Uplift Standing Desk Review - April 2019 (updated June 2021)
After a couple of months of research (and some neck/back pain) we decided to pull the trigger on the Uplift Pheasantwood 60" x 30" stand up desk with the V2 Frame on March 4th, 2019. On Friday, April 12th, 2019 (almost 6 weeks later), it was delivered. The purchase of a new desk and the reorganization of an office that it spawns is...well...time consuming. In the end, it was totally worth it. You end up with less “stuff” and an organized workspace that resembles a kid on his or her very first job interview. Pristine.
The desk, the V2 frame, the E7 Anti-Fatigue Mat and the other extras arrived in 6 different boxes. The desktop itself was in a well-packaged, foam-covered, cardboard wrapped box, weighing 100lbs. The other 5 boxes contained things like the modesty panel which hangs from the back of the desk. In a commercial setting, it’s a way of giving some privacy to those seated at the desk. For a home office, it’s more of a tidying up of the back of the desk. We also picked up the advanced cable management kit which has a long plastic, U-shaped enclosure that screws to the bottom of the desk. It’s a perfect fit for the power strip and other chargers/power supplies that you’re looking to tuck away under the desk. The biggest adjustment we had was building out the cable management as a moving desk vs something that’s always stationary. The key, we found, was to secure cables to things that moved when the desk was moved to its standing height (and back down to sitting height).
The Pheasantwood surface itself is extremely smooth. We considered a reclaimed wood desktop but decided to go with something with a more consistent hardwood surface. One of the other things we loved about the Pheasantwood desktop was the front edge. We ordered the barkline front edge and while it’s known to not be a natural cut, it is still pretty gorgeous. Time will tell how that stands up. The desk itself does appear to be prone to scuffs/indentations, if you’re not careful. We noticed that after we unmounted one of the monitor arms from the back edge of the desk. There were some marks from it simply being installed. There were also a couple of minor scratches along one edge of the desk right out of the box but I think a wood filler pen will solve that pretty quickly. The desk itself is very sturdy. There is some minor shake at the standup setting of 45.9” but we’re not sure how you could NOT have some shake at that height plus 3 monitors (2 of which are 12-18” off of the desk on the arms).
Aside from the hour or so in assembly time the other thing that chewed up most of our weekend was going from 3 drawers on our old Thomasville Mission Oak desk to one small drawer on the Uplift desk. What we found was that 15 years of working at the same desk had made the 3 drawers a depository for anything on the desk surface that we didn’t want to see or use anymore. Over the course of 15 years, that was a lot of pens, business cards, old BlackBerrys, stickers, and quite a few things we simply didn’t need.
We opted for the upgraded keypad. It has 4 memory positions but we only really see the need for 3 in a home office environment. We have ours set to 27.8” at the lower end (the sitting position) and 45.9” at the higher end (the standing position). The movement from one position to another is quiet, smooth and has a tapering toward the end of each range. Doesn’t seem overly important but you wouldn’t want a hard “start stop” for a desk moving up and down, especially with 3 monitors on it.
We have a 27” iMac flanked by two 24” Dell UltraSharp monitors. We picked up two Vivo gas spring monitor arms for the Dells, and they are working out great. We also added two grommets in our Uplift desk and installed one of the monitor arms through the grommet and the other on the right wide side of the desk (this makes the install of the modesty panel much cleaner on the back of the desk).
We also picked up two monitor stands - one to lift up the iMac just a bit in the center of the desk and the other to get our 2 OWC Thunderbay 16TB and 20TB disk arrays and UPS off of the ground. Our old desk had a crossbar that held these so we knew we wanted them elevated for better air circulation.
After a few days of using our desk, we are definitely seeing more movement in our daily routine. It’s almost refreshing to hit the #2 button, stand up and stretch and resume our work. All in all, we’d definitely recommend the Uplift Standing Desk.
UPDATE: Less than 2 years after this purchase, the Pheasantwood surface started to show something odd with the finish. It was almost as if a shell coating had gone bad. It wasn't peeling off but you can clearly see that there's a problem. Uplift's response was "After speaking with a manager, I would be able to send you a repair kit that has soft steel wool that may be able to brush out some of the finish that is coming up on the desk." and "
Unfortunately, upon further review, this is not covered by warranty."
This was given as an option BEFORE they ever saw a picture of the issue. This desk is in my home office, away from extreme temperatures, never has liquids on the surface, no spills, no heat from food....nothing that would cause this from our end. I expected a little more from them.
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