All of the company's stands are available in multiple colors and are made of aluminum to dissipate heat. The Executive stand comes with vents cut into its platform, while the Professional's platform is solid. A $10 upgrade for the Executive adds a two-fan/USB-hub combo that requires USB power from your computer. The fans are hardly noticeable when active, and may be switched off. The Professional can add vents and fans (but no USB hub) for $5.

Both stands are quite rigid, even when extended near the full height--a nice feat of design and engineering. There's a little jitter from side to side as you type, but it's not enough to put you off or start an oscillation pattern. The stands work great on top of a standard desk, as well as when used over your legs while sitting on, say, the floor or a bed...unless you sit crosslegged, thanks to the narrow space between the stand legs.

The aforementioned Mouse Pad screws onto any leg of either stand. I didn't find this accessory to be very useful, because even if you attach the pad as high as possible on the stand holding your keyboard or laptop, the pad is several inches lower than the stand's main surface, making for poor ergonomics. Also, the bracket, while secure, is difficult to attach, and it must be removed in order to fully collapse the stand.

The stands' articulated-leg design has both advantages and disadvantages. Each joint can be locked into any of 24 positions, so with three joints in each leg, there are a very, very large number of ways the stands can be employed. However, even though the joints have numbered and tick-marked degree indicators, I still found it difficult to re-create a particular position I liked, as well as to get both sets of legs to the same place. Uncaged could do more to provide simple tools to mark positions to get back to them rapidly, such as color cues or position markers. If I were to use the stands permanently, I'd likely use fingernail polish or a colored permanent marker to indicate my preferred positions. Also, let's not forget about fingers: While Uncaged includes several warnings about pinching, it's simply inevitable that at some point you'll get a finger squeezed when clicking and unclicking the legs--I did. It smarts, but I survived.

The stands are surprisingly light, at 4 pounds for the Executive and 3 pounds for the Professional, and they fold up compactly enough to lug around. In fact, I'm surprised Uncaged doesn't offer a custom carrying bag of some sort, as even though there are no sharp edges, there are rough ones--I wouldn't throw either stand into a bag with a laptop or tablet--and each is too large stick in a backpack.