I work entirely from home now, & have done at least 50/50 home office for almost 20 years now. In order of what’s made the biggest difference comfort & health wise:

0. getting in some regular fresh air and exercise breaks. I try in summer to work a few hours on the balcony when the sun isn’t too bright, and get some biking and swimming done.

1. a decent mechanical keyboard. You can spend 1000s on one or get a 2nd hand gamer model to try out for a while. Chances are you know somebody who won’t mind you having a test week or so.

2. dual screens and adjustable arm control. This has proved decidedly complicated as I’m reasonably tall and most monitor stands weren’t sufficiently high. I have rarely needed to adjust the screens so no need to go all out on fancy arms.

3. decent office chair. Expensive and worth every penny. If you spend 8h sitting on your butt might as well make it comfy. Plenty of leg room, easy height adjustment.

4. a big desk, enough to spread all the stuff out. 2 years ago I got an adjustable standing desk, quite expensive. I use it occasionally 2-3 times a week. I do like it but I think the novelty in the community outweighs the general benefits.

5. Decent speakers, headset & a good USB DAC for music.

What specifically? Obviously this depends on what you prefer, but I’ve found that good stuff doesn’t come cheap. Chairs desks and monitor arms that aren’t quality don’t pan out well. Again I’ve built this collection up over 7 years, don’t go all out at once.

• wasd v2 custom 105 keyboard <3 this. I have a keyboard.io butterfly but it’s not as well suited to me. I’ve had a carpal tunnel operation a year ago so this is pretty important for me. Split keyboards don’t float my boat.
• generic 27” Dell monitors. Good but not overly pricey.
• steelcase office chair, a large one with a foot rest. The most expensive item by far and worth it. If you have the time you can probably pick up a decent 2nd hand one from office suppliers and refurnished lease items, but YMMV.
• steelcase adjustable desk. These days I would just make my own out of a large piece of wood (I did one for the kids and it’s worked really well), and skip the adjustability unless you really need it. You can always spend more later.
• speakers I picked up a pair of BOSE desktop ones 2nd hand, and tossed up between a mojo chord, and a dragonfly red USB DAC. these are nicely portable so I can take them on vacation in the car, and I got the mojo got honestly it looks so damn cool. The sound was similar, and the dragonfly sticks out of my desktop oddly, but it might work well for a laptop.

I work from home and work at a huge geekdesk adjustable desk. I have the surface at sternum height about 90% of the time (standing but desk surface is high relative to my body compared to normal), and sitting 10% of the time. I think the really high desk prevents me from slouching but my sample size is a biased 1.

I have my work and personal laptops in identical setups side by side (the desk is very wide). Each laptop is on a shelf, and the shelf is based by my speakers. I have a pair of ergodox split keyboards tented at about 45 degrees, and matching j-tech vertical bluetooth mice.

It might not be a good idea, but when I’m working from home (1-2 days per week over the last 6 years) I’m usually sitting on my sofa with my laptop on my lap, as I do now. I do have a proper office chair, so sometimes I really make room on my desk and sit there, but still without external keyboard and mouse.

At work I use two external monitors and a mechanical keyboard - at home it’s just too much hassle to plug that stuff in, I’d definitely go the KVM route if I was working at home full time - so my 2 monitors (connected to my private workstation) go mostly unused.

Interestingly it usually works out fine unless I really need to watch like 5 logs at the same time, then I’m sorely missing a second screen.

TLDR:

• office setup = laptop + 2 external screens, mech, keyboard
• private home setup = tower pc + 2 screens, mech. keyboard
• home office = mostly on the sofa