Please note, this is a summary of a review posted on reviews.com.
Hello fellow work from home friends!
First, I apologize for my lack of presence lately. As some of you may know, my husband and I recently bought our first house, and I’ve been very busy between getting moved in and getting everything set up. I’ve also been trying to ramp up my freelance writing business – I’ve been re-designing my business website, ericalynnmartin.com, and adding a few things to it to try to make it more user-friendly for my potential clients. I’m back though, and going to try to post at least once a week on this site.
Today I want to talk to you about something that I think is very important – fitness. Many of us who work from home sit in front of our computers. We may not be able to get out and walk while we’re working, but we can occasionally stand up if we’re using a standing desk. There are many different standing desks out there, so picking the best one can be difficult. The good folks at reviews.com have done the work for us though and found a few standing desks that they like. Here’s a summary of the information they posted on their website:
The Best Standing Desk Overall:
Fully’s Jarvis Standing Desk
This incredibly sturdy and surprisingly elegant adjustable desk looks more like furniture than an office fixture. It has great range — suitable for people up to 6 feet 7 inches tall — and you can customize it to your exact specifications. We’re partial to the bamboo top, but there are more than 12 other styles to choose from, along with add-on accessories like wheels, grommets, cable management, and more. Our only warning: those add-ons can add up quick, suddenly taking a $500 desk closer to the $1,000 range.
The Runner Up:
The Uplift Height Adjustable Sit Stand Desk
This desk was a close second (it’s just so similar to the Jarvis, how could it not?). It’s wobblier than the Jarvis at its max height, so if you’re taller than average, we don’t recommend it. That said, its motor is a bit quieter, and comes with an equally expansive range of desktop options, customizations, and add-ons. At the end you’ll have a similar price tag to the Jarvis — but also get a free gel-foam standing mat as an added perk.
Honorable Mention:
The UpDesk Ultra UpWrite
The UpDesk Ultra UpWrite was our biggest surprise. We wrote it off as too gimmicky at first — come on, a $889 white board for a desk? But in practice, we found it fun and inspiring to doodle, jot notes, and make lists right on the desktop. The fact that it was the absolute quietest desk out of all nine we tested didn’t hurt either.
This desk was our biggest surprise. We wrote it off as too gimmicky at first — come on, a $889 white board for a desk? But in practice, we found it fun and inspiring to doodle, jot notes, and make lists right on the desktop. The fact that it was the absolute quietest desk out of all nine we tested didn’t hurt either.
The Process They Used to Find the Best Standing Desk
We started by looking at 67 adjustable-height desks — ones that we could adapt from sitting to standing and back again with either an electric motor, hydraulic lever, or manual crank. We didn’t look at fixed-height desks, which are designed to set and forget in one standing position, or conversion desks, which you place on top of your existing workspace and raise to accommodate standing (a simple, economical solution, but not really a desk desk).
To start narrowing the pool, we checked out max height.
And looked for great warranties.
A standing desk can be a major expense, especially for companies looking to furnish their offices — one desk is typically between $500 and $1,500, but a one-of-a-kind desk from Uplift’s Artisan series is nearly $4,000. We nixed any that didn’t offer a frame and electronics warranty of at least five years. (Our research showed an average frame warranty of 5.5 years, and an average electronics warranty of 4.5 years.)
More than half the brands we evaluated offer warranties of at least five years, with many extending up to 10. The Mayline VariTask, for instance, offers a lifetime warranty on the frame, and 10 years on its electronics. The Ikea Bekant warranty covers 10 years, for both the frame and electronics. Uplift and Jarvis offer the next best warranties, covering seven years for frame and electronics on a wide range of models.
Then we put them to the test.
We made sure the desks were easy to assemble.
We factored in shipping: how quickly the desks arrived, and in how many boxes, as well as ease of assembly. The hands-down winner went to the UpDesk Ultra UpWrite, which took just 40 minutes to put together, beating even the Ikea Bekant by five minutes.
The NewHeights Elegante took by far the longest, mostly because we had to stop mid-assembly to go buy a power drill — the only desk that required one. After nearly two hours, the Elegante was assembled, but not exactly perfectly: some of the screws’ grooves were filled with a mysterious glue, making them impossible to use. We ended up frustrated, with a wobblier desk than we should have. For a starting price of nearly $1,400, these inconveniences smarted more than they otherwise might have.
And we took each desk for a test drive.
Once the desks were assembled, we filled cups of coffee and water to brimming, and set about testing wobble factor, along with mode and convenience of conversion — speed, noise, and smoothness.
At this stage, we immediately crossed off the NextDesk: Its motor was by far the noisiest, and the desk wobbled during conversion. Adjusting this one from sitting to standing several times per hour — as experts recommend — is definitely annoying. Colleagues in our office looked up from their work because the noise distracted them, even with the office’s fan and background music.
I hope you’ve found this brief summary of the review.com article to be helpful. If you’d like to read the full review, which includes videos, more pictures, and a lot more information, click here:
http://www.reviews.com/standing-desk/
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