By Mark Lukach and Nathan Edwards This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer's guide to the best technology. Read the full article here. Three years ago, The Wirecutter was the first publication to pit all of the major standing desks against one another in a head-to-head test. After spending hundreds of hours testing 13 desks over the years, we can say that the Ergo Depot Jarvis Bamboo (configured with a 60-inch bamboo desktop, cable management, and the handset upgrade) is the best standing desk for most people. It's as reliable as desks costing more than $1,500, but it provides more stability, sells for half the price, and comes with a seven-year warranty that eclipses the one- to five-year policies its competitors offer. We also recommend getting our pick for the best standing-desk mat, which will provide support for your feet and relieve pressure on your heels, back, legs, neck, and shoulders to help you stand longer and mitigate injury risks.Who should buy this and whyIf you have a desk job, making sure you move around during the day and alternate between sitting and standing can help keep you healthy and injury-free.
(But if you're reading this, you probably already knew that.) You can find a staggering amount of convincing research about the perils of sitting, though as more data comes in, it's beginning to look like the problem isn't sitting per se, but the opportunity cost of sitting, namely a lack of physical exercise (standing all day isn't any better for you).You should consider an adjustable standing desk if you spend most of your day working at a desk—especially if you have some control over what kind of desk you work at, and particularly if you work from home, as a growing number of people do.Before you buy it, try itWe're big believers in starting cheap: One of our testers worked at his kitchen counter for a year before he bought anything. You could also stack boxes or books on your desk so that you can give it a shot—just make sure the ergonomics are right.You can easily piece together a makeshift standing desk, like Colin Nederkoorn's $20 IKEA hack, the Standesk 2200. Mat Honan, BuzzFeed's Silicon Valley bureau chief, built one at his office when he worked at WIRED.
"I think I may have been the first person at WIRED to build one, and now there are eight people at the office who have one, too," Honan told us. "It's cheap and easy and it looks good."What to do if you have a laptopWhether you're sitting or standing, the ergonomics of a laptop are awful. The screen is right by the keyboard, rather than up at eye level, so either your hands are in the wrong place or your neck is at the wrong angle. If you work at a laptop, get a stand to raise the screen to eye level, and purchase a separate keyboard and mouse so that your forearms are parallel to the floor; otherwise you're going to end up with neck or wrist issues. If you use the IKEA hack linked above, put your keyboard and mouse on the lower shelf and your laptop on the top one. For more options, check out our full guide.How we picked and testedWe tested the Chairigami (left) and VARIDESK (right) standing desks, among eleven others. Photo: Mark Lukach After deciding to focus primarily on electronic adjustable desks (thanks to their positive effect on your long-term health, as well as their popularity, reliability, and cost-effectiveness), we brought it in a total of 13 standing desks for testing.
Testing began as soon as the packages arrived. Before using the desks, we factored in how long it took to arrive, how many boxes it came in, and ease of assembly. One of our testers set up desks in his garage on concrete and also on a piece of carpeting, to best emulate most offices. He tried to work at each desk for several hours a day over the course of a week, and varied the height multiple times each hour to see how consistently responsive each desk was. He also paid attention to the subjective category of aesthetics, which in the world of furniture clearly matters.Our pickThe Ergo Depot Jarvis is a great (and great-looking) desk for the money. Photo: Kevin Purdy The Ergo Depot Jarvis Bamboo has all the essential features of a great standing desk you'd expect to cost more than $1,500, but for about half that. It has the most stable frame of any desk we've tested because Ergo Depot redesigned the frame so that the larger, heavier end of the lifting column is on the bottom—most desks using the original design have the opposite arrangement.
This results in minimal wobble, even when fully extended up to 50 inches (which includes the height of the desktop itself). That's high enough to fit people as tall as 6'7" or so—whereas most desks top out at either 45 or 48 inches.The height adjustment is controlled by a wired remote that has four presets; that means you can customize ideal sitting and standing heights for up to two people. It's driven by a reliable electrical motor that can raise or lower at 1.3 inches per second (in line with other desks in this price range). Additionally, Ergo Depot also offers an array of functional, unpretentious accessories, like a wire-management bundle that contains a six-outlet power strip, a raceway for cable organization, and a bunch of zip ties (and mount points for those zip ties). The desk comes with a seven-year warranty and ships quickly. And if you already have a desktop you like, you can buy the frame by itself—it adjusts to work with desktops of many different sizes.For converting your existing desk04 - For converting your existing deskWirecutter editor Zhao uses this desk at home.
Photo: Michael Zhao If you already have a desk that you like and you don't want to commit to a full-size sit/stand desk, consider the Ergo Desktop Kangaroo Pro Junior. It sits on top of your existing desk and converts from sitting to standing position in seconds without electricity. Instead of motors, the Kangaroo uses pneumatic springs to lift its work surface, and you lower it by pushing it down manually. It's much lighter and less bulky than other conversion options like those from VARIDESK, and you can easily move it around your desk if you need to.This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here. Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber Maintaining Concordance as Seated Postures Change Part of the Thrive Portfolio See how this product can contribute to your environmental goals. Envelop desk and Setu chair receive Interior Design magazine's Best of Year product awards. What's In It For You The Eyes Always WinWhy not your desk, too?
Named for the flexible work surface that slides to envelop you as you work, Envelop is the first desk designed to help you, your chair, your work surface, and your technology work in harmony. Available with a standard pin-height adjustment or sit-to-stand height adjustable legs, it can support a full range of healthy seated and standing postures. Heavy computer use can be hard on the body. Even in an ergonomic task chair, you may hunch, crouch, or lean in as your body moves to help your eyes focus on the monitor—leading to back and neck pain, eyestrain, and fatigue. Envelop's unique seven-degree tilt helps you maintain the optimal distance and angle from your monitor. It also moves your keyboard, pointing devices, and screen along with you every time you move, keeping your eyes focused and your body aligned in a variety of healthy, comfortable postures. The sliding, flexible support surface (or “infield”) of this desk actually envelops you as you work, moving forward seven inches and pivoting down seven degrees to provide continuous flexible support for your forearms and wrists.
The soft, resilient surface reduces pressure while eliminating awkward wrist positions. Pair it with an ergonomic chair with a wide range of motion to provide healthy support through a wide range of seated postures—whatever is most comfortable for you. Envelop’s clean, harmonious design fits wherever you need it: as a freestanding desk at home, in an office, or within a panel system. It’s also built to fit you, with a body pocket designed to accommodate from the fifth to 98th percentile of women and men, according to anthropomorphic data. Pin-height or electric sit-to-stand height adjustable legs expand the applications even farther. The late Bill Stumpf and his design partner, Jeff Weber, have been responsible for many of the imaginative leaps that have produced our most innovative solutions. Bill designed the first ergonomic task chair, Ergon, introduced in 1974, and the Aeron chair. Jeff designed the Caper chair. Together, they designed Embody, the first health-positive task chair.
Embody began with Bill's and Jeff's awareness of an unsolved problem: the lack of physical harmony between us and our computers. They thought of the small universe that encapsulates the office worker—the "envelope"—as consisting of three parts: chair, surface, surround. While working on their radical idea that a chair could do more than just minimize the negative effects of sitting and could actually have positive effects on the seated body, they became acutely aware of the problem of the static surface. They wondered why people—even when sitting in the best ergonomic task chairs—still had a tendency to hunch over "like cockroaches," as Bill liked to say. He and Jeff realized that, because the surface has always been disconnected from the chair and the person who sits in it, the different postures the person assumes continuously throughout the day disrupt the relationship between the face plane and the computer plane. The result was neck and shoulder strain and pain. As they worked to develop the Embody chair, they began to rethink the whole concept of a desk.