Hey, guys, this is Will from Going
Awesome Places in my last video, I showed you how to DIY your own walnut shelves.
Well, I've made a lot of changes to my office in the months since.
But one thing always bugged me.
My desk currently, I use a Costco desk by Bestar and it's been OK.
It's modular in one.
You've got a filing cabinet drawer
for miscellaneous things and an open section for quick access.
In the other, you have two levels.
On one, I have a laser printer
and my Drobo 5C DAS
or direct attached storage.
On another level,
I've got some documents, business cards and a recycle bin.
Lastly, you have the tabletop.
It's pretty simple and made out of the same melamine surface on particle board.
I've had this for a couple of years now and I've shifted it into a couple
of different configurations to get it to work in my room.
And it works is simple, but I've always wanted more desk space
and minimal office setup spending that much more time at the Home Office.
I've been really intrigued by the sit-stand desk setup, so I did a lot more research and one
company that really piqued my interest was a company called ergonofis.
It's a brand that you might not have heard of, but once I dug in a little deeper,
I really liked what I saw, OK, with so many companies out there that sell
standing desk products, why did I pick ergonofis
before we get into that? How do you actually pronounce the company's name?
Initially I actually thought it was ergonofis
but then I thought, is it ergon-office or er-gono-fis...ergonofis.
ergo...ergo-no-office.
ergon-office.
ergono...anyways...
I'm going to call it ergonofis.
First of all, they're Canadian, headquartered in Montreal.
The amazing thing is that the shift tabletops are manufactured right in Quebec
so that they can maintain the highest quality and myself being Canadian.
We can also reap the benefits of free shipping to the dual motors.
And the electrical components are actually made in Europe and North America,
which is different from some of the competitors which are made in Asia.
3's got to be the 10 year warranty, which is an industry best.
And on top of that,
the Shift tabletop gets a three year warranty, which is way more than the one
year warranty that you get with most other tabletops.
Number 4 is something personal for me.
When measuring out my space,
what I really needed was a tabletop that was 24 by 40 inches.
And strangely enough,
ergonofis is the only company that offers those dimensions.
Number 5 or something that really drew
me to ergonofis, which is the Shift tabletop.
It's really made to be accident proof.
It's antimicrobial, it's heat resistant,
fingerprint resistant and scratch resistant.
What else doesn't it do?
Number 6 is the range as a sit stand table.
It's got to be able to go really low and also go really high.
And when I compared specs across
the board, ergonofis had one of the best ranges around being able to go
as low as 24.5 inches and as high as 50.2 inches.
Number 7.
and lastly, has got to be customer service.
Right from the beginning, I could tell that customer service was one
of the most important things, the company culture, and that was verified
by many of my interactions during the ordering process.
Now that we got the details out of the way, we can finally set up this bad boy.
I actually spent some time removing all the stuff that was on the table.
The monitor, the table itself is now gone, a big empty space.
You'll see that both of the cabinets are still here.
No point in wasting those.
I'm going to reuse them for this set up.
All the ergonofis boxes are
actually in the room as well, Can't wait to do this!
I'll see you guys on the other side.
I didn't know what to expect from their
special laminate countertop, but from first impressions to weeks
of usage, I'm super impressed with the soft touch surface.
I've had hot mugs and cold glasses of water and it handles it all.
I just wipe off any water with a cloth or something damp to get the water marks off.
And yes, I managed to scratch the surface
a bit from trying to install this wireless charger that charges through the table.
But all I had to do was use a Magic Eraser and all the scuffs were gone.
When your arm sits on the table,
you also get a nice cooling feeling from it, which I didn't expect and is key
because it's that part of the arm that always gets sweaty in the summer.
The tabletop surface is also just the perfect size.
Just be careful, though, with your chair,
because as you can see here, I accidentally spun around a little bit
too aggressively and caused a dent on the edge.
The frame itself is sturdy and does all
the things you expect it to do from its specs.
I love how the control pad lights up when
you tap on it, which is great if the lights aren't on in the room.
It's a slick feature that I haven't seen on any other table brands.
From a footprint perspective,
it doesn't take up that much space as it's just two legs.
You do have to be careful, though.
If you have cabinets like me to access, say, the printer, you do have to make some
adjustments to make sure that you can still get to it from a global perspective.
I personally think it's fine with an acceptable amount of wobble.
I first adjusted the feet with felt pads
to protect the hardwood floor and make sure that they were adjusted so
that the tabletop was level when testing wobbliness.
It was certainly much more stable
at lowered positions and more susceptible to wobble when raised because
of the joints of the three stage lifting columns.
But that's to be expected.
You can lean on the tabletop in both scenarios and it's fine.
My monitor and webcam do shake quite a bit, as you've seen,
because of the type of arms that I'm using, so I really can't complain there.
The biggest challenge I had with the table really came from how my office was set up
to begin with because I had installed these walnut shelves, I kind of shot myself
in the foot with the DSLR or webcam, the microphone boom arm and the monitor arm.
There was just no way I'd be able to clear
it without hitting the shelves halfway up to standing position.
So ultimately, the solution was to pull
the table away from the wall, to allow everything to just clear the shelves.
And now it's fine.
The trade off is, of course,
that I have this awkward gap behind the table, but I have an idea for a solution.
Later, the mindset shift you have to make
with a sit-stand desk is that you actually want more buffer space.
I realized around it,
as opposed to having everything tightly touching from edge to edge.
It's for aesthetic reasons, but also it's a practical thing.
Major lesson.
Don't install low shelves if you can.
The control pad not only lights up,
but is, of course, going to be useful to make a bunch
of setting changes to set heights, all you have to do is tap and hold one
of the four memory locations and you're done.
I set the one to be the sitting position and two to be the standing position.
You can also set minimum heights easily by pressing one and two together to set
the min height or three and four for the max height to do it.
Just press them together again and you'll remove the restrictions.
You can also hold the up and down button
together to activate the child lock so that you can't change any of the settings.
The buttons themselves don't give you tactile feedback, but they're sensitive
to touch and doesn't require much force to activate.
Also, if there are certain errors that happen, you'll see error codes displayed
like this one from when I overused it to film this.
The desk also has collision detection built in.
I tested it and it works when there's a solid distributed force that it comes up
against and will reverse course and rebound the way a few inches.
But let's just say not so great if it's just something on the edge.
The speed, honestly,
is pretty fast to go up and down and is really as fast as I'd want it to be.
See for yourself.
And when it comes to noise, sounds like this.
OK, I know this doesn't really belong in performance, but one thing I learned
early on is that standing on hardwood is not comfortable.
So I invested in a standing mat like this one, which provides a lot of cushioning
and it makes standing a lot more, well, comfortable.
I tuck it in when I don't use it and it becomes its own sitting matt too.
This deserves its own section because cable management is a pain when it comes
to standing desks with the ergonofis Shift 2.0.
I wasn't sure how I'd be able to organize
the insane amount of cables that I knew I'd have to run in and out and around.
First, I got to say the cable management provided is not very good.
That's what these clips are, so don't use them.
I tried so many different things over these past couple months,
but I finally figured out a few things to keep all of your cables organized.
Let's first start off with the logic control unit.
This one is luckily already mounted
securely, so you don't need to worry about this.
Next, we have this Belkin Power Bar I've
had for years and it magically perfectly fits between the metal bars of the table.
And so I have that fastened by two jute wires that I picked up from Amazon.
The key that really made everything work is this Monoprice cable tray organizer.
It's designed for standing desks,
but I learned that it's also a perfect fit for their office.
It's easy to install,
although I'd recommend not doing it like me after the table's been assembled.
What this cable tray does is that it gives
you a large space to be able to hide cables cleanly while having different
openings for cables to come in and out to the power bar.
The other key to cable management is
to have as few cables coming in and out of the desk.
In my case, I was able to minimize this down to the power cable on the left
for the power bar and on the right I have the Thunderbolt
cable to the MacBook Pro and also an XLR cable for the mic.
What I haven't quite figured out yet is
a good way to manage that main cable from the power bar to the outlet.
It's thick and stubborn.
And while I like these cable organizers,
they just haven't been sticky enough for the metal legs.
So I might just have to bite the bullet and use 3M double sided tape.
Lastly, another thing that I got from ergonofis is this power bar
outlet with three outlets, 2 USB charging ports and surge protection.
You might be wondering why I need this if
I already have a power bar underneath the table.
Well, this is meant to be a power bar
that gives me quick access without cables and things getting in the way.
You can also decide to install it
in whatever location you want in front, in the back above or below.
But what made most sense for me was
to install it on the back left corner facing the wall so I could have a reliable
spot to plug in an accessory real quick or charge a device via USB.
It's a nice soft touch,
matte black texture, but they also have them in white as well.
So here's what I love about this new set up. It looks and feels incredible.
I didn't think I'd feel this way about
the laminate, but that cool, soft touch is amazing and it's just so easy to clean.
The size is just right as well.
I now have the perfect amount of space for my 34-inch double wide screen
monitor and two speakers end to end.
And talk about flexibility.
I can now switch between sitting
and standing any time during the day to help with productivity.
And finally, I love that I can dance to music while standing now.
OK, so what about areas of improvement?
Well, first of all, if you choose a black tabletop, know that it reveals dust quite easily.
Something I talked about earlier was cable management.
And those clips that they provide just aren't useful at all.
So plan on picking up your own cable
management tools and I'll have those links in the description.
That said, what I do know is that they're
working on something that's going to be a little bit more robust.
So future tables might have this problem already solved when you pick yours up.
From a height accuracy perspective.
I noticed that there's a bit of a point, one variation.
And so you'll see that when you tap it,
sometimes it'll jerk upwards or downwards, but the number doesn't change.
I've also found that the actual height
from the ground is sometimes different from the number that's displayed.
So that's something to keep in mind.
Lastly, it's no denying that the ergonofis Shift 2.0 is a premium product and it's expensive.
So to help you with that, make sure you use my special five percent
coupon code, which you'll also find in the description below.
Well, there you have it.
The Home Office is now levelled up once again.
Whether you're a content creator like me
or just recently switched to work from home, the ergonoifis sit-stand table
you should definitely check out.
Thanks for watching. And until next, then.