I’ve always thought a wall-mounted TV was the cleanest, highest-tier TV installation unless you move into the realm of custom cabinets that hide your TV until you’re ready to watch it. I lived in a place with walls that could not take a wall mount for years, but when I moved into a more modern house, one of the first things I did was pay a professional to install our TV, mounted on the wall.
I was quite happy with it the first time, so when I later moved again, I repeated the process. However, as time went by, I soured on the whole idea of wall-mounting a TV.
The “clean” appearance usually hides another cable-management problem
Out of sight, out of my mind
Credit: Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek
What you see above is my first ever wall-mounted TV setup. It works, because we decided that this living room TV would not have anything connected to it other than a single power cable. This TV would only work using its built-in smart apps, and therefore not a single HDMI cable was needed.
Instead, we had a separate setup with a smaller TV and all the consoles hooked up to it. On our next move, that would change, since the main TV would also need to have all the consoles connected. The common area just wasn’t shaped correctly for the old solution of having a separate gaming setup.
The very second we had to connect three consoles and a streaming box to the TV, things started going sideways.
Ultimately, I was able to hide most of it with trunking, but the idea of having to do this again fills me with dread, and I am going to be moving into a new place within the next year.
Don’t get me started on wanting to change things like the sound bar or HDMI cables. When I upgraded to a 120Hz TV, I had to change out all the HDMI cables for ones that could handle 4K 120Hz. Not because every current device I had needed this (it was just my PS5 at the time), but because if I was going to change the cables, it was better to just do them all and get it over with.
A wall mount makes every future change more difficult
You’re allowed to change your mind, you know
In my experience as someone who moves around a lot, the first layout you have when starting in a new place is rarely the best one. Eventually, after actually being in a space for a while, you make tweaks or rethink things until they actually fit how you live day-to-day.
Unfortunately, unless you’re mad enough to keep drilling and filling holes in the wall, your TV is likely going to stay where it was first mounted. Which means your other furniture has to be arranged to take the TV’s position into account.
Aftermarket VESA stands give you the same height without the commitment
More people need to know this is an option
Credit: Justin Duino / How-To Geek
One of the main reasons we wall-mount TVs is because the factory-standard feed they come with is usually quite awful.
It’s really the minimum solution to prevent your TV from falling over and offers you no built-in height adjustment or swivel. So, that means the plasma stand or other flat surface you use is the sole arbiter of how high your TV is, and changing its angle means turning the whole thing. Vertical tilt? Forget about it.
The good news is that the VESA mounting solution on the back of most TVs isn’t just for wall-mounting. There’s a huge variety of aftermarket stands that take advantage of the VESA mount to upgrade your TV stand.
Take this PERLESMITH stand you see here. Once you attach your TV to it, you can adjust the height and swivel it, and this stand in particular even has cable management features built into it.
Type
Tabletop Mount
Material(s)
Alloy Steel
A simple yet versatie stand that should fit all but the largest TVs.
It doesn’t have to be a tabletop model either. There are floor stands as well, some of which even have shelves for a console, streaming box, or Blu-ray player. If you like, you can even get a TV stand with wheels, which is what I did.
My next TV is going on a rolling stand or just a good old TV table
I’m gonna keep rollin’
Credit: Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek
That’s right, the thing that really changed my mind about wall-mounting was a rolling TV stand I got as a solution to a bedroom that had nowhere to mount a TV. So my secondary TV could be moved to somewhere in the living room for playing games or as a work monitor with my MacBook hooked up to it, and then rolled into our room for late-night movies. Or likely just more video games, if I’m being honest.
Looking through all the options, I realized that when I next move, it makes more sense to simply get a stand that will sit close to the wall than do yet another installation. The cost of a nice stand is about the same as a wall-mount installation by a pro anyway (which landlords insist on), so for me, this feels like the right way to go.