As a professional writer, I spend a lot of time sitting—too much time. I also don’t have a large amount of money to spend on buying new furniture for my office. The “Lift” adjustable height monitor stand from Uncaged Ergonomics provides a great middle ground, allowing me to sit and stand at my desk.
There are many ways in which the stand could be used to create a sit/stand desk. I use it for my Macbook, setting the laptop on the top shelf and typing as I stand, or I sit on a tall drafting chair. I even have room (barely) to add a second monitor to the set up. It’s not ideal, but it is functional and, at a $129.00 retail price, it’s a pretty good way to get me out of my chair while I work.
However, if you own a desktop computer or an all-in-one, the stand would need other equipment to to make it functional. When using the monitor stand on its lowest height, the desktop is just a little too low when standing to type comfortably. On the other hand, the stand is too tall to function well if I were to sit down in a regular desk chair. I already had the drafting chair which allowed me the height I needed to sit and type, but to make it work well, I would also need an adjustable height keyboard attachment. On the website for the Lift one can see that the advertising shows people using the stand with both a keyboard lift and one of the company’s wobble stools if sitting.
If you have a drafting chair in your home, you can skip the $200 wobble stool, but you will still need the $50 keyboard stand if you want to make the Lift monitor stand useable for your desktop computer. So if I do my math, that works out to be around $380 dollars with the wobble stool, or a much more reasonable $180 dollars without the stool. With reasonable quality sit stand desks starting at around $450.00, that seems like a good deal, as long as you don’t need the wobble stool. (Of course, you could always skip the wobble stool and find a less expensive chair.)
There is one more thing I should mention. The quality of the construction on the product is adequate, not terrible, but not impressive. I had trouble putting mine together at first because the holes drilled in the small shelf didn’t quite match up with the holes in the crossbars. They also sent me plastic screws with wing-nuts. However, once together the product seems sturdy enough and of adequate quality for the price, but don’t expect the precision and perfection you see with some high end office furniture.
Overall the Life Adjustable monitor stand is a good way to make a regular desk into a sit/stand desk. Just make sure you have the other things you will need to make it functional.
This is a great take on today’s mania of standing up while working. But why complicate things when you can just get standup tables? You should find so many of them sold today in varying shapes and styles. But if you are just starting out and want something that’s simple and does what it I supposed to do (which is letting you work standing up), try getting something like the http://tinyurl.com/p5jovp9.
Wow there is a lot going on there. With any product it is important it is sturdy, affordable and looks good. We are launching our all in one package on kickstarter soon http://zestdesk.com/
Hey
I find it so interesting with standing desks at the moment, I’ve seen lots in the news about the health benefits of standing up and the dangers of sitting down. I’ve found that the best balance is doing both, if you sit down all the time, It can be dangerous, however if you stand up all the time you have similar problems. So I stand up for about 2 hours, and then sit down for about 2 hours and I feel great.
I also forgot to mention – If you have a look at http://www.deskimatic.com/standing-desk-chair/ there’s lots of interesting facts and information also