Do you sit and sit all day, slumped in your supposedly ergonomic chair, then creak and have to stretch when you get up again? That’s because you need to be standing during the day! Enter the modern invention of The Standing Desk.
I review the Autonomous SmartDesk 2, one of the nicest and well made standing desks in the market…
Not only have I not had an office desk for many years, I haven’t even had an office for years. Instead, I do what a lot of so-called digital nomads do and work at coffee shops or, sometimes, home workers do and grab a chair at the dinner table. Work well for an hour or so, but I often have to get up and stretch because the human body wasn’t really designed to be stuck in one position for hour after hour after hour.
That’s why standing desks have really caught on in many work communities, desks that are designed either at the optimal height for when you’re standing or have a mechanism that let you raise a typical desk so that you can stand and work in front of it. Lots of hacks, lots of goofy solutions with boxes and expanding computer stands, but really, what Autonomous offers with its second generation SmartDesk 2 is far, far superior and really will change how comfortable and productive you are, day in and day out.
Let’s start with a photo of the Bamboo SmartDesk 2 standing desk with Ergo Desktop surface that the company sent along for us to review:
As you can clearly see, it’s a lovely desk, with a smooth finish, quite strong (and heavy) and with plenty of space even with the 58-inch wide Ergo surface for a computer, an iPad (I’m using as a TV) and plenty of space to spread out notes, a book or even another tablet or smartphone. The “ergo” desk surface offers the cutout in the front which looks a bit weird, but is really convenient, particularly when standing. There are six different surface shapes, including one that’s almost two feet wider if you really need lots of space.
The lower cost version of the SmartDesk 2 has the height adjustment motor in one leg and uses a bar to raise or lower the other leg in parallel. The business version – what I reviewed – has two motors, one in each leg, and the result is a table that raises and lowers quickly and super smoothly, as shown in my video review:
It’s really terrific in use, and the control panel offers four programmable presets, making it easy to adjust it to your perfect sitting and standing height:
Assembly was a bit tricky because the informational videos were focused on the lower end unit with the single motor, but once we decided to skip the instructions and just assemble it as made sense, we proceeded along at a good clip and two of us had it from box to fully assembled in 30 minutes or so.
The end result is really fantastic. The SmartDesk 2 has changed where and how I work, quite honestly, and the ability to stand up and even lean on the desk (it’s that stable and strong) is great, even if I decide after just a few minutes I want to sit down again to focus more on what I’m doing. If you’ve never tried a standing desk, I strongly recommend you check one out, and if you do, spring for one that has a motorized lift mechanism. It’s really worth it.
Autonomous SmartDesk 2 standing desk. Prices starting at $299. As reviewed: $549.
Disclosure: Autonomous sent us a desk for the purposes of this review. Which was really nice of ’em!