month+ I've been using it.

When I was at the local Business Depot, I saw that there were two models of monitor arm offered by Fellowes, a standard one (good for up to 15" monitor) and a beefier model intended for 17" units up to 50lb (22kg). I bought the bigger one for use with a Samsung 750s 17" monitor. This is the second monitor of a dual-screen workstation setup, and while the primary screen is perfectly happy to sit on a small riser directly on the desktop, a monitor arm made the most sense to get the second screen in a good viewing position.

Overall

The arm itself is heavy, made almost entirely of metal except for some plastic trim pieces. After doing a bit of assembly (nothing too tricky, took me about ten minutes to figure things out and get it together), I screwed the arm bracket to the back edge of the desk. It took another 10 minutes of fiddling to finally get the screen positioned exactly where I wanted. The adjustment mechanisms are not elegant, requiring more of a brute strength and patience approach. You will definitely want to have the strength, or a helper with the strength, to lift most of the monitor weight off the arm while you do any fine tuning. The "manual" (and I'll use this term loosely) doesn't help much in figuring out how to perform these adjustments either.

Safety

Make sure you have a thick, sturdy desk to affix the clamp to. Based on the other reviews of this product, I get the sense the primary clamp on the cheaper model Fellowes monitor arm is too flimsy for the task. With the 50lb model, the clamp is quite solid and has a fairly large surface area. Still, if you try to affix it to a thin, cheap desk surface I can easily see how it would tear a U-shaped hole out of the wood. I have had a 33lb (15kg) monitor on this arm for over a month, attached to a basic 1" thick particleboard desk. Everything is holding up just fine.

Another thing to watch out for is jiggling and swaying. This isn't so much a safety issue as an ergonomic one. Even simple typing can set up minute vibrations at the end of the monitor arm, but simple physics says you have a 40lb mass at the end of a 3' arm. Without adding some kind of insanely expensive damping system there's not much Fellowes or anyone else can do about it. A very solid desk is probably the most effective remedy for this situation.

Conclusion

This product could have been easier to set up and adjust, but it's not like I have to do it every day. Although the elegance factor is somewhat lacking, in terms of practicality the Fellowes monitor arm does what it is meant to do. I'm happy to have a second screen set up where it is, and I can live with the slight jiggling and the "ominous" feeling of having a 15kg object perched over my mouse hand. For the other reviewers who panned this product, perhaps it's just a matter of upgrading to the heavier model and making sure your desk is up to the task.


Recommended: Yes