If you're a long-time reader of Gear Patrol, you're likely familiar with Craighill. The Brooklyn-based company makes a wide range of products — from EDC items (like metal pens, money clips, key rings and bracelets) to desktop accessories (like valet trays, eyeglass stands and bookends) — that are both beautifully designed and made of high-end materials.
Now the company has brought that same ethos to its first-ever headphone stand, simply called the Craighill Headphone Stand. It costs $88, and is available now.
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When compared to other headphone stands, the Craighill Headphone Stand is pretty minimalist. "It's really just two components," explained Hunter Craighill, one of the co-founders of the company. "It's just a steel bar with four bends and then a molded silicone part that's doing double duty of holding the end of the steel bars and delicately cradling your headphones." It also has four rubberized feet on the bottom to prevent it from sliding and scratching your desk.
The standout feature of the Craighill Headphone Stand is, at least in my opinion, its silicone cradle. It's perfectly shaped to hold a pair of headphones, but it's also soft yet feels far from cheap. "We wanted to create something as artfully and efficiently as possible," explained Craighill. "So we decided on the silicone molded cradle as the right material. I think it feels nice to be putting your expensive things on this very delicate and soft surface that feels kind of pillowy."
After deciding on the silicone material of the cradle, Craighill said that they refined its shape many times over to make sure it was perfect. "We would do prints on our 3D printer and test them on everybody's headphones in the office. We'd go to the audio store to test them. We'd go to the Apple store to test them on the AirPods Max. And then we'd refine it and do the same thing [again]."
The Craighill Headphone Stand is made of stainless steel like many of the company's other products. It's really durable and still like metal; it's pretty heavy (weighing just over a pound) and typically feels cold to the touch. Finally, it has a matte black PVD coating. (At launch, it's only available in this one finish.)
As far as price, the Craighill Headphone Stand costs $88. It's expensive but not crazy expensive given the larger landscape of headphone stands. (For context, one of our favorite minimalist headphone stands, the Master & Dynamic Headphone Stand, has an even simpler design and still demands a hefty $69.) And if you have headphones that cost $300+, $400+ or $500+, you're probably more than willing to give them a nice perch to sit on when they're not being used.
"We do a lot of things in the desk space and I think a problem that we found was that we have nice headphones and [we] don't have a good place to put them," said Craighill. "You spend a lot of money on these expensive [headphones] and then they end up sitting on the edge of your keyboard, or over the top of your screen, or you put them back in their travel case which seems weird. It only seems right to have a good home to keep them safe and also show them off."
