How to choose an electric standing desk

Almost every disappointing standing-desk purchase traces back to one of six fields that were sitting right there on the listing. Here they are, in the order they actually decide the outcome.

1. Height range — check it against your body, not another desk

This is the one that produces returns. The bottom of the range is what fails shorter users, who end up perched above a desk that won't come down far enough to sit at properly; the top is what fails taller ones. Measure your own seated elbow height and your standing elbow height first, then read the desk's range. A desk that "goes higher" is only better if it also goes low enough. If you plan to put a thick desktop on a bare frame, remember the top adds to the bottom of the range too.

2. Frame stages

Sit-stand legs come as two-stage or three-stage. More stages generally means a wider travel range and, in most designs, a more stable feel near full extension — but it is also the difference the price is often hiding. The listing states which one you're getting; if it doesn't, that absence is itself informative.

3. Stated weight capacity — and whether it includes the top

People underestimate their own desk load badly. Two monitors on arms, a clamp light, a desktop PC and a laptop dock add up quickly, and monitor arms in particular apply load a long way from the frame. Read whether the quoted capacity is for the frame alone or the assembled desk; on frame-only listings it usually excludes the desktop, which is not a small number.

4. Motor count

Single-motor and dual-motor frames behave differently under load — in lift speed, in noise, and in how evenly they travel when the load is off-centre. Neither is automatically wrong; a lightly-loaded desk is a perfectly reasonable place to save money. Just know which one you bought.

5. Warranty, split by part

Standing-desk warranties are usually not one number. Frame, motor and control electronics are often covered for different lengths, and the headline figure in the marketing is generally the longest of them. On a product whose whole value proposition is a motor that keeps working, the electronics term is the one worth finding.

6. What is actually in the box

The most common mis-comparison in this entire category: frame-only listings and frame-plus-desktop listings sit next to each other in search results at prices that look like a bargain and a rip-off respectively, and they are not comparable at all. Before you compare two prices, confirm both include a desktop — or neither does.

A note on review scores

We don't publish star ratings or spec tables here. A score we didn't earn by testing is a made-up number, and a spec table copied from an old review goes stale the moment a manufacturer revises a configuration. The six fields above are all readable, live, on the listing itself — which is the only place they're guaranteed to be current.

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