Standing desks are the new craze and with more people working from home due to the Covid pandemic, we are looking at ways of making working from home as comfortable as it can be, and for the health-conscious, It’s not just about the comfortability, but also ways to still stay healthy as it’s easy to ignore when in the comfort of your home. One of the ways people are staying productive is by the way of standing or height-adjustable desks. Sitting down for too long at your desk can have negative side effects, so having the option to stand when you need to without moving your workstation is an added bonus. For this review, we have one of the most popular height-adjustable desks, the Flexispot E7 motorised desk.
What is it?
The Flexispot E7 is a midrange to a heavy-duty motorised desk that allows you to sit and use your workstation and at the touch of a button, you can stand up, carrying on working on your project. It has a powerful motor with plenty of torque to push all your equipment up or down with ease, for example, I have two Samsung monitors, my Mac Mini M1, two speaker monitors, and my storage system on there every day with no issues at all. The Flexispot E7 can rise up to a maximum of 123cm and 58cm at its lowest which is actually ridiculously low and I can’t imagine anyone actually working comfortably in this position. With ample height, it’s suitable for tall humans, and with the ability to lift up to 125kg, you can probably sit on it and get lifted comfortably.
The E7 will cost you around £399 just for the legs alone, then you have to select which worktop you’d like from the variety of options available. I went for the all-black top and white legs, and it’s pretty spacious but a fingerprint magnet. Selling the legs and top separately is costly but offers the option to have your worktop so for example, you could upcycle a piece of old furniture and create your own. The legs and can be width-adjusted, so you can create a top that’s as wide as it allows.
Delivery and Installation
The E7 comes neatly packaged and in my case, the legs and the worktop came separately, but the reason why I’ve included this section is that one thing I wasn’t aware of is like unlike most Ikea flat-packed items, this arrives just like any other package and you get no assistance and while it’s super easy to install, it’s very heavy to carry and may require two people because the legs have the motor’s built-in, so bear this in mind.
It comes with a five-year warranty which covers the frame, motor and there’s a separate three-year warranty for the control panel. Don’t be confused when you see a different brand name on the control panel.
Usability
After around two months with the E7 with daily use, I can tell you that it’s one of the best height-adjustable desks out there. The Sanodesk control panel has seven buttons and a display panel that displays the height and the motor is not noisy, although it’s audible. On the control panel itself, you have four programmable presets available so you can set “1” to your own custom height and the same with “2” then set the stand and sit icons to something else or you can simply press the up and down buttons manually until you’re content.
The M button is useful for setting up the preset memory and to also lock the buttons to prevent accidental button press. For such a simple gadget, Flexipot or Sanodesk thought about safety too, so if you press the arrows by accident or you have kids around playing with it, it can recognise when it hits an obstacle and it would prevent the desk from moving. It doesn’t use any sensors for this feature, but enough resistance and it knows to freeze operation.
Is it worth it?
The Flexispot E7 is absolutely worth the purchase if you’re committed to working from home. While there are suggestions this is good for your health, I haven’t seen any scientific or concrete research to back this up and the articles I’ve read on this, aren’t really conclusive for this to be the sole reason to buy a height-adjustable desk, but one thing it does do is make you more aware and productive. It makes you more aware of your posture, that you have sat down for too long to take a break, and also great for making sure you are using your computer with the correct posture. It takes some getting used to also because, at times I forget that I have a standing desk, slipping back into my old ways once the novelty wore off.
Side note: The desk was provided by Flexispot for this review and they had no input. As it’s a product I’d happily recommend, It’s worth mentioning that you can get up to 32% OFF Flash Deals from 24th May to 30th May with Flexispot, to celebrate its 5th-anniversary sale. and you can get 15% off for other products site-wide directly from the Flexispot website.
