How do you work on the bottom side of that board? The height of the components would interfere with the rod/clamp.
I said that the second photo was an extreme example, just to give a visual cue of scale (I was silly to include it
). Actually it is quite useful for holding items like that for testing, more stable than just sitting them on the bench.
The holder will happily support a single eurocard (100x160mm) at convenient soldering and microscope height, and will still go down to about 20mm square. Yes the middle clamp rod is higher, with about 5mm clearance, but that is still plenty for dip packages and most passives / actives. It's normally easy to find a path across a board that's clear of tall components to accommodate it. I could have fabricated taller jaws if I'd wanted, but I was concentrating on up scaling the (mostly useful) phone pcb holder to decent sized boards.
Still a decent sized holder that fits my need for microscope use and came in at about £10-15 (I could have scrimped on the stainless if I'd wanted to get it lower).