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© 2025 BBCWorld 10:55pm I struggled with standing desk foot pain — until I tried these 3 things
Ask anyone who’s tried a standing desk and they’ll all say the same thing: it makes your feet hurt. It makes sense since you aren’t used to it yet, especially if you’ve been sitting all day every day for years. It takes more effort to stand than sit, and you have to develop your tissues to withstand the constant pressure of being on your feet.
But that pain may not go away on its own. Standing for hours at a time can cause muscle strains and aches and pains that only seem to get worse with time. I struggled with horrendous foot pain during my first few weeks with a standing desk, and it eventually evolved into plantar fasciitis.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story. I’m happy to report that it’s been a few years since my first foray into standing desks and now I can stand all day without any pain—plus the benefits to my back and posture have been enormous. I’m glad I stuck with it.
I just had to learn how to take care of my feet while using my standing desk. Here are my three favorite solutions that actually worked.
Solution #1: Anti-fatigue mat
The most important and most effective recommendation I can make for anyone who’s a long-term standing desk user is to get a proper anti-fatigue standing mat. The keyword there is “proper.” Not all anti-fatigue mats are equal, and getting the wrong one is just a waste of your money.
Truth is, there are so many standing mat designs out there, ranging from simple and compact options to expansive mats with all sorts of ridges and bumps. I’ve tried my fair share over the years and I’ve developed my own preferences—but even then, some are objectively better.
The Topo Comfort Mat by ErgodrivenJoel Lee / Foundry
For starters, simple memory foam is a no-go. While this material is fantastic for your bedtime pillow, it’s next to useless when it comes to standing on it all day long. You exert too much force on it and it will very quickly lose its supportive and cushioning capabilities. If you see an anti-fatigue mat meant for kitchens, skip it. They’re usually made of memory foam and won’t provide the all-day relief you need at a standing desk.
I’d also avoid any standing mat that’s totally flat and uninteresting in its design. Not because they’re dull to look at, but because variety in texture and shape can make a real difference to your standing comfort. Again, anti-fatigue mats for kitchens are usually like this, so skip them. Instead, look for contours, bumps, ridges—features that not only encourage different stances but also let you relieve pressure points.
The Active Anti-Fatigue Mat E7 by UpliftJon Martindale / Foundry
The design I’ve personally settled on is the Uplift Active Anti-Fatigue Mat E7. It’s huge and takes up far too much floor space for something so simple, but it’s really comfortable and effective. The polyurethane is tough but flexible so it contours when I stand on it, but not so much as to provide no resistance. When my feet start to tire or ache, I can use the mat itself to massage them—especially the half-spheres on the sides, which are great for digging into the arches. The prickly section offers points of micro pressure, which feel really nice on tired feet.
To be fair, the Uplift E7 mat isn’t the only one that offers these features, and it’s expensive for what it is, but I think it’s worth the money. It works well with bare feet and with shoes, it’s durable and holds its properties, and it comes with a 15-year warranty. Uplift is confident you won’t wear this thing out. (I consider that a challenge!)
Solution #2: Balance board
Maybe you already have an anti-fatigue standing mat, or maybe you just want more variety to your standing movements. In that case, a balance board can be a great alternative to a static mat.
There are several different designs out there, but they mostly boil down to one core idea: a flat board on a half-sphere that forces you to maintain your balance on it. As you shift your weight around, it rocks from side to side with you, engaging a bunch of balance-related muscles, encouraging physical effort, and ensuring your feet are never still for too long.
The Yo-Yo Board 360Jon Martindale / Foundry
Standing on a balance board burns calories, but that’s not its main purpose. The most important benefit is that it keeps blood pumping freely in your legs, helping to thwart deep vein thrombosis (one of the most common issues that comes with all-day standing).
I’ve tried a few different designs over the years, but I really like the Yo-Yo Board 360. It’s short enough that it can be easily rotated in any direction, yet tall enough to allow some deep dips to the side, front, or back depending on how I’m using it. It also has a thick foam pad for extra cushioning for my feet. Other boards with thinner foam seem to wear out over time as the foam compresses, providing less support for my feet even as it retains its cool rocking function.
Unfortunately, the Yo-Yo Board 360 is hard to get in the US. If you want something similar, you can find some solid alternatives on Amazon, including the Fezibo Anti-Fatigue Balance Board.
The Fezibo Anti-Fatigue Balance BoardFezibo
Beyond just helping my feet, though, I’ve found balance boards to be a fun way to fidget while standing to work. I can rock the board onto its side, drop it back down again, do 360-degree spins, and a bunch of flamingo legging to help ease any stress on one leg or the other.
All-day static standing isn’t much better than all-day static sitting, so using something like this to increase the variety of your movements can be really useful for managing foot pain and aches.
Solution #3: Under-desk treadmill
Want to really burn calories while you work and alleviate a lot of your standing desk foot pain? Try an under-desk treadmill!
Okay, so this one isn’t something you can use all day long, and it’s definitely something you want to build up to over time. (If you thought standing while working was tricky, walking is a whole other kettle of fish.) But this one is the ultimate in multipurpose productivity.
I did a quick 40 minutes on my WalkingPad Z1 foldable treadmill this morning, burning a swift 86 calories, and I barely noticed it. My legs were a bit tired afterwards and I sweated a bit more than I normally do while writing an article, but now that I’m used to walking while writing, I can do it quite easily. Not for long periods of time—so I still need the anti-fatigue mat, balance board, and an ergonomic office chair for breaks—but it’s an excellent addition to my collection of foot-saving accessories.
The WalkingPad Z1 Foldable Under-Desk TreadmillJon Martindale / Foundry
Since using an under-desk treadmill, I’ve burned a lot of calories—and it’s surprisingly straightforward to type while walking once you’ve gotten over the initial learning curve. The first few days saw me hitting the wrong keys and misclicking a lot, but it didn’t take long before those issues were behind me. My brain soon recalibrated to glide mode.
There are some downsides to such extreme movement encouragement, though. It’s undeniably large and takes up a lot of space in my tiny home office—and that’s with the slim-line model that folds up for storage, which is the only reason I could make it work. (My dog complains that it takes up valuable under-desk space where his bed could be.)
Treadmills are also noisy, though not obnoxiously so. It’s easy enough to ignore with headphones on, but I probably wouldn’t recommend this if you live in an apartment and have a downstairs neighbor.
But if you have a spacious office and you’re on the ground floor or in the basement, I’d say that an under-desk treadmill is a seriously useful bit of kit. Mine will certainly remain in my arsenal of standing-desk-foot-pain-alleviating accessories that I can’t do without.
Honorable mention: Comfortable shoes
If you can’t get any of the above solutions—or if you just don’t like any of them—then can I at least suggest a decent pair of shoes? Nothing exacerbates my standing desk foot pain more than standing barefoot or in socks. Conventional flooring isn’t padded well enough to be comfortable for unprotected feet for hours every day.
But no slippers, no heels, no work boots, and probably not orthotics, either. And instead of wearing just any pair of comfortable sneakers, my recommendation goes one step further—to something more padded and more protective. I have something specific in mind.
The Vibram FiveFingers Barefoot Toe ShoeJon Martindale / Foundry
I’m talking about minimalist shoes like the Vibram FiveFingers. I know I’m in the minority in thinking these shoes are amazing, but I wear them all day while walking on the treadmill or rocking on the balance board. No foot pain. These shoes have helped strengthen my feet, and my toes have the freedom to spread out comfortably.
You don’t need to wear such a fashion-pariah of a shoe, but I’ve found them to be great for standing and they work really well for me. Your opinions may differ. But whatever you do, get a good pair of shoes for your standing desk and make sure it’s comfortable, supportive, and not too restrictive. Your feet will thank you for it.
Further reading: Life-changing desk accessories for PC users
© 2025 PC World 10:45pm  
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Relax! Windows isn’t wrecking SSDs. But these mistakes will kill yours dead
Social media has recently been lit up with claims that a recent Windows update is killing SSDs. According to Microsoft, Windows isn’t at fault. In fact, recent reports show that this problem only occurs on drives with pre-release firmware updates from storage manufacturer Phison. (Pre-release firmware updates are internal builds that never should’ve seen the light of day in actual consumer hardware.)
The good news is, the latest Windows update won’t kill your SSD. Even if you’re affected, you can restore your drive with a firmware update. The bad news is, your SSD can still fail for a number of other reasons.
Putting Windows Update aside, let’s talk about some of the other real threats to your SSD and what you can do to protect it.
Check for SSD firmware updates
SSD manufacturers provide utilities that check for firmware updates and monitor your drive’s health. They’re worth installing—and it’s especially true since this recent issue is related to pre-release firmware updates.
It’s a good idea to check if your drive has the latest stable firmware installed. Firmware updates may fix bugs and prevent other problems with your SSD. Avoid any beta firmware update files you may see for download on your SSD manufacturer’s website.
First, you’ll need to figure out what SSD you have in your PC. One easy way to check is to open File Explorer, right-click your “C:” drive, click “Properties,” and then look under the “Hardware” tab. Or you could just download and launch CrystalDiskInfo. (It’s one of our favorite Windows apps for checking the health of your PC.)
Pick the right utility based on your SSD manufacturer: Samsung Magician, SanDisk Dashboard, and Crucial Storage Executive are some big ones. (Despite the name, SanDisk’s utility also handles firmware updates for Western Digital drives.) Perform a web search for the name of your laptop manufacturer and “SSD utility” to find the right utility app.
If you have a laptop, your laptop manufacturer’s software may handle firmware updates for the built-in drive, too. This isn’t guaranteed, though. You may need to run a utility created by the company that manufactured the laptop’s built-in SSD instead.
Chris Hoffman / Foundry
Since I have a Samsung SSD in my desktop PC, I downloaded Samsung Magician. Look for an “Update” option in the app and check if there are any available firmware updates for your drive. If so, make sure you get them installed sooner than later.
Ensure your SSD is properly cooled
SSDs can generate a lot of heat—especially PCIe 4.0 SSDs and PCIe 5.0 SSDs! Some SSDs come with heatsinks and some don’t, and you can also install an aftermarket heatsink on a standard M.2 SSD. But whether you need a cooler for your SSD really depends on the particular drive you have and the general thermal profile of your case.
CrystalDiskInfo is a great way to check your SSD’s temperature, health, and other statistics. If you’re curious about how well it’s cooling, you might also want to run a benchmark using CrystalDiskMark (a synthetic benchmark we use to test SSDs here at PCWorld), which can stress test your drive and monitor it during real-world operations like file transfers. But make sure you check its temperature while writing a lot of data to the drive, not just while reading data from it.
Chris Hoffman / Foundry
As a rule of thumb, it’s best to keep your SSD below 70 degrees Celsius. If you see the SSD getting hotter than that, that’s a sign it may be throttling itself and not performing at max potential in an effort to stay cool. The exact temperature you need to watch out for depends on your drive—look up its specs in the manual to find its rated operating temperatures. If it’s too hot, look into improving the airflow in your PC’s case and/or installing a heatsink on your SSD.
Don’t completely fill the drive
Solid-state drives wear down faster when they’re near maximum capacity. That means if your SSD has been at 95% capacity for a long time without much breathing space, it has likely worn down more than necessary.
This is less of an issue these days thanks to overprovisioning—many SSDs have a good chunk of “extra” storage—but it’s still a good idea to keep a decent amount of free space on your SSD.
Nor Gal / Shutterstock.com
For utmost longevity, you should aim to keep your SSD below 80% capacity whenever you can. One added bonus here is that SSD write operations are also faster when the drive is less full, so keeping a lot of free space can help boost your drive’s overall performance.
Don’t cheap out on your SSD
Not all SSDs are made equal. They differ in capacities and write speeds, and some SSDs are rated for more intensive write cycles, which means some drives wear out faster than others.
For consumer-grade SSDs, the biggest difference is TLC (Triple-Level Cell) vs. QLC (Quad-Level Cell) flash memory. Drives with TLC storage have a higher TBW (terabytes written) rating, meaning they can perform more writes before the flash memory cells wear out. The trade-off is that QLC drives tend to be cheaper, for obvious reasons.
Mark Hachman / IDG
A QLC drive is fine for light PC use, but a TLC drive will hold up better if you’re doing a lot of writing to the drive. For example, a 1TB QLC drive may have a 220 TBW rating while a 1TB TLC drive might have a 600 TBW rating. The exact numbers will depend on the individual drives.
If you’re a high-demand PC user—whether you’re downloading huge PC games, editing big media files, or performing any other kind of work that involves regularly writing a lot of data to the drive—you’ll get more mileage out of a TLC drive. The next time you buy a drive, check out our recommendations for the best SSDs for all budgets.
Just in case: Back up your files
Everything breaks eventually. While a modern SSD doesn’t have the fragile moving parts that made traditional mechanical hard drives vulnerable to failure, it can still break down.
You may turn on your PC one day only to find your SSD has failed due to a hardware problem or electrical issue, even if its firmware is problem-free.
Aiseesoft
The only way to truly protect your data is to maintain backups. Back up locally, back up to the cloud, or both. But whatever you do, make regular backups so you aren’t caught off guard when your SSD fails.
One final ‘smart’ warning
Windows Update isn’t the main threat to your SSD. Firmware bugs, excessive heat, and write-related wear and tear are all problems you can avoid. Electrical issues and hardware failures are also possibilities. Keep on top of those and your SSD should last a while.
Note that some SSDs show a “health status” via something called a SMART early warning system, and you can view this using tools like your SSD manufacturer’s utility app or CrystalDiskInfo. But SMART isn’t foolproof. There’s no guarantee you’ll get an early warning when your SSD is on the brink of failure. An SSD could be showing “in good health” and still end up bricked and unbootable the next day.
Here’s the takeaway: a software bug probably won’t take out your SSD, and most SSD risks are things you can see coming and adequately protect yourself against. Ensure you’re using current stable firmware, keeping your drive cool, not filling it to the brim with data, and regularly backing up your files just in case. If you do all that, there’s a good chance your SSD will outlast most of your PC’s other components.
Subscribe to Chris Hoffman’s newsletter, The Windows Readme, for more real-world PC advice from a real human.
© 2025 PC World 10:45pm 
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