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The best standing desk converters
By Kevin Purdy This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Read the full guide to standing desk converters. If you want to incorporate standing into your work routine but a full-sized adjustable standing desk isn't an option, the Kangaroo Pro Junior is the next best thing. After building, testing, and comparing 15 standing desk converters, we found our pick of more than five years offers the most stable, ergonomic, and adjustable standing setup while taking up less room than most converters. All standing desk converters are an inherent compromise, an attempt to make one part of your non-moving desk move for your work. The Ergo Desktop Kangaroo Pro Junior makes the fewest ergonomic compromises of the converters we've tested without being too annoying to use. That's no small feat for this category, believe us. Being able to control the height of your monitor and keyboard tray separately makes the Kangaroo Pro Junior a better fit for more people. The monitor mount means your display is more stable and takes up less room than a monitor standing on a platform. And because you work on a flat, deep surface, rather than a narrow tray, you can use whatever combination of keyboard, mouse, and other tools best fits your work. The Kangaroo Pro Junior makes you do a little bit more work than some converters—turning knobs and gently lifting with your hands—but that pays off in ergonomically superior arm and neck angles. If you don't have a monitor you can mount to a VESA bracket or you want to use your laptop screen but still stand at your work, the VertDesk Standing Desk Converter is the best fallback option, and we mean that as a compliment. It's more stable than many other two-tier converters, especially its keyboard tray. It's smooth to raise and lower, it rises mostly straight up instead of lurching out like many converters, and it has some built-in cable routing that make it easier to create a good monitor setup. If you've got a sizable desk to dedicate to standing (that you don't want to trade out), and you know you won't need to switch out your setup for other work, the E7 by Uplift gives you the most convenient standing setup short of buying a standing desk. It weighs nearly 100 pounds and takes up 26 inches of desk depth (nearly 40 with an overhanging keyboard tray), but it's quicker and quieter than other electric converters we tested, looks better than most converters with a bamboo or rubberwood desktop options, and lets you use either a lowered keyboard tray or a flat work surface. If you only use your laptop to work and want to start standing, the Cora gives you a lower-cost, less-permanent way to do so. Using your laptop alone whether sitting or standing isn't a great ergonomic setup, and the Cora cannot fit a monitor. But it also works great with a laptop on a stand, a small keyboard, and a small mouse, making your sitting and standing angles ergonomically better, if not ideal. It's also the quietest, easiest to adjust, and best-looking laptop riser we tested.
Herman Miller tries to cash in on our activity-tracking obsession
We already know that sitting all day damages our health, and plenty of companies have tried to do something about it. Now, furniture maker Herman Miller is getting in on the action with a line of smart furniture sensors called Live OS.
There's a standing desk and balance board for kids now
Given the increasing anxiety of what sitting is doing to our bodies, it was only a matter of time before someone began worrying about our nation's children. After seeing his son's classroom, FluidStance chief Joel Heath decided to build the UpGrade, a standing desk and balance board combo for school kids. Much like the adult version, it centers around a balance board that is claimed will help small ones be more active. As part of the project, the company has also made a height-adjustable desk that'll let three kids take a break from sitting at any one time.
Lian Li's first standing desk is also a computer
Lian Li is no stranger to building desks with computers crammed into them, but this is the first time it's playing to the standing desk crowd. After all, you can justify more of those late night raids if you're also standing up and, therefore, kinda exercising. Much like its predecessors, the DK-04 is a large chassis that'll let you build your dream water-cooled PC with support for eight expansion slots. It also has an electronically-controlled motor that'll let you push the table to heights between 67.5 and 116 centimeters. The other big change is to the underside of the chassis, which now tapers to provide bigger and better legroom than the originals. If this is the desk of your dreams, you can pick it up in Europe in early may for £1,269.99 and in the US for $1,499.
The best standing desks
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.
Stir now sells just the bases for its sit-stand desks
Every time we write about Stir's kinetic standing desks, we always point out how damn expensive the things are. In a world where you can buy a manually-operated standing desk from Ikea for a couple of bucks, spending three grand on a smart one can seem excessive. Thankfully, Stir knows this and is now offering a way for folks to just buy the legs without spending big on the top. The Base L1 is, as you can guess, a height-adjustable desk base that'll let you attach any topper of your choosing. Should you want to get in on the action, it'll set you back between $1,000 and $1,500 depending on what you can haggle with your local dealer. Plus, obviously, the price of a base on top.
Convert your tired table into a powered standing desk for $400
NextDesk has long offered standing desks, which are argued to have health benefits over regular desks that you sit at. Its latest product is a powered desktop solution that can "convert" your regular desk to a standing one.
The Altwork Station is an expensive marvel of desk engineering
Standing desks are all the rage in modern offices these days, thanks in large part to plenty of research that claims sitting all day is detrimental to your long-term health. And you can spend a lot of money finding the right one -- take the just-announced Altwork Station that goes up for pre-order today for $3,900. It's a tremendous amount of money, but the Altwork Station is far more than your average adjustable standing desk. It's a somewhat crazy but intriguing vision for giving users a totally customizable workstation, whether you want to sit, stand or even recline, and there's some very impressive engineering behind all this. As a product for the average consumer, it might not make sense -- but that doesn't detract from the five years of work that went into the Altwork Station.
Researchers say treadmill desks make you smarter
Every week, a group of scientists publish a study that arrives at a ker-azy, headline-grabbing conclusion. Unfortunately, it's easy to just report on these studies as if they were handed down as truth by St. Albert, the patron saint of scientists. That's why we should take this Canadian study, published in Computers in Human Behavior, with an obligatory pinch of salt. According to its conclusions, you see, people who work at a treadmill desk aren't only healthier, but are also significantly smarter.
Engadget Daily: the year's defining stories, the dangers of sitting, and more!
We're just about through with 2014, so it's the perfect time to take a look back at the defining moments of the past year. To help, we've rounded up some of the biggest stories of 2014. Click on the gallery below to find out what made the list, along with other stories that made headlines in the past 24 hours.
Why sitting will kill you (and what to do about it)
If you work anywhere in or around technology, chances are you've either witnessed or are a member of the standing-desk craze, the natural offshoot of the increasing medical research suggesting sitting in your Herman Miller Aeron chair will actually kill you faster than smoking. But standing's the tip of the iceberg. Treadmill desks, work-walking, whatever you want to call it -- more and more people aren't just standing while they work; they're clocking in 10 slow miles a day on the job. With treadmill desks popping up everywhere from home offices to the cube farms of Google to the open newsrooms of The New York Times, the definition of what it means to be "at work" is changing more than ever before.
Portable cardboard desk keeps you standing while you type
Many will tell you that it's unhealthy to sit in front of your computer for hours at a time, but you can't usually bring a standing desk with you to a remote studio or the park. However, you won't have to make do with chairs and laps now that Refold's cardboard standing desk is on the way. Think of it as origami office furniture -- so long as you're willing to lug about 14 pounds with you, you can set up a leg-friendly workstation in about two minutes. It's sturdy enough to handle the weight of many desktop PCs, and there are different sizes to accommodate both kids and taller adults. Like the concept of computing anywhere? You can pledge $160 NZD (about $125 US) to Refold's already-funded Kickstarter to get the American-made desk, which should arrive sometime in June.
Engadget Daily: Hot-rod Tesla Model S, adventures with a homemade standing desk and more!
Let us help you brighten your Monday a bit, yeah? Today we've got everything from a concert violinist playing a tune while surgeons fiddled with his brain, the unsurprising news that even North Koreans are accessing porn and a bit more! It's all waiting for you in the gallery below.
Adventures with a homemade standing desk
I, Dan Cooper, am today going to review some cardboard boxes. Not Google Cardboard, nor Luckies' Cardboard Smartphone Projector (which is coming in a few weeks), but some honest-to-goodness cardboard. More precisely, the box for my Nintendo Wii + Wii Fit starter pack, the packaging for a Dyson DC19 T2 Exclusive and an Image Business five-ream printer-paper box. I should add that I haven't been paid by any of the above companies, and each one came with the implement it was purchased with -- oh, except for the paper box, which my wife brought home from her office one day.
Stir Kinetic smart desk selling for $3,890, New Yorkers can try before buying
Remember the Stir Kinetic, the standing desk that learns your sitting habits and adjusts the height automatically? Well, it's going up for sale today and yes, it's as expensive as we said it would be. As promised, the hardwood desk starts at $3,890, though for now you'll only need to pay a $300 deposit; the rest will get charged to your account when it ships in April. (The first 50 customers will actually get it in February.) Just so you know what you're getting into, the desk has a super-minimal design, adorned only by a touchscreen, which you'll use to lower the desk over its 26-inch range. You can also tap the screen to see how many calories you've burned and keep track of how much time you've spent standing. There's also an "Active Mode" that allows the desk to move periodically, encouraging you to take a break. Additionally, the desk has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, along with four USB ports and eight AC sockets -- a neat way of ensuring your cables stay put as you move the desk up and down. As we've been saying all along, $3,890 is a heckuva a lot to pay for a desk, so in addition to having deep pockets, you better be sold on the idea that working while standing up is good for your health. If not, the company will be showcasing the desk at an in-person store, but just one: the Wired Web Store at 353 West 14th St. in New York. If you happen to live in the area, you can mosey on down starting December 4th and check it out in person (no purchase necessary if you just wanna get your kicks). As for everyone else, you might just want to revisit our hands-on video and call it a day.
Stir's Kinetic Desk is a standing desk that learns your sitting habits, moves when you need a break (video)
If Apple were to build a desk, it would look like this. Much like Nest, maker of the world's sexiest thermostat, Stir is a company founded by someone who worked on the first iPods, and, it too is trying to make a mundane household item fashionable. In this case, of course, the product in question isn't a thermostat or even a home appliance, but a standing desk. The Kinetic Desk, which will ship in the first half of 2014, has a thermal sensor that can tell when you've arrived, and over time, it learns how long you prefer to be on your feet before taking a break. To lower the desk over its 26-inch range, just double-tap the built-in touchscreen, located on the left end. From there, you can can set goals, like standing for 25 percent of the day, as well as see how many extra calories you've burned, or monitor how much time you've spent sitting. CEO and founder JP Labrosse tells us that the desk might eventually integrate with fitness-tracking services like Fitbit, though it won't at launch. Still, the desk has WiFi and Bluetooth radios baked in, so if Stir ever did want to share data with third-party services, the hardware would at least be able to support it. The Kinetic Desk has just one button. Press it and you'll be telling the desk to enter "active mode," which will remind you to take periodic breaks by rising up and down ever so gently when it's time for you to stop what you're doing and walk around. (It's less distracting then it sounds; in fact, Stir is using the name "WhisperBreath" to describe it.) Also like an Apple product, the desk has a stark design: it's powered by a single cable, with eight AC ports and four USB sockets tucked into two hidden panels at the top of the desk. That makes for a minimalist look, of course, but it also means you don't have to worry about dragging cables (and knocking things over) when you adjust the height of the desk. Once this starts shipping, you'll have two color options for the lacquered wood surface, and four choices of accent colors for the underside and in the two charging drawers. As for the starting price, you're looking at $3,890 and up -- suffice to say, you'd better already be a standing desk convert before taking the plunge.
Case Study: Standing at your Mac to save your back
BusinessWeek is worried that Your Office Chair Is Killing You. "Short of sitting on a spike, you can't do much worse than a standard office chair," says Galen Cranz, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. This article caught my eye because just about a month ago, I bought this standing desk from Amazon.com. I had been in the market for one for a long time but had held off because they are usually ridiculously expensive. At the time, that desk cost me $96 ($86 + $10 shipping, all prices USD); it may have been a pricing error because that same desk today is selling for $277 + $7.50 shipping or you can buy a pack of two for $723 + $73 shipping! (Like I said, it's ridiculous.) Reading up on others around the web using various different desks, it is not unusual to see people spending over $1000 for a "standing desk," especially custom made. You can spend much, much more. I'm not trying to sell you on this particular desk, but to answer the question that everyone seems to ask me when they see it: "How well does it work? Aren't you tired of standing all of the time?" Read on for more...
