To be honest I initially had a bit of trouble getting the arm hydraulics to work and almost wanted to return the product until I came across instructions for a similar arm, in which it was described how to increase and decrease hydraulic pressure. After I finally put some effort into turning the hex screw in the right direction, the hand immediately came to life and seemed to be able to hold anything. Luckily, I'm just installing an old 25-inch widescreen monitor that's maybe 10 pounds (15 pounds max) so I don't need to test it, but I'm pretty sure I'll keep the monitor if I'm going to scale it up anytime soon without much effort.