SetupReadyBeta

Version history

SetupReady is built in the open. Every release is listed here, newest first — what was added, what changed, and what we fixed.

Where SetupReady is today

SetupReady turns a short quiz into a complete desk setup: it works out the kind of setup that fits how you work, splits your budget across every part of the desk, and picks specific products for each one. Every recommendation is a real, currently-available product with a price we check daily — not a category placeholder.

Products
724
Categories
19
Brands
294
Price checks
Daily

The quiz and every recommendation are free, and always will be. Paid tiers for people who iterate on their setup are coming after beta.

v1.2 — Meet Specs (beta)

Current

A desk-setup assistant you can talk to. Describe the setup you want, or show it a photo of one you like, and Specs builds it from the catalog at today’s prices — then helps you tweak it in plain English. Free during the beta with a SetupReady account.

Added

  • Specs at /specs: three ways in — describe the setup in a sentence, upload a photo of a setup you like, or just ask a gear question. Every product it recommends comes from the same engine and catalog as the quiz; it never invents products or prices.
  • “Ask Specs” on every results page: ask why a pick was made, or say “cheaper keyboard”, “drop the webcam” or “make it $1,500” and it changes the build for you — with alternates named so you can switch again.
  • Photo builds say how sure they are about each item they saw and match to the closest products we carry, rather than pretending to identify the exact model. Photos are resized on your device, read once, and not stored.
  • A look vocabulary for the whole catalog — colour and style tags on nearly every product — so “all white and minimal” or “warm wood” means something to the engine, not just to the assistant.
  • Beta limits per person, every 24 hours: 2 photo builds, 5 prompt builds and 10 chat messages. The quiz is always unlimited.

Changed

  • The Studio assistant became Specs and opened to everyone for the beta; old links redirect.
  • Colour and style preferences steer picks without overriding what you asked for — a request for a white ultrawide gets an ultrawide, in white where one exists.
  • A brand or feature lock no longer leaves a slot without alternates: when the locked pool is thin, the alternates come from the rest of the category.
  • The quiz’s “pick up to two priorities” is now enforced.

Fixed

  • The theme toggle showed the wrong state for visitors who had chosen light mode.
  • The results panel no longer covers the site navigation while scrolling.
  • Saved setups counted slots you had removed on purpose as “missing products”.
  • Pro and Studio builds could briefly show the free engine’s picks and a phantom “Reset” before the tier loaded.
  • Guide pages had a doubled “— SetupReady” title.
  • The nightly catalog refresh had stopped carrying the out-of-stock signal since late July; products that Amazon shows as unbuyable for three nights are hidden from recommendations again, and back-in-stock items return.

v1.1 — The best monitor at every price

A new kind of page: one honest pick at each of six budgets, chosen by the recommendation engine against live prices — built for people who want one great monitor, not a whole setup.

Added

  • Best monitor at every price — six budget tiers from $100 to $2,000, each with a top pick and two alternates, and a switch to see picks for gaming, creative work, office use, or a bit of everything.
  • The picks are computed by the same engine that builds full setups, against prices that refresh daily — so the page corrects itself as the market moves, instead of aging like a listicle.
  • Anything that goes out of stock or gets delisted drops off the page automatically.

Changed

  • The $1,000 tier became $1,200, so the 32-inch 4K 240Hz OLED class — which lives between $850 and $1,200 — sits in one tier instead of splitting awkwardly across two.

Fixed

  • Every monitor shown under a price cap now actually costs less than that cap.
  • Budget tiers are true price bands: each tier only shows monitors priced above the previous tier, so climbing always shows new gear and cheap picks can’t pad an expensive tier.
  • The featured pick in each tier now targets the top of its price band — at least three-quarters of the tier when the catalog allows it — so “under $2,000” leads with a near-$2,000 panel and “under $350” with a near-$350 one, without ever promoting a worse-fitting monitor just because it costs more.
  • The Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 57" was mistagged as an office monitor and could never appear in gaming recommendations. Corrected — it now anchors the top gaming tier.

v1.0.1 — Recommendations you can actually buy

A deep audit of the monitor category turned up scoring quirks and stale product data that affected picks across the whole catalog. All of it is fixed, and the engine no longer recommends anything that is sitting out of stock.

Fixed

  • Products that have been out of stock for several days in a row are no longer recommended. They come back automatically the moment the listing restocks — unlike delisted products, which stay out until re-verified.
  • Fast monitors that carried an exact refresh-rate label instead of the generic speed tag were invisible to the speed scoring and lost out to slower panels. Speed, response time, size, and curvature tags are now derived from each monitor’s verified spec sheet, so equivalent panels compete on equal footing.
  • A monitor with a built-in KVM switch was scored down for having one — a penalty meant to keep switch boxes from displacing docking stations. Monitors are no longer punished for the feature.
  • “Good deal” detection no longer fires on price history distorted by a stock-out, which previously made scarce products look like bargains.
  • A product with a genuinely poor rating across only a handful of reviews could slip past the quality floor on statistics alone. The floor now catches very low ratings even on small samples.

Changed

  • Around two dozen monitor records whose tags, tier, or description still reflected a predecessor model now describe the product actually being sold.
  • Spec sheets sourced from anywhere other than the manufacturer’s own documentation are now flagged internally for re-verification, and future spec imports check the source automatically.

v1.0 — Public beta

The first public release. The recommendation engine, the full catalog, and the tools for shaping a build are all live and free to use.

Build your setup

  • A short quiz maps how you work, your aesthetic, and your budget onto one of five setup styles — gaming, creative, productivity, hybrid, or minimalist.
  • Your budget is split across every part of the desk, then rebalanced: money left over from a cheap pick flows to the parts that can still be improved.
  • Swap any product for an alternative and the total, the budget bar, and your setup style update live.
  • Remove any category you do not need, and add extras from “Beyond your core setup” that were not part of the original build.
  • Share a link to your exact build, or reopen the quiz with all your answers still filled in.

Browse without the quiz

  • Browse any category on its own — every product we carry, filtered by budget and sorted by price, rating, or our own ranking.
  • Spec guides for 15 product types explain, in plain language, which numbers on a spec sheet actually matter.
  • Example builds at three budgets for each of the five setup styles, with the quiz answers behind them shown.

The catalog

  • Every product is checked daily for price, availability, and whether the listing still exists. Anything delisted stops being recommended.
  • Ratings and review counts come from real review history, not editorial guesses, and a product with a genuinely poor rating is kept out of recommendations entirely.
  • Almost every product carries a spec sheet verified against the manufacturer’s own documentation rather than copied from a retail listing.

Accounts

  • Sign in with Google to save setups and come back to them later.
  • Beta accounts can save up to three setups.

v0.9 — Spec sheets and example builds

The catalog stopped relying on retail listing copy, and the homepage started showing real builds instead of describing them.

Added

  • Verified spec sheets across the catalog, sourced from manufacturer documentation.
  • Spec guides explaining how to read the numbers for each product type.
  • Example builds at $500, $1,500, and $3,500 for every setup style.
  • Single-category browsing for people who only need one part.

Changed

  • Dark mode became the default.
  • Product verification corrected around seventy listings to the model actually being sold.

v0.8 — Soft launch

SetupReady opened to its first testers as a free beta.

Added

  • Feedback from any page, so testers can report anything that looks wrong.
  • Terms of service and a privacy policy.
  • A “Beyond your core setup” section for gear that did not fit the main build.

v0.5 — A catalog worth trusting

The product data was rebuilt around verified listings rather than hand-entered records.

Changed

  • Every product was matched to a verified retail listing; anything that could not be verified was removed.
  • The catalog grew from a few hundred products to several hundred across nineteen categories.
  • Categories that need more than one product — audio, storage, power, cable management — now recommend a complementary set rather than a single item.

v0.2 — Accounts and saved setups

Setups stopped disappearing when you closed the tab.

Added

  • Sign-in, saved setups, and an account page.
  • The first paid-tier tools: unlimited alternatives, brand and feature locks, a budget rebalancer, and an upgrade finder.

v0.1 — First working engine

The original prototype: a quiz, a scoring engine, and a results page you could actually change.

Added

  • The three-layer recommendation engine — setup styles, category budgets, and scored products.
  • Budget redistribution, so unspent money moves to where it helps.
  • An interactive results page with live totals and swappable picks.

Something look wrong?

SetupReady is in beta, and the fastest way it improves is people telling us what missed.

Build your setup