A laptop sitting flat on a desk puts its screen roughly 6 inches below eye level for most people, which means constantly tilting your neck down. A stand's entire job is to remove that tilt.
Why height matters
Raising a 13–16" laptop screen by 4–6 inches brings the top third of the display closer to eye level, which is the ergonomic guidance behind most standing desk and monitor arm setups. The tradeoff is that your laptop's built-in keyboard becomes too high to type on comfortably — which is why a stand works best paired with an external keyboard and mouse.
Airflow
Laptops draw air in from underneath. Sitting flat on a desk (especially on a fabric surface) restricts that intake, which is part of why laptops run hotter and fans spin up faster on a soft surface than on an open stand.
Desk space
A stand also frees the space under the screen entirely — a notebook, a phone, or nothing at all. Our Forge Slim-Slot Vertical Laptop Dock takes the opposite approach: it stands the laptop on edge instead, so it takes up almost no desk footprint at all.