Outside of his work duties, Dominic describes himself as a food enthusiast. He manages a newsletter called Braise, in which he reviews London eateries and cookbooks, and sometimes experiments with crafting his own recipes. Most of his leisure time is spent cooking, dining, or pondering over food, which consequently means he also dedicates a fair amount of time in the gym to balance it out.

Where is your workspace located?

The workspace I share with my partner is located in our London apartment. Originally a second bedroom, it has been converted with two desks and a sofa bed for when guests visit. My partner, being a PhD student, has an erratic schedule split between home and school, leaving the office space mostly to myself.

Could you tell us about your desk(s)?

We both have standing desks. Mine is an electronic and automated Autonomous SmartDesk 2, while my partner’s desk, an older pneumatic model from Bakker Elkhuizen, is no longer available for purchase. This minor inconvenience is slightly bothersome for her as it requires manual effort to adjust. Both desks are topped with self-healing cutting mats which are now primarily used as oversized mouse mats, though they occasionally serve their original purpose for arts and crafts.

You have both a chair and a walking station. What are they, and how well do they work for you?

The chair I use is a secondhand Herman Miller. It initially belonged to my partner while I used a large Duelhawk Jet Black PU gaming chair, also not available anymore. We eventually realized we each preferred the other’s chair and decided to swap. I’m of an age and experience that leads me to believe it’s worth investing in a chair as it’s used daily.

I own a budget-friendly walking pad from Mobvoi, which I purchased after reading my colleague Victoria Song’s article on another model by the same brand. Following her suggestion not to engage with its smart features or monitor workouts has worked for me. I use it at its slowest speed, aiming to spend as much of my mornings walking as possible; some days I manage two or three hours, while on others I delay until it’s too late to start. No matter the day, I allow myself to sit in the afternoon when I need to focus on concentrated writing, which I find challenging to do while walking.

(I know, I know, my cable management isn’t great. I tend to be very tidy, but cables are one of the few things I absolutely don’t have the patience to organize. Sadly, having a standing desk really lays bare those sins, so I may have to force myself to get better about it.)

Here’s the long one: tell us about the various tech devices you’re using.

My current setup is slightly awkwardly trapped between my work and personal computers, though I have some plans in the works to improve it.

My work machine is an M2 MacBook Air, which lives propped up on a Ugreen laptop stand. It’s connected to the monitor on the right, a cheap 24-inch QHD Philips model that I bought in 2020.

The confusing part of my setup is that second monitor, an embarrassingly old Acer one. That’s because I’ve also got a desktop PC that I use outside of work, and that connects to both monitors. At the end of the work day I can flip the MacBook shut, and my personal setup is good to go. It’s all unnecessarily cluttered, though, especially since the MacBook can’t support both external monitors at once, so this year’s big upgrade will probably be a 32-inch 4K monitor to replace the pair of them. I’ll happily take any recommendations from the comments!

My keyboard is the Logitech MX Keys S, which I love. I’m as much of a sucker for a good mechanical board as the next guy, but I love low-profile, full-size keyboards, and good mechanical options in that space are few and far between. I used to use a Hexgears Venture, but I ran it into the ground eventually, and this has served me well since.

The mouse is also Logitech, though it isn’t my usual one. I picked up this MX Anywhere 3S a while back to use when I’m traveling to trade shows and product launches, and usually have the larger MX Master 3S on my desk. Sadly the left button on that has given up the ghost, and I’m holding off on replacing it in the hopes that the long-rumored MX Master 4 is about to launch.

Continuing the Logitech theme (I’m just now realizing quite how much of my desk setup was built by them), I have an old Z337 2.1 speaker system that just barely fits on the desk right now (another reason I need to switch to a single monitor), and a Brio 500 webcam that I mostly like for how easy it is to flip the built-in privacy shutter.

Everything connects up through an Anker Prime USB hub that’s almost certainly more powerful than I need it to be, but has lots of front-facing USB ports for charging my array of phones, helped by a Xiaomi 50W wireless charging stand, which made more sense when I was using a Xiaomi 14 Ultra as my main phone, but is slightly wasted now — other phones don’t hit that max charging speed.

I tend to have a rotating cast of phones floating around my desk, though this is relatively tidy for me — on messy days I can have up to five or six handsets taking up space. Beyond the Vivo X200 Ultra I used to take these photos, you can see the Fairphone 6 and Huawei Pura X, the two phones I’ve most recently been testing for reviews.

Tell us about your camera collection.

I decided I wanted to try out film photography back in 2019, because I was spending a lot more time writing about cameras as part of my phone reviews and using cameras as part of my job. I figured film would be a good way to make myself learn more about the core principles.

I picked up this Canon EF on eBay. It’s a ’70s SLR with a metal body, which means it’s heavy but is built like a tank — I suspect it will outlast me. It came with a Canon 50mm lens, and I’ve gradually picked up a few cheap options to go with it: a 28mm wide-angle, a 35-70mm for when I want flexibility, and a 70-210mm telephoto I bought specifically for a safari in Kenya a couple years back. I always tell myself I’ll buy better-quality lenses when I’m a good enough photographer to get the most out of them, but I’ll probably just have to bite the bullet eventually.

The microphone living alongside them all is the Rode NT-USB, which I use for podcasts and videos, though I’d like to get a boom arm for it so I can store it around the desk.

You’ve got a lot of toys and games on those shelves! How long have you been collecting them?

This is a really motley assortment of things I’ve collected over the years — some bought, some gifted, some acquired from an old office clearout. There’s more dotted around the rest of my apartment, though my girlfriend is on an (understandable) mission to concentrate it all in the office.

Do you have any favorites?

I’m an absolute Alien obsessive, and I actually have two full-size facehuggers, one plushie and one vinyl, which I adore. There’s also a (sadly not full-size) power loader from Aliens, which I can’t get enough of. Elsewhere in the apartment I have a few original ’90s Street Sharks and Small Soldiers action figures, which are still waiting for the right shelf to display them on.

The board game collection is small but steadily growing. I’ve been playing a lot of Gloomhaven over the last year or so, though Betrayal at House on the Hill is probably the game that gets broken out most often. I’ve also got a healthy collection of D&D 5e and Alien RPG sourcebooks — I can strongly recommend the latter, and that’s not just the fanboy in me speaking!

Okay, tell us about that beautiful cat.

That’s Noodle, one of our two cats (the other is Loaf, and yes, of course they have an Instagram account).

She’s actually a recent addition to my desk. We’ve had the cats for a couple of years, but in the last few months Noodle has decided she really wants to hang out with me while I work, and will happily lie down on my keyboard to do so. We set her up with a little blanket bed instead, which she now sleeps in about half the day, though she still isn’t above a keyboard nap when the mood strikes. The biggest surprise to me is that she doesn’t seem to mind the standing desk going up or down while she’s on it, which I expected would cause a bit of panic.

Photographs by Dominic Preston / The Verge