Trojan Pro LTS07

The LTS07 in situ in the author's home office. The desktop is now considerably tidier!Photo: Ian Gilby

This robust folding Laptop Stand is ideal for studio, live and office applications — and is not just for laptops.

There I was looking at my ever-more cluttered home office desk thinking ‘there has to be a better solution’. Like many today, I work from home and whilst I have a wonderful music studio space full of gear elsewhere in the building, I’ve always kept my home office as, well, an office. Increasingly I find myself undertaking Gmeet, Zoom and Skype business meetings from home and needing to record these for later editing in ScreenFlow. I’ve been finding my cheap-n-cheerful Logi headset wasn’t cutting the mustard, suffering plosives and sounding unprofessional, requiring extra post-pro editing that disappears once you have a decent interface/mic setup.

So I’d been thinking that I needed a better quality audio solution but desk space was my limiting factor, with three TimeMachine backup drives and an external DVD  drive hogging valuable real estate, leaving no workable space spare for a proposed audio interface.

De-cluttering The Desktop

No sooner had I sipped on my coffee and clicked 'Get New Mail' than up popped an email from Studiospares promoting none other than their Trojan Pro LTS07 Premium Folding Laptop Stand With Shelf. It looked the biz and seemed perfect for my needs. I have used their Trojan Pro power sequencer in my studio for years, along with their monitor stands and cables, so had no qualms about quality and reliability. A quick scan of their website photos and LTS07 text description and my mouse was hovering over the Add To Basket button ready to click!

At £29.99£24.99, the price seemed very reasonable to me; I’d paid over £70 ages ago for the aluminium Apple laptop stand which currently resided on my office desk allowing me to get my 17-inch 2011 MacBook Pro off the desktop itself and alongside my ancient 30-inch Apple Cinema Display. The latter two have both been fabulous workhorses and, yes, I am an unapologetic Apple ‘fan boy’.

My Trojan Pro Laptop Stand arrived a few days later, well-boxed. Sturdy, reasonably heavy and an all-in-one unit, it comes folded flat and can be stowed easily when not needed or when transporting to a gig, say.

She's Got Legs!

I attempted to fold open the legs but they would not budge. Then the lightbulb came on in my head — you have to push in the solid plastic grommets on each side of the beautifully powder-coated black main shelf to release the latches and allow the stand to be opened out. Same for the two base legs. Once I realised this, it only took me a minute to get the stand set up how I required it and the design is flexible enough to allow free positioning — just stop pushing the grommets when you have the legs/shelf at the angle you want them, and they spring out and lock into place. Nice.

Trojan Pro LTS07 offers flexible positioning/angling of the upper arms.The height of the stand is fixed at 35.5cm which seems ideal for DJ/live use and not too tall for my own needs. The top bars easily take the weight of my Apple MacBook Pro or a Dell Inspiron PC laptop I also tried. The main support bars are covered with strips of non-slip foamed neoprene and the front offers a curved-up plastic/foam strip which prevents your laptop sliding off the front. Neat. For the record, the distance between these two upper bars is 21cm.

The two legs are also coated with neoprene strips to keep the stand exactly where you position it, without fear of movement. Internal distance between the left and right leg bars is 23cm — the perfect size to take my Sound On Sound mousemat. On top of this I stacked my Iomega Firewire drive, Apple DVD drive, old and chunky Western Digital 2Tb USB drive, and finally on top of that my slimline WD My Passport Ultra 2Tb drive. The drive cables can be fed through the open back of the stand for easy cable management and tidiness. Alternatively, you could easily place a Keyboard Controller sitting across the bars for live performance or studio duties; I just happen to be using my Laptop Stand in my home office.

Fold-down Middle Shelf

This very useful fold up/down middle shelf turns the LTS07 from a robust laptop stand into a studio/live delight, providing an ideal place for an audio interface.I’ve left the best bit (in my opinion) until last, as this — and the keen pricing — is what sets the Trojan Pro Laptop Stand apart from others I researched on Google and from my previous Apple stand.

Under the upper bars, there’s a fold-down middle shelf designed to take a lightweight, small audio interface such as a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (pictured below), PreSonus AudioBox or a Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD (which is what I bought to improve my office music playback). There’s plenty of useful open space at the back to feed cables into your interface plus it is also coated in neoprene to aid with non-slippage. When folded down, the height clearance from your desk to the underside is around 12cm (enough for all my drives) and this shelf is recessed from the front of the upper bars by around 6cm. I certainly had no problems tweaking my interface controls once in position.

Trojan Pro is Studiospares’ own branded product range, and I was not disappointed with the functionality and quality build of the LTS07 Laptop Stand. It’s built like a tank, though the middle shelf could be made from stronger metal if they wish to improve it for a MkII version. Don’t let the Laptop part of the product’s title put you off, since it’s not only useful for laptops — as the picture shows, it will hold a LaunchPad or possibly an NI Maschine. It certainly had no problem reliably holding my PreSonus Atom controller at the ideal angle. The top bars are 21cm apart so if your device is narrower, you’d need to put something across as a backing plate.

Not just for laptops! The LTS07 shown here with Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Novation LaunchPad.

Verdict

Whilst there are cheaper as well as more expensive laptop stands available (Studiospares sell those too), I have not been able to find one this flexible with the all-important folding middle shelf. It ticked all my boxes, and comes highly recommended. And no, I didn’t get a free unit; I paid full price for it.