Secretlab Heavy Duty Monitor Arm review: Suitably strong support

Our Verdict

Strong enough for the largest of normal gaming monitors, yet offering smooth, effortless adjustment, the Secretlab Heavy Duty Monitor Arm lives up to its name. It's an ideal match for the company's desks too. It is very expensive, though, with lower-grade alternatives available for a third of the price.

Reasons to buy

• Compatible with huge gaming monitors
• Fantastic build quality
• Really smooth movements

Reasons to avoid

• Very expensive
• Adjustment handles too big for some monitors

The Secretlab Heavy Duty Monitor Arm has one of the most pleasingly to-the-point names of any product I’ve reviewed in some time. Ok, technically it’s actually called the Secretlab Magnus Monitor Arm (Heavy Duty Edition) but really there’s only one name everyone’s using. What’s more, this extra-strong monitor movement mechanism entirely lives up to its moniker, providing ample support for huge screens weighing up to 16kg. It’s not cheap, but it delivers on its promise.

While most of the best gaming monitor options today have support from their own included stands, or can be supported by less heavy duty monitor arms, if your screen has more than a 32-inch diagonal, most typical monitor arms won’t cope. So, if you want total freedom of movement without the fear of your high-value screen taking a tumble, this Secretlab arm is the one for you.

Specs

Design

The Secretlab Heavy Duty Monitor Arm is just like any typical gas lift-assisted monitor arm, in terms of its core function. It has a base plate on which one arm pivots, a second arm that pivots on the first and provides up and down movement, then a monitor mounting plate that can spin and tilt. Together the two arms and the mounting plate allow you to move a monitor up and down, forward and back, side-to-side, and also to spin the display into portrait orientation.

This arm differs from most alternatives in two areas. The first is that it includes two large adjustment handles, which means you don’t have to grip your precious screen to move it but can hold these handles instead. The second is that, as per its name, the build quality here is much sturdier than cheaper arms.

In particular, where some monitor arms have a design that means the arm sections rotate in just plastic-lined holes, with the plastic acting as a sliding surface, in this case the arms are mounted inside proper ball bearings. This means that, even with the massive weight of some large monitors, the arm movements don’t get jammed up, but instead still swing effortlessly.

The arms and mounting plates are also built to a really high standard, with very thick steel used throughout. The whole unit weighs over 6kg and is so heavy with such freedom of movement from those bearing joints that it flops about with menace when assembled, so watch out.

The extra movement handles are really useful, but they won’t work with some really large screens, as you won’t be able to reach them easily from the front. In this case, you can remove them, reducing the weight of the arm and tidying up the look of the setup.

Overall setup is really easy thanks to the two-part mounting system where you affix the plate (above, left) to the monitor’s VESA mount then just lift the monitor onto the arm such that the little dented sections in the bottom of the VESA plate rest onto the bent hooks on the bottom edge of the arm’s mounting plate. A little twist of the lock at the top and the monitor is secure.

Secretlab also supplies extension screws for the mounting plate so that you can fix it to monitors where the VESA mount is recessed into the display slightly (as in the image above). We actually found these were needed for more displays than you might expect, with the hooks on the arm on which the mounting plate sits tending to foul on the edge of the VESA mount recess. We tested around a dozen monitors and only one didn’t need these extension screws.

This initially caused a lot of confusion as we didn’t spot the extension screws for a while, frustratedly trying to fit the mount on a number of different displays to no avail. That one’s on us for not reading the manual quite closely enough, though. Once you’re all set up, this mounting system is rock solid and really easy to mount and dismount.

Another premium touch is the cable management system of this arm. Like most such monitor arms, you can stow your monitor’s cables in removable sections of the arms, but here the stowage areas are just held on with magnets, so it’s really easy to quickly swap cables in and out.

Lift balance, so that the monitor is easy to move up and down, can be adjusted via an Allen key socket on the second arm (the gas lift one), with a useful min-max indicator on the arm showing how the lift is being adjusted.

Performance

Once the arm was set up, I was totally won over by the ability to have 34-inch ultrawide screens, surprisingly heavy 32-inch displays (like the pictured Iiyama), and even 49-inch superwide displays sitting securely, while still having loads of freedom of movement. Of course, as with any monitor arm, a crucial benefit is that you also gain so much desk space.

One slight note of caution is that, while the base plate provided here is very sturdy – and comes with a really easy-to-use adjustment system for clamping to your desk that tightens from the top, through the plate – it doesn’t have the largest footprint to distribute the weight and strain of the arm/monitor setup. As such, you’ll need to mount this plate to a good quality, sturdy desktop.

As you would expect, Secretlab’s own Magnus Pro desk coped just fine in our testing. Also, we particularly liked the fact that the Heavy Duty Arm fits in between the lift-up cable tidying section at the back of the Magnus Pro and the desktop in front. It even fits over the magnetic deskpad of the desk without issue.

Price

Here’s the nasty bit. This monitor arm costs $349. That’s really expensive, with most heavy-duty options on Amazon costing around a third of this price. However, having used some cheap monitor arms, I can attest to their often relatively cheap build quality, so if you want an arm that’s guaranteed to last, the Secretlab does deliver.

Verdict

It’s hard to get past the sheer price of this monitor arm. For many gamers, it could prove more expensive than the monitor they’ve bought. However, if you have indulged in a high-end, heavy gaming monitor, the Secretlab Heavy Duty Monitor Arm offers a fantastic way to mount and control your display. It’s incredibly well-built, easy to assemble, and easy to operate. If you need to free up desk space and open up your monitor movement, it’s the arm we’d want to use, if our wallets allowed.

Alternatives

VIVO Ultra Wide Monitor Arm

There are many heavy-duty monitor arms available from largely unfamiliar brands on sites such as Amazon. One example is the VIVO Ultra Wide Monitor Arm, which costs just $109.99 and supports displays up to 44lbs in weight. However, we’ve not tried this model so can’t attest to its build quality and ease of use.

Kensington Single Monitor Arm with Vesa Mount

I’ve tested the Kensington Single Monitor Arm with Vesa Mount myself, and found it to be a decent-quality unit for the price. This well-made arm is easy to use and costs $88 right now. However, it’s only rated to hold displays weighing up to 19.8lbs.