When it comes to most things in life, it’s all about the extras.
Whether that’s the bonuses you score from a supermarket loyalty card or taking a cheeky punt on enhancing your monetary endowment, it’s all about the other bits, the extras that build together to form a more glorious whole. I’m talking, of course, about peripherals – the often rag-tag collection of accessories that make the desktop a better place to be, improving the working experience and upgrading gaming immeasurably.
Naturally, this covers a colossal amount of ground, so, I’ve gone ahead and collated a colossal amount of gear - from the highly practical to the utterly unpredictable, but each gratifying gadget is capable of converting your humble home PC (or Mac) workspace into a world of convivial computing convenience and contentment in an instant.
So, whether your PC is primarily for business, more geared up for gaming, or it casually swings both ways, there’s bound to be something in this sizable selection to smartly supplement every set-up.
Best PC peripherals at a glance:
- Best for wireless computer control: Logitech Signature Slim Combo MK950 - £110, Logitech
- Best for compact, handsfree complete comms: AnkerWork S600 Speakerphone - £179, Amazon
- Best for low-priced precision: Trust Gaming GXT 924W YBAR+ - £36, Amazon
- Best for sounds without all the pounds: Trust Gaming 22209 GXT 618 Asto Soundbar - £35, Amazon
- Best for the face to face to face to…: Logitech MX Brio - £220, Logitech
- Best for crystal-clear calls/glorious gaming: HECATE by Edifier GX05 - £90, Amazon
- Best for reinventing the mouse (wheel): Contour Design SliderMouse Pro - £263, Amazon
- Best for studio-style calls and streaming: Trust Gaming Onyx GXT 255+ Pro Mic & Arm - £140, Amazon
- Best for beefing up workstation sound: Edifier e25HD 2.0 Bluetooth Speakers - £130, KB Audio
- Best for podcasts and online peopling: Audio-Technica AT2020USB-XP - £149, Amazon
- Best for 4K camera quality: EPOS Expand Vision 1 - £161.63, Amazon
- Best for your brain: EPOS Impact 1060 ANC - £171.03, Amazon
- Best for doing the business: Logitech Zone Wireless 2 - £300, Logitech
- Best for beating battery life blues: Canyon WS-404 4-in1 Wireless Charging Station - £80, TJ Hughes
- Best for work and play: SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless - £330, SteelSeries
- Best for MacBook mounting: TwelveSouth Book Arc Flex - £63, Amazon
- Best for elevating productivity: Groov-e Adjustable Stand - £23.70, Amazon
- Best for conferencing like a king/queen: EPOS Expand 40T - £254, Amazon
Logitech Signature Slim Combo MK950
Best for: Wireless computer control
Face it, being tethered is something best left to walked dogs and bobbing kites, but when it comes to the two most important PC peripherals, the keyboard and mouse, wireless is the logical way forward.
Giving greater flexibility to position your vitally important input products wherever you please, amongst the latest offerings to enter this area is the Signature Slim Combo MK950, a Bluetooth or USB Logo Bolt linking ménage à deux that, together form a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Both AAA battery powered, the Combo can combine with up to three separate devices, such as desktops, laptops, smartphones or tablets, letting you flip from one to another at the tap of a key, and customise keys and set Smart Action modes to suit your individual usage needs and optimise productivity.
Design-wise, the keyboard has a slim, sleek style that takes up less space on the desk, but with a layout that is far from cluttered, combined with soft-touch, quiet keys that make it comfortable to use over long periods.
Likewise, the mouse is nicely contoured to the hand, and comes complete with a SmartWheel that lets you scroll with greater efficiency and accuracy, and a grand total of six buttons to quietly click your way through tasks.
Simplicity itself to set up with basic plug-n-play functionality, the Logitech Signature Slim Combo MK950 is a great way to get wireless at your home workplace, whether Windows (10/11), Mac (OS11 or later), Chrome, iPad, iOS or Android.
Buy now £110.00, Logitech
AnkerWork S600 Speakerphone
Best for: Compact, handsfree complete comms
If you have concerns about holding a mobile next to your head, or just spend too much time on video calls, this little beauty from AnkerWork will be right up your street: the S600 Speakerphone.
Like a small, minimalist Dalek in design, this aide de call is a little sliced of conference contact ingenuity, hooking up over strong Bluetooth 5.3 with your smartphone, then combining all its many assets of a 360° speaker, environmental noise reduction, voiceprint recognition, 4x mic array smart voice pickup, and AI-powered voice filtering. It also delivers perfectly pin-sharp, crystal-clear voice calls, with your dulcet tones painstakingly plucked out from any background noise around you and piped to the lucky listeners utterly untainted. Likewise, on the flipside, the 5W 360° speaker fills your shell-likes with beautifully balanced acoustics on a call and also banging bass when work is done and playtime begins.
Mainly powered or portable thanks to a built-in 16-hour life battery, iPhone users can even make use of the Qi2 charging 70° magnetic phone stand for hands-free video calls.
Easy to operate with Play, Volume Up, Volume Down, Mic Off, Call Answer/End buttons on the front, the AnkerWork S600 comes compatible with Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and plays perfectly with FaceTime, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Restream and more, so now there’s no excuse for missing meetings and never again will you have to utter the immortal words “Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?”
With a premium feel and sturdy build, the S600 is already a Red Dot Design Awards winner and one look at it and you’ll see why.
Buy now £179.99, Amazon
Trust Gaming GXT 924W YBAR+
Best for: Low-priced precision
Yes, while this is a PC peripheral review round-up, with the main emphasis being working from home, it would be pure folly to rule out the inclusion of those peripherals that happily straddle both camps of work and play. Peripherals such as the GXT 924W YBAR+ mouse from Trust Gaming, for while this excels in the playground, its precision performance makes it ideal for all manner of work where pin-point accuracy is required.
Wired via braided cable, the YBAR+ comes packing a high-performance 25k sensor, 50G acceleration, a polling rate of up to 1000hz and a tracking speed of 400 IPS, alongside low-friction gliding pads and some six programmable buttons. What’s more, with a premium finish and a nicely ergonomic structure, the whole thing fits very comfortably in the palm.
PC and Mac compatible, across macOS 11, 12 or 13, Windows 10 or 11, and Chrome OS, the GXT 924W YBAR+ is available in a Black or White finish, and for those who enjoy a show when they work and/or play, also features full RGB LED lighting.
Buy now £36.00, Amazon
Trust Gaming 22209 GXT 618 Asto Soundbar
Best for: Sounds without all the pounds
Decent sound may not be necessary for every home office set-up, especially if all your work entails is word processing or data analysis, or, well, most home working jobs, but it is nice. Having clear audio over video calls can make a massive difference and if you need the background inspiration of work-motivating music, then shoddy sound from miniscule monitor speakers will never suffice.
However, satellite speakers take up space; and can also be quite expensive. So, why not think outside of the stereo speaker box and put your audio needs in the capable yet metaphorical hands of a soundbar? And it doesn’t have to be a pricey proposition either, as it isn’t with the 22209 GXT 618 Asto from Trust Gaming.
Yep, it’s designed for gaming, but at only 47cm long the 618 features stereo 45mm drivers with a frequency response of 20Hz - 20.000Hz, and a peak power output of 12W (6W RMS), so for music and calls, it’s perfectly endowed.
Plus, essentially a plug-n-play, the Trust comes powered via USB and connects using 3.5mm line-in, whilst a front-mounted volume control, 3.5mm line-out for headphones, and mic in, you’ve all you need for an inexpensive all-round PC audio system that takes mere minutes to have out of the box and up and running.
Not unpleasant on the eye, either, with its minimalist speaker grille and black and silver finish, the Trust Gaming 22209 GXT 618 Asto Soundbar may be a bit of a mouthful, but it’s small on footprint, reasonably sizeable on sound, and very small on price.
Buy now £35.00, Amazon
Logitech MX Brio
Best for: The face to face to face to…
If you spend the days on video calls and conferences that could have been an email, you may as well look your absolute best; which is where the Logitech MX Brio comes to the rescue.
A 4K Ultra HD collaboration and streaming webcam with a large 8.5MP Sony STARVIS sensor, backed by AI image enhancement and Advanced Autofocus, you’ll never have looked sharper on screen or, indeed, in actual real life.
Add to this dual beamforming microphones for noise reduction and a pick-up range of up to 1.2m, and you’ll sound great too, even if you do wander off to the back of the room mid-talk for some odd reason.
Coming with a nicely lengthy 1.5m USB connection cable and a detachable universal mounting clip (can also be tripod mounted) and you’ll have issues with perfect placement either.
Finally, with a built-in privacy shutter, you can manually ensure nobody is sneakily watching you on the sly once the call/conference is done, so no need to worry about being caught out when you wander past your PC starkers on the way to the shower.
Buy now £220.00, Logitech
HECATE by Edifier GX05
Best for: Crystal-clear calls/glorious gaming
For those who prefer to walk and talk, pace and pontificate, or, indeed, get their post-work game on without disturbing others, there’s the stunning HECATE GX05 earbuds from Edifier.
Looking every bit like something from Cyberpunk 2077, but just as useful in an office environment today as they would playing a game set in a dystopian future, the HECTATE GX05 connect to your smartphone, PC, Switch, iPad, VR, PS5 etc., with the stable power of Bluetooth 5.3, and thus provide wireless low-latency audio with ENC Noise Cancellation Hi-Res audio, with fast charge and RGB lighting thrown in for good measure.
With 10mm dynamic drivers and dual-mic noise cancellation, calls are crisper than Gary Lineker’s favourite snack, while switching to game mode puts you bang in the middle of the audio action with an enhanced focus on the direction of footsteps and gun-fire in the immediate vicinity.
With a 16-hour battery life, there’s ample time for work function and gaming fun between charges, and whether you’re using them for calls, music or gaming, audio quality is always excellent, precise, clear and detailed.
So, the only remaining question is: who or what is HECATE? Well, a brief Google informs me she’s the Greek goddess of magic and witchcraft, which given how good these are for the price, explains it all.
Buy now £90.00, Amazon
Contour Design SliderMouse Pro
Best for: Reinventing the mouse (wheel)
Without a doubt the most unusual inclusion, Contour Design is clearly a company utterly disgusted with the computer control status quo, so much so that it took a good, long look at the common house mouse and said “No, this is rubbish. Let’s start again.” And so they did, completely reimagining the mouse as something altogether new.
Meet the SliderMouse Pro, a cursor control system that places the mouse front and centre before the keyboard, to put all functions right under your thumbs for a newly ergonomic experience that makes a massive amount of sense.
Featuring a good-sized mechanical navigation bar that’s second nature to use, you can glide around the screen effortlessly in comfort with no needless movement of your hands, while the central panel has a scroll wheel, copy/paste buttons, programmable shortcut buttons and buttons dedicated for forward/backward navigation on the web, to make mousing easier than ever.
Working with both PC and Mac, the SliderMouse Pro connects over Bluetooth, USB receiver or cable for ease of set-up, comes in two different sizes (Slim and Extended) to suit differing desk sizes, and offers options of three magnetic wrist rests in vegan leather, bamboo or fabric, to suit the wrist-comfort needs of all comers.
As with all innovation, people might take some convincing to come away from the conventional mouse, especially when they see the price the SliderMouse commands. But then, built to last for over 10 years, that’s actually a lot of extremely ergonomic usage when it comes to pounds per product lifespan.
Buy now £263.00, Amazon
Trust Gaming Onyx GXT 255+ Pro Mic & Arm
Best for: Studio-style calls and streaming
The Onyx GXT 255+ Pro mic and boom arm is a combination of a USB-connection cardioid microphone that focuses on your voice, complete with 24bit/96kHz bit/sample rate, zero-latency output to headphones, shock mount, pop filter, gain control and mute button, attached to a studio-grade microphone arm keeps the mic solidly in position while also serving as a cable tidy. The boom arm fixes to the side of your desk using a G-clamp, making set-up quick and easy.
Featuring an LED light to indicate when the mic is hot and when it's muted, no fancy software is required, so you can be up and chatting business/podcasting your opinions/streaming your soul out in next to no time.
An excellent one-box solution to audio enhancement, keep your desktop clear and get a mic armed for the open air. Boom!
Buy now £140.00, Amazon
Edifier e25HD 2.0 Bluetooth Speakers
Best for: Beefing up workstation sound
There’s a plethora of external audio options open these days for people looking to add some extra sonorous oomph to their desktop speaker set-up, but few are as – frankly – sexy as the e25HD 2.0 Bluetooth speakers from Edifier.
Available in gloss Red, White or Black, these decidedly curvy beauties are minimalist looking in the extreme and so easy on the eye that they could be the audio equivalent of Optrex.
Capable of connecting via Bluetooth 5.3 or wired using optical or aux, the Edifiers feature a 1-inch silk dome tweeter, one 3-inch long-throw mid-low driver, and two passive bass radiators, combined with dual Tl Class-D digital audio amplifiers to create a stereo soundstage of a maximum of 74W of stunning sound with support high-resolution audio up to 24bit/96kHz. And that look? Not all about aesthetics, as the curved shape of the cabinet helps reduce resonance, making for much less distortion of colouration - so a pretty face and so much more.
Linked to my desktop by aux and via Bluetooth to my Alexa Show 8, the e25HD has quickly proved essential to all my daily work and entertainment activities, handing voiceover video calls and demanding music tastes with equal aplomb.
Buy now £129.99, Amazon
Audio-Technica AT2020USB-XP
Best for: Podcasts and online peopling
I’ve been using another Audio-Technica mic, the hypercardioid AT2040USB, for a while now and have found it a stout yeoman of streaming and recording, so when the cardioid condenser AT2020USB-XP pitched up in the hands of the postman, I was right on it.
So, £20 more than the other just mentioned model, the AT2020USB-XP also comes with more benefits. First of all, it’s plug-n-play, so simple to set up, secondly, it comes with some essential accessories, namely a nicely stable desk stand and a custom pop filter to spare additional expense and save your podcasts from plosives. It’s also relatively small, so it takes up less space, which can be vital to many. Then there’s the studio-quality onboard tech…
For starters, there’s that cardioid directional pick-up that focuses on you and nothing else, three levels of on-board noise reduction selectable from the base of the mic (with LED indication), on-board automatic gain control, high-res 24-bit/192kHz sampling for recordings clearer than crystal, not to mention a headphone jack complete with volume control to allow for zero-latency monitoring of your mouth-use.
Also featured up front is an easily accessible mic on/off button that allows you to mute proceedings dead in a split second, and the whole sound shebang is presided over by a two-state LED indicator ring that shines true and lights blue when the mic is hot and lights red when cold.
Connecting to your computer of choice via USB (USB-C to USB-A cable, USB-A to USB-C adapter included), the Audio-Technica is solidly built, fully featured and remarkably flexible, lending itself to streaming, podcasts, audio-based content creation and, yes, video calls and conferencing, whereas lesser mics might only tick off a couple of those boxes. Okay, maybe not suitable for the noisy needs of gamers, but for everything else it simply excels.
Buy now £149.00, Audio-Technica
EPOS Expand Vision 1
Best for: 4K camera quality
Find yourself stuck in Microsoft Teams, Zoom and/or Unify video meetings and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with how you look on screen and how often you’re asked to repeat yourself, yet don’t want a mic in your face constantly, then splash the cash and treat yourself to the Expand Vision 1 from EPOS, a webcam that’s small, unobtrusive, and features a 4K camera plus EPOS Audio for professional quality sound and banish your video conferencing blues for good.
Connecting via USB and with a mounting clip designed to play nice with any monitor, getting set up is simple, while on-screen control of your image comes courtesy of a very hand-floating window that allows for lighting, field of view and colour control, meaning you’ll always look your beautiful best as you struggle through a colleague’s slide presentation.
Compact and coming complete with its own carry case, the Expand Vision 1 has a privacy shutter to avert potentially peeking eyes after meetings are concluded, and is compatible with PC and Mac OSX, no matter what or where, all your high-quality webcam needs are more than catered for.
Buy now £161.64, Amazon
EPOS Impact 1060 ANC
Best for: Your brain…
Should your home environment be a noisy one and if you find brain fatigue a common side effect of your current cans set-up, the EPOS Impact 1060 ANC headphones will be a game changer.
Light, sturdy and comfortable, the 1060s feature EPOS AI that picks up on your voice pattern and nothing else, while the ANC (Active Noise Cancellation) ignores everything else by using beamforming technology to scan the surrounding environment 32,000 times per second to identify and shut out most ambient noise, so that you come through loud and clear on every call.
Connecting over Bluetooth to your PC, an on/off/Bluetooth combined and a multifunction switch on one can make them easy to operate, while ANC can be toggled on the other, letting you cut out the world as required.
Certified for use with Google Voice, Google Meet, Unify, and Zoom, if you want professional quality headphones for enhanced everyday office use, with anti-fatigue tech, and you don’t want to pay £300, the EPOS Impact 1060 ANC are the answer.
Buy now £171.03, Amazon
Logitech Zone Wireless 2
Best for: Doing the business
If your working life revolves around being seamlessly in touch with colleagues and clients in environments that might be noisier than normal, then you may as well not mess around and arm your ears with headphones that always have your back: the Logitech Zone Wireless 2.
Compatible with Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and Google Voice and featuring Fast Pair, the headphones also have AI noise suppression and premium hybrid noise-cancelling mics (ANC) to guarantee clear communication both ways, while the USB-C receiver and multipoint Bluetooth 5.2 lets you toggle between devices.
Flicking the mic boom up activates mute automatically, and on-ear controls allow users to answer/end/reject calls, pause music/play/select next song, turn the volume up/down, activate ANC/ Transparency mode, mute on/off, and power on/off, all of which comes quite naturally after a few hours of use.
No fewer than five omnidirectional MEMS, provide precision voice pick-up, and the 40mm drivers create decisively clear audio with, should you want to take time off for some tunes, surprisingly punchy bass, while the Personal EQ lets you tailor sound to your taste.
Light at 230g and nicely head hugging without being oppressive, the Zone Wireless 2 soft ear pads also rotate for the perfect fit, so you’ll not find yourself uncomfortably adjusting them no matter how long and arduous the online meeting.
Battery life gives up to 15 hours of talk time or 22 hours of listening time, but should things run over, they can be connected with the bundled USB-C cable to carry on using corded.
Expensive? Maybe. Well, undeniably. But for keeping busy business people in constant, unwavering connection, they’re priceless.
Buy now £300.00, Logitech
Canyon WS-404 4-in1 Wireless Charging Station
Best for: Beating battery life blues
Gadgets – they get everywhere and almost always want charging. For those with smartphones, smartwatches, earbuds and so on and so forth that need a battery boost on an almost daily basis, may we introduce you to the WS-404 from Canyon?
This device is a well-priced wireless charging station that has space for the simultaneous Qi magnetic charging of no fewer than four devices, while maintaining a footprint that maximises available desk space. With room available for two Qi-supported smartphones, 1x earbuds and 1x Apple Watch (Series 2 to 7), obviously, Apple tech obsessives will benefit most from the Canyon’s magnetic power output, but any metal-bodied smartphone will sit comfortably.
With an LED indicator up front to show what’s charging and what’s not, to stop anything from overheating, a smart "Bland" chipset means each device is assigned its optimal charge capacity, saving the lifespan of the respective tech toys and stopping your house from burning down – a veritable win-win!
Cheap too at just £80, stick your device charging concerns on the Canyon stand and concern about it no more!
Buy now £80.00, TJ Hughes
SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless
Best for: Work and play
Designed for gaming but, after vigorous testing has concluded, also excellent for office duties, if you’re in the market for cans for both activities, don’t fork out twice, face the music/calls/epic world adventures with headphones that offer the audio lot: the new Arctis Nova Pro from SteelSeries.
Hi-Res capable, with ANC complete with transparency mode, and an AI-powered retractable microphone, 40mm Neodymium drivers deliver a rich, balanced soundscape, with both music and call vocals delivered with equal clarity, while options of preprogrammed audio profiles or self-mixed EQ means you can get unerring audio ideally suitable to you.
Connecting via dual USB to two devices simultaneously, such as PC, PS4/PS5, Switch/other main handhelds, and Mac, toggling between your two options in the blink of an eye, the inclusion of Bluetooth 5.0 means you can also wirelessly hook up to your phone to take calls while you play.
Coming with a wireless base station, to boot, during those heated team games, you can find your exact equilibrium between game audio and that mate who is always far too excitably loud, adding to the overall comfort of wear.
Plus, coming with two hot-swappable batteries offering 22 hours a piece, your high-end audio is assured, but please remember to eat/sleep too.
Buy now £330.00, SteelSeries
TwelveSouth Book Arc Flex
Best for: MacBook mounting
Hybrid worker with limited desk space? Use a MacBook but would like to hook it up to a proper monitor and mouse when at home? Then you need the Book Arc Flex from TwelveSouth. Yes, NEED.
A minimalist flexible support that holds said Mac vertically while connected to your peripherals, the Arc saves oodles of space while helping you achieve a far more comfortable and suitable set-up for labouring from the confines of your quarters, cradling your computer with care now and into the future by being adjustable to changing thickness up to 1-inch.
Available in black, white or chrome, the Book Arc Flex is primarily meant for MacBooks, but it can also accommodate any laptop with a screen size up to 16 inches, so no matter what make, you can unclutter even the smallest desk with ease and convert to a complete home workstation in mere seconds and, of course, in style.
Buy now £63.01, Amazon
Groov-e Adjustable Stand
Best for: Elevating productivity
Sometimes you just need a bit of a lift. Indeed, if you’re tapping away at a laptop that’s just too low, or have it hooked up to a monitor and keyboard but need it open on display, then for the sake of comfort and convenience, get it closer to eye level with the Groov-e laptop stand.
Built from sturdy aluminium alloy and stable on its 240 x 240mm stand, the Groov-e is suitable for laptops from 10- to 17-inches in size, its non-slip pads keeping them securely in place when in use.
Fully foldable and with adjustable height and angle, the stand is good to go anywhere, while the open design allows for proper heat dissipation, ensuring overheating doesn’t become an issue.
A slick-looking, safe way to literally lift your laptop to new heights of productivity, stop stacking books under it and get more Groov-e.
Buy now £23.70, Amazon
EPOS Expand 40T
Best for: Conferencing like a king/queen
If you find yourself needing to dial into meetings whether in the home office or between actual face-to-faces, then you need something in your audible arsenal that ensures you never miss the slightest sound being uttered and, conversely, that nobody mishears you. To that end, the EPOS Expand 40T is probably right up your superior sound street.
A perfect circle almost exactly the same size as a CD, the 40T is also a shallow 37mm tall, or the same height of a stack of 25 CDs as, yes, I’ve measured myself. And not only is it compact, but it’s also wonderfully self-contained, with its BTD USB-C Dongle slotting neatly into the bottom for storage and its USB-C cable coiling around the foot. Also included in the box is a separate USB-C to USB-A adapter and a soft case for the Expand in which it sits in the box.
So, what does it do? Well as a start, there’s multipoint connectivity over Bluetooth for two devices, an 18-hour talk time battery life, three beamforming microphones that isolate voices from annoying ambient noise, and it can even allow several people to jabber on at once without being cut off – the bane of being at the solo receiving end of a group conference call.
Working like a dream with all the big UC (Unified Communications) names, the Expand 40T gives instant access to meetings at the touch of its perfectly intuitive buttons, letting you business away without all the bumbling rigmarole.
A decidedly cool bit of kit that makes conferencing considerably easier and clearer for everyone involved and is perfect for working home or away, the natty little EPOS Expand 40T comes compatible with mobile phones, desk phones, PC/ Soft phone, Mac OSX and tablets.
Buy now £254.00, Amazon
