Home Office 2025 upgraded with Mac Mini, Prompter and more!

After a longer stint with my home office (only with minor changes since 2022) it was time for some major re-modeling. I started with moving furniture around but then I upgraded basically everything: cables, Mac, teleprompter and much more. So stay tuned for my best home office yet!

• Moving furniture around: desk goes back, couch goes to front and new shades are in!
• M4 Mac Mini - the new soul of my home office
• Prompter - a teleprompter upgrade I didn’t know I needed!
• Desk re-arranged - Microphone, iPad, Prompter and keyboard for the Mac
• New/old iPad corner - still works perfectly!
• Old iPad Pro and ancient iPad 1 at the very back!
• Green screen still there…
• Big upgrades in my Home Office 2025!
• P.S. Additional space for Legos!
• P.P.S. Cat 6a Ethernet in my home office

Moving furniture around: desk goes back, couch goes to front and new shades are in!

Let’s start with the furniture. For the last 4 years I’ve had my stand up desk right next to the windows, closer to the front of the home office. Now that I record podcasts regularly: NoOffice FM and Nie Ma Biura every two weeks and Nadgryzieni almost every week, I needed improvements. I wanted to be able to control my background better and be able to put up shades when I record in the morning as the rising sun here is pretty strong.

By moving the desk to the back I feel like I have more space in front of me when I’m at the desk, I have a better view out the window and I have an easier way controlling the light by putting down shades.

The sofa in my home office sometimes is being used by guests who sleep here, so this way when the sofa is converted to a bed, my home office space is basically unaffected and I can keep recording podcasts or videos.

M4 Mac Mini - the new soul of my home office

Now that I’m rocking the M4 iPad Pro I decided to go all-in on M4 and bought the almost-base model of M4 Mac Mini as my new Mac. I’ve upgraded it with 10G Ethernet and 512GB storage ($900). I love this mini computer and I love how it’s so cute and so small that it looks like a stand for my Mandalorian figurine:

I have an external 4TB SSD connected to it so this Mac Mini serves as a great backup solution for all my cloud data.

The Mac Mini has 3 Thunderbolt ports in the back and I have them connected to 3 things:

1. Monitor
2. SSD disk
3. USB-C hub

As a USB-C hub I’m using this upgraded Lemorele dock which supports high-bandwidth connections and works great with all my gear:

1. Prompter (see below)
2. Elgato Camlink that transfers video from my Sony camera
3. Shure MV7+ podcast microphone
4. Additional USB small keyboard.

With all these things connected to one dock/hub everything runs smoothly. The audio from the microphone, video from the Sony and video from the Prompter. All good.

Prompter - a teleprompter upgrade I didn’t know I needed!

My friend and podcast co-host, Thomas, suggested I got small new teleprompter with a screen built-in called Elgato Prompter (Amazon) and this thing blew my mind. Not only is it a better teleprompter than the setup I had before, but it also serves as an additional screen. Amazing.

It connects to my Mac Mini using just one USB-C cable (which also powers this thing) and using DisplayLink it serves as an additional screen for my Mac. It’s so light that it can be easily attached to my Sony ZV-E10 camera and its Sigma 18mm lens. I have the Sony camera plugged in using a dummy battery like this one which is plugged in to a smart plug-in like this one so I can basically turn on and off my camera using the iPhone or Siri.

Prompter comes with a special Mac software from Elgato that can instantly change its functionality from either an external screen or a teleprompter. As a teleprompter it’s awesome - I just paste the text and later talk to the camera while reading the text.

However, it’s also great as an external screen for podcast recording and for meetings. When I record Nadgryzieni I see all of us and the comments people are posting in real time:

For meetings I have set up Zoom like this that whenever I access a meeting room, it shows the room in full screen on THAT screen. So cool!

I can switch between setting everyone in the Prompter, or just the person speaking, while having everyone else on the side on my main monitor, like this:

Now I feel like this Prompter is my “phone booth” as all my meetings take place in there!

Desk re-arranged - Microphone, iPad, Prompter and keyboard for the Mac

Now my desk is clearly divided in two sections:

• iPad section on the left below the Prompter is where I type on M4 iPad Pro
• Mac section on the right where the keyboard and trackpad are and where my old trusty 4K LG 27UK850-W screen is installed. Even though it’s a 4K screen I have it simulate as 5K at 2560x1440 resolution in retina mode (go to Settings > Displays > More Space).

I’ve also moved the microphone to the left so it doesn’t disturb me when I’m just working, yet it still perfectly gathers audio and can be easily moved to any position desirable.

Below the desk I have cables very neatly organized (red zone) and I’ve set up lights in such a way that I have all of the office neatly lit up (Ikea smart bulbs - green) and have two Elgato Key Light Amazon lights (in yellow). Here’s the view of the back of the desk:

New/old iPad corner - still works perfectly!

I still decided to keep my iPad Corner with my very old Thunderbolt Display for when I want to work in a focused way on the iPad. Now that the external monitor support on the iPad is fixed, I can take advantage of the entire screen easily.

At the back of the iPad corner I used IKEA Kallax furniture with drawers for the document shredder, trash and power cable situation. I made a hole for the shredder and attached the top of it directly to the Kallax.

This small 4-section Kallax is divided like this:

1. Top left - shredded and just paper bin
2. Bottom left - other trash
3. Top right - two small drawers for handy things
4. Bottom right - UPS APC and power outlets and LAN switch

Everything handy!

Old iPad Pro and ancient iPad 1 at the very back!

I’ve installed my trusty old 10” iPad Pro right behind me. I’ve set it up with a different iCloud account which can access my “Home” so I can manage lights and other accessories with it. Next to it there’s still-working my first ever iPad from 2010!

Right above the iPads there is a big photo-like Bluetooth speaker and the first prominent article about Nozbe from 2007 by Marc Orchant. Here’s the Wayback link to the article from February 12, 2007.

To the side there’s a big drawer for documents that I must keep. I still have my whiteboard which I don’t use as often as I’d like, but it’s there if I need to brainstorm on some ideas.

Green screen still there…

I’ve moved the green screen to the back and now it’s ready when I need it for some podcast recordings or conference speeches. Or Nozbe videos.

I’ve added one extra bulb on top of the green screen so that the screen itself is lit more evenly.

Big upgrades in my Home Office 2025!

To recap, this is yet another big step in my home office evolution:

1. Mac Mini
2. Prompter
3. Re-arranged stand-up desk
4. Kallax with document shredder and cables in drawers
5. iPad corner
6. Green screen
7. iPads on the wall
8. Whiteboard
9. Additional desk if needed
10. Drawer for documents
11. Sofa

I hope this new home office inspires you to improve yours. If you have any questions, let me know on social media.

P.S. Additional space for Legos!

In the corridor-room adjecent to my home office I’ve built a special place for my lego cars collection and it looks glorious and is back lit with LED lights:

Above the legos I have a Brother Wireless Color laser printer. I prefer to have a printer in the corridor since it makes noise when it prints and this way anyone can print anything from their phone on tablet and pick up the print outs wihtout disturbing me in the home office.

P.P.S. Cat 6a Ethernet in my home office

One last additional improvement is that I’ve re-cabled my home office with Cat 6a Ethernet cable because I’ve got 10Gigabit port on my Mac Mini and Eero 6+ mesh which supports already 2.5Gigabit ethernet. This way I already have a cable for the future. I’ll be slowly re-cabling my entire house in the future.