- You know what I keep picturing man because of you?
Damn Kevin Hart as a bunny.
- Let's do this now!
- Yo guys, Jonathan here
and welcome to the $200 desk setup
where the challenge is to find a desk, the accessories,
and not only make it functional
but it's gotta look good and most importantly,
not exceed that price point.
Now, disclaimer.
This does not include the computer or the speakers
because that would pretty much single-handedly
obliterate the entire budget.
That may make its way to a later episode
at a higher price point.
If that's something you wanna see,
go ahead and drop a like down below
but for now the focus is for those
who already have a computer
but need to shake things up as far as their setup goes.
So for starters, we cannot do a setup challenge
without a desk and for this,
I went with the Techni Mobili modern computer desk
which has this really clean pine laminated top,
white accents, white steel legs,
and gives you a pretty decent amount of real estate
all while remaining relatively compact.
Now currently as of right now,
this desk is a 110 bucks on Amazon.
So that's gonna give us roughly 90 bucks to play around with
as far as accessories go,
but a couple of things that stand out to me with this desk
is one, the storage which is plenty enough space
to store your keyboard, your mouse, your pen, your pencil,
or in this case, if your Austin Evans
your 10 year anniversary notebook at Zotac.
Regardless if you're Austin Evans though,
anybody's gonna appreciate some cable management
and that is exactly what we have here on the back.
This compartment opens up which is gonna be really helpful
for hiding those pesky cables.
First up is the Globe desk lamp
which is a really, really, tall box.
Oh man, this is gonna be
some assembly required.
That's got some reach.
That doesn't screw, it just kinda sits there.
Oh no.
Okay, I'm just dumb.
I was trying to connect the spring to the top of the lamp
but in this case, it goes from end to end.
Be careful you don't whip yourself up in the face.
And then we got ourselves a light.
So now we got the lamp set up,
initial impressions are up to the
kinda sketchy installation,
it's not bad for 20 bucks at all.
We're gonna go ahead and get this light bulb in.
This is a $10 colored LED light bulb.
Damn, now let's see if we can get some changing colors.
So we got red,
green,
blue. - You're my boy!
- So it's a lamp and a light bulb out of the way.
My biggest question right now is gonna be the LED strip
for the back of the desk.
This I've actually never messed with before
so it could be interesting to set it up.
What's cool though from what I can see
is that it's actually powered by USB
so you're not gonna have to tinker around with power
or possibly electrocute yourself.
So to test it off, I'm assuming you can power this up
through a USB powerbank,
yup, that actually works.
I am like a sit-down Christmas tree.
Following the LED light there
are this really cool cable management strips.
They come in a pack of five for around 12 bucks.
What you're seeing here is actually one split in half.
The reason I'm doing that is so we can keep that opening
in the middle of the desk
where we can eventually then tuck in the cables.
Just like the LED strips, what's also a nice touch with this
is they come with the 3M adhesive preinstalled
so you're not gonna have to attach that
or stick that on yourself.
Next, we can go ahead and attach the LED strip
and right away, you can already see
how that cable management strip is paying off
because we can tuck the cable neatly through that
and run it inside the desk.
Now, functionally the LED strip work perfectly
and for 10 bucks, having the built-in control was awesome
but it was at that moment, I quickly realized
that I actually placed it too high
because of how the desk functions.
So through my trial and error, if you go with this setup,
it's actually a better move to place the LED strips
slightly lower.
What that's gonna do is allow you to open and close
the cable management portion of the desk
without screwing up your LED strip.
Now realistically, you're not gonna wanna throw
a USB bank inside your desk,
so next stop is a surge protector from Poweradd.
What I like about this is in addition to the outlets,
there are also two USB ports which in turn
will power up the LED strip.
It was almost a test within a test
but it was really nice to know
that you're not limited to one stick only on the LED strip
so attaching that a second time worked just as well.
From there, it was really about
putting the finishing touches on the setup.
But I gotta say, the cable management section
worked really well and helped keep things
super clean and tidy.
Total for this setup was just under a 180 bucks
which leaves us around 20 bucks to play around with.
So in this case, I went ahead and threw in a fake plant
and of course, Baby Groot.
So with the color we're getting through the lights
and the lighter tone of the desk itself,
it looks really great against a darker wall
especially at night
but it also looks great in a lighter environment,
in front of a white wall like this.
All in all, for a 110 bucks, the desk is really solid.
The one thing I will point out is you gotta be careful
not to scratch because it is a laminate top
so if you happen to be subscribed to the Curiosity Box
by Vsauce, definitely don't do this.
- There you go.
- Now for scale and for reference,
this is a 15 inch MacBook Pro.
If you're thinking about using a monitor,
I would say 21 to 24 inches
is probably the ideal sweet spot.
The cable management section is awesome.
You can see what a great job it does at hiding the wires.
You pair that with the drawers on the front
that helps keep things organized.
Pack on a few accessories
and for two bills, we get a really clean setup.
Aside from that, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
If you did, make sure you subscribe for more episodes
like this and if you like setups,
you probably want to check out the Dream Desk
which you can check out here.
This is Jonathan and I will catch you guys later.