We bean counters are known for being boring people. Some days, I’d say the stigma holds true. I think the attitude starts in high school — T-charts and double-entry accounting don’t have the same sort of pizazz as computer science or biology.

You could rightfully extend that stigma towards our taste in computers and keyboards. Try to find an accountant who uses a Mac. Rarer still is the 65% keyboard user. I tried for a little while — I used a 40% Planck EZ for a tax season, and it was a relatively enjoyable experience. I truly enjoyed the ortholinear layout. I liked the customizability. I hated the endless eyebrow raises from colleagues and clients who thought I must be from outer space trying such a small keyboard. To try something new, I also tried a 65% board this past tax season (albeit, with a customizable number pad/macro pad combination). It worked, but I’ve been in finer moments.

Accountant keyboard needs likely differ slightly from an engineer, developer, or artist. I’ve concluded we need:

• A number pad — All but a few typists will be able to type faster on the 10-key number pad grid than the number row on a generic keyboard.
• A full size 0 (zero) key in that number pad — Anyone learning how to type on an old adding machine will be more ingrained with index-finger-striking that zero key than middle-finger-striking.
• A full size “+” key — Along the same lines as the larger 0 (zero) key, a double-sized or 2u “+” key is fundamental to your work as an accountant. There will be those who say they have no problem with a 1u “+” key. But if you grew up on an adding machine or any Windows machine at any time, you will want the 2u “+” key.
• Arrow keys — Text selection is one thing, but it’s likely more important to have arrow keys for navigating Excel.
• Page up, page down, and home keys — You’ll note here that I have left off “End”; I don’t believe that many folks need to jump to the end of a PDF that often. Page up/down and home keys are required for quickly navigating PDF documents and for jumping between sheets in Excel.
• Caps lock — Perhaps this is the only profession in the world that uses Caps Lock. But if you’re filling out government documents in capitalized text, you’re doing it wrong.
• Function row keys — It’s not just F2 and F4 for Excel; our old-fashioned tax software uses F2, F4, F5, F6, F8, F9, F10, and F12 for core functionality. And frankly, the keys work spectacular. I love the one-key press to print or place a memo.

I say “need” above for a reason. Of course, none of these above bullet points are truly needed. You can customize a 40% board top to bottom, eliminating the “need” for any of my above bullet points. But the mental overhead here is overboard. You have to work with a 40% board for over a year before those shortcuts truly become back-of-your-hand normal. It takes so much thought-process away from a profession that requires so much thought-process of its own.

You’d be wise then to say “Just buy a full-size keyboard!”. Indeed, this is what most folks do. But this also comes with a few downsides, the biggest being the sheer size of a full-size keyboard. The wider the keyboard, the farther out your mouse or trackpad sits from within your shoulder-width comfort space. And the more often you use the mouse for navigation (shame!), the more you’re going to find ergonomic issues developing over time. Full-size keyboards are not the answer.

I believe I’ve now found the perfect keyboard layout for accountants. Like our profession, the discovery will be considered super boring. The layout checks every box. There’s no mental overhead. The keyboards that ship with this layout are infinitely customizable, though you won’t get lost in the weeds customizing too many additional keys because you won’t have to.

Keychron’s Q5 Pro and Q5 Max are likely going to be the best keyboard for any accountant. The Pro is great if you want to save a few bucks. The Max has all the bells and whistles. Neither keyboard will be as good as $500+ keyboards made with the best material options. But both get the job done in a way no other keyboard does.

Why specifically the Keychron options?

Let’s count the number of why’s:

• The Q5 Pro and Max are 96% keyboards, shedding just a few of the least used keys to allow for a shorter, more compact keyboard layout. This ensures your mouse doesn’t rest too far outside your normal shoulder comfort zone, but still ensures you have all the keys you’re going to need without too much customization fuss.
• The Q5 Pro and Max have the unicorn of number pads on a 96% board: a number pad with a 2u “+” key and a 2u 0 (zero) key, perfectly aligning with any prior Windows keyboard or adding machine you’re used to. You would be blown away by how hard it is to find this type of number pad on a 96% board. Most 96% keyboards opt to push the main keyboard directly together with the numpad, forcing the right arrow key to take the place of one half of a 2u 0 (zero) key. A full-size 0 (zero) key is a fundamental requirement for any accountant. (I will die on this hill.)
• Both the Q5 Pro and Max shed the “End” key for a more functional tool: a customizable knob. This isn’t deal-breaker-level or anything, but a functional knob is far, far more useful than the End key.
• The Q5 Pro and Q5 Max are customizable top-to-bottom, enabling you to map custom macro functions to any key on the board. This is especially useful for the F13-F15 keys. I’ve set up a few contorted keyboard shortcuts for our tax software to be mapped to these keys.
• The Q5 Pro and Max break the arrow keys ever-so-slightly away from the rest of the keyboard, ensuring you can feel for the arrow keys by touch and nothing more. The arrow keys also aren’t positioned next to anything majorly important. On other keyboards, I’ve caught myself trying to move up or to the right, only to hit “Enter”, “1”, or “0” at least a half-dozen times before noticing.
• Both the Q5 Pro and Max are 96% boards, ensuring Caps Lock is right where it belongs. Again, you can customize how you see fit. But out of the box, Caps Lock is there, ready and waiting for you to properly fill in forms like a professional.
• Lastly, function row keys are high and mighty on both these boards. This past tax season, I used a 65% board alongside an external number pad/macro pad. The results were painful. I constantly had to use two hands to hit F2 or F4 (Fn + 2/4 on a 65% board), which would take me out of flow or require me to drop the physical paper in my hand which I was referencing. Instead, I mapped several macro keys to my most-used function keys. Having a dedicated function row is far superior to using a customizable macro pad.

I single out the Keychron Q5 Pro and Q5 Max because I have found no other 96% keyboards with layouts that fit all these boxes. The single biggest differentiator between the Q5 Pro and Q5 Max is the full-size 0 (zero) key and the 2u “+” key. There is no requirement to retrain your multi-decade muscle memory to hit that 0 (zero) key with your middle finger. And you won’t be subtracting numbers in Excel when you meant to be adding them. This could be cause for quite the confusion in your end report.

Finally, these keyboards are fully customizable, enabling you to pick your own mechanical keyboard switch, your own keycaps, your own interior materials (if you take it apart and add in what you want), and enable you to map any keyboard shortcut to any key. If you want the “End” key rather than the delete key, all the power to you. (Though unfortunately, there’s no “End” key in the keycap box that I can find.)

These keyboards aren’t perfect. The Keychron KSA keycaps are humongous. There are some really cool keycap design choices (like the concave “F”, “J”, and “5” key, allowing for instant touch recognition) and this particularly colour set looks outstanding. The keycaps, though, have a relatively small touch target due to their shape. I am looking at other keycap sets to resolve my issues here.

I’m not particularly happy with the stabilizers in my Q5 Max either. My spacebar rattles like a rattlesnake’s tail. Every other keystroke is quiet and unnoticeable. The spacebar makes up for it.

The Q5 Max also sits a lot higher and at a steeper angle than other mechanical keyboards in my arsenal — two things that aren’t checkboxes for me. I’m not a low profile keyboard fan. I’m also not an ultra-high-profile keyboard fan. Both the Q5 Pro and Max are considerably thicker than Mode’s options, likely because of the battery onboard.

If there are other options out there that would satisfy my thirst for the perfect accounting keyboard, please forward them to me. The fundamentals are:

• 96% layout
• Full-size 0 (zero) and “+” keys
• Function row keys

If there is a better unicorn keyboard that comes in at a better price or comes with better materials than the Keychron Q5 Pro or Q5 Max, then the world is likely out of balance. True to my name, I’d have to test things out to bring calm to the storm.

For now, this Keychron Q5 Max is really quite impressive.

It seems the best desk accessories on the market right now are part of a system of accessories. Each accessory is designed to fit alongside a variety of other parts, providing a sum total that should improve your desk setup, improve your focus, improve your delight, or whatever.

These systems are expensive. The three most widely loved systems will run you upwards of $1,000 or more to build out your entire desk with like-designed accessories that work together.

This has pros and cons, like anything else. The accessories looking and feeling the same will appease those looking for pure consistency across their desk (raises hand). When they’re designed to work together, they work together, potentially unlocking more space or more features than if they were used on their own.

But there are cons. If you can’t afford the whole set, the individual accessories may be missing the complementary features from the missing counterparts. There may also be compromises built into individual accessories for the sake of working with other parts.

This is where I stand on the Grovemade Laptop Riser. Grovemade’s Laptop Riser is designed to work specifically with the Grovemade Desk Shelf — the stand’s unique U-shaped design slides smoothly underneath the Desk Shelf, bringing your laptop’s stand closer to your external display. The front walnut accent beautifully moulds into any wood-focused desk design.

But on its own, the Grovemade Laptop Riser lacks a variety of features you’ll find in other laptop stands from Twelve South or Rain Design. You can’t fold the stand. You can’t really take it anywhere. Not only that, but you can’t truly use the stand among other desk setup systems. You can, but I doubt you’ll want.

The Grovemade Laptop Riser is truly designed as a Desk Shelf companion. You can use it on its own, don’t get me wrong. But in and among any other combination of desk accessories, you’re likely going to want a different laptop stand.

Materials

It’s always about materials with Grovemade products. Grovemade uses a combination of wood, metal, felt, and cork unlike any other accessory company right now. Each product is sturdy as a rock and fashionable enough to show off.

The Laptop Riser is no different. The hallmark accent here is the solid block of walnut affixed to the front of the stand. It’s a slightly warmer walnut stain — my desk is a milk chocolate walnut stain, and the walnut block on the Laptop Riser is ever-so-slightly more orange than the desk walnut. It looks great, especially in warmer settings.

The top is lined with a warm felt. The felt lines the entire bottom-side, meaning your laptop will be sitting on the felt itself. If you’re worried about cooling, this is a warmer way to rest your laptop than other laptop stands, which either leave air underneath the display or use a different material selection.

The dark felt is the only colour option — something to keep in mind if you’re as picky as me for office themes.

Grovemade doesn’t use any cork in the Laptop Riser. Cork is one of Grovemade’s answers to the sustainability question, and I believe cork is one of Grovemade’s material weaknesses. Cork works great underneath a desk mat which needs friction, some sturdiness, and some softness. But it doesn’t work as well in the Desk Shelf, where you have weight on the shelf for long periods of time across a variety of humid and non-humid environments. Thankfully, Grovemade opted not to include any particular cork element in the Laptop Riser.

The Laptop Riser holds your MacBook Pro at a surprisingly steep angle when open. There are a few things to note here:

• The steeper the angle, the less desk footprint the stand takes up.
• The steeper the angle, the less area underneath the stand for storing items.

The stand is formed from a solid piece of metal. This isn’t the heaviest metal laptop stand out there — the Ugmonk Gather laptop stand seems heavier to me — but the Grovemade option is hefty in its own right. The metal pings when you set it down on the desk, and you won’t be budging it easily. Overall, the metal U-shaped backbone of the stand is sturdy and well-built.

Again, you’ll never be wanting when it comes to Grovemade’s material choices. These material choices drive the high Grovemade price but also drive the high Grovemade quality.

Use with the Grovemade Desk Shelf

This is the kicker with this laptop stand. Grovemade’s Laptop Riser is specifically designed for the Grovemade Desk Shelf. The U-shaped design slides nicely underneath the shelf, enabling you to mount your laptop up and off to the side in clamshell mode or to slide it nice and close to your external display with the laptop lid open. The Desk Shelf even has an off-centre middle tray divider, showcasing where Grovemade expects you to rest your external display and where the Laptop Stand is going to sit. It’s the sort of thing that seems obvious when you use these kinds of accessories together.

But! Again! There are tradeoffs to these accessory design choices.

• Sliding the Laptop Riser underneath the Desk Shelf renders the Desk Shelf space behind the Laptop Riser on the Shelf useless. You probably won’t be storing anything back there, assuming you run your wires or close your laptop for clamshell mode from time to time. You also can’t access anything in Grovemade’s Desk Tray if you have one stored in the Desk Shelf.
• Sliding the Laptop Riser underneath cuts into your mouse space if you’re right-handed. (Adding to my conclusion that the rationally superior spot to use a laptop stand is to the left of your external display, even if the Grovemade Desk Shelf isn’t designed for left-side use.)

• Sliding the Laptop Riser to the right of the Desk Shelf’s right leg cuts down on the space you can use underneath the Desk Shelf. If you see the coolest setups on Reddit, you’ll see loads of folks storing a hard drive underneath a desk shelf in this manner. The Laptop Stand somewhat hinders your ability to store anything underneath the Desk Shelf.

So while the Laptop Stand the Desk Shelf look and function wonderfully together, there are enough cons here to give some folks pause if they’re looking for an ultra-functional desk system.

Use on Its Own

Simple: The Grovemade Laptop Riser is the single most beautiful laptop stand on the market. The Ugmonk Gather stand might give it a run for its money, but I’ll stand by the comment for now.

Cables from a wired keyboard will have to snake around the front of the laptop stand rather than run underneath like many other laptop stands, but this shouldn’t be too much of a bother. That walnut block on the uniquely U-shaped Laptop Stand will catch any onlooker’s attention.

You might find the Riser works with other desk accessory systems, but I doubt it — I try hard to stay on top of the best systems out there, and they all have their own unique laptop stand option.

Wrap Up

The high-quality materials, U-shaped design, and Made-in-America Grovemade product makes for an expensive price tag. The Grovemade Laptop Riser is $190 USD, especially steep when compared to foldable and portable options from Twelve South. The Riser is designed to be part of a larger, highly stylish, highly sustainable system, and it works best when used with other Grovemade products.

Don’t rest on the Laptop Riser — this is a great laptop stand in its own right.

But don’t shrug off the idea that the Riser is just part of a larger system — the moment you unbox and use the Laptop Riser, you’re going to want to add more Grovemade desk shelf system products to your desk. And that’ll cost you, like any good desk accessory system.