- Yo, guys, Jonathan here, and welcome to Dream Desk 4,
which is simple, but powerful, packs a ton of pixels.
But this one is special, because this dream desk is mine.
("Shelter" by Porter Robinson & Madeon)
(phone ringing)
- [Meredith] Hello?
- Hi, Meredith?
- [Meredith] Yes.
- How's it going?
- [Meredith] Good, hi Jonathan, how are you?
- I'm good, sorry if this is super random.
- [Meredith] Oh, no problem.
- Yeah, so, back with Dream Desk 3, I remember you tweeted,
and that kinda really stuck with me,
just, I remember seeing that tweet
about how your son woke you up to go watch Dream Desk 3.
Well, I'm building my desk right now,
so I kinda had the idea of surprising your son
with a setup like mine.
- [Meredith] Oh, man, he'd love that!
Yeah, yeah, oh, this is so cool,
like (laughing) how do I keep my cool
when I'm so excited on his behalf?
Oh, neat.
Man, I wish you had any idea how much of a fan he was.
You have inspired so many desk changes,
and, you know, just inspiration for him in general
to continually try and redo what he already has.
(electronic music)
- So, this setup is centered around
a 2016 15 inch MacBook Pro and LG's Ultrafine 5K display.
Being able to dock a MacBook Pro into a 5K display
is something I've wanted for a really long time.
Using a 5K iMac and then going back to a 4K display
always felt like a bit of a downgrade,
so this gives me the best of both worlds.
Now, the desk itself, funny enough,
is technically a dining table,
so if you walked into the office section at IKEA,
you would never see it.
So when I happened to stumble upon it in the dining section,
I immediately fell in love.
It has a beautiful, glossy, reflective top,
tons of room for activities,
really well-built legs that are classy,
but also let you do some serious wizardry
with cable management.
Now, the MacBook Pro itself is the top spec i7 model
with Radeon Pro 460 graphics.
And controversy in dongles aside,
performance for me has been fantastic.
The video you're watching right now was shot in RED 6K RAW
and was edited entirely on this machine.
Jumping back to the Ultrafine 5K,
huge shout-out to LG for not only sending this my way early,
but also sponsoring Dream Desk 4.
It is a beautiful 5K display
that connects through a single Thunderbolt 3 cable,
and on top of giving you dock functionality
with three extra USB-C ports,
it is also powering the MacBook Pro, which is awesome.
Small things like being able to control the brightness
within Mac OS is a nice touch, but more than anything,
it is a really impressive-looking display.
If you've used or you're coming from a 5K iMac,
it is every bit as good, and possibly a little better.
It's super bright, has beautiful colors,
and honestly, so far I couldn't be happier with this combo.
Now, behind the monitor,
making everything look nice and pretty
is the Hue Lightstrip Plus from Philips,
who are also awesome enough to sponsor Dream Desk 4.
Getting to partner with Philips
has been one of the coolest experiences so far for me.
If you've watched any of my videos, you know I love lights,
and there's something special
about adding color to your setup, especially your desk.
It kinda just gets your brain going,
and for me, helps creatively.
Now, as far as the speakers,
I've been searching and looking for the perfect pair
pretty much all year, but finally, I think I found them.
These are the ADAM ARTist 3s, which look amazing
and pack an incredible sound in a relatively small package.
They have a ton of inputs, but also connect through USB,
which is super handy.
The 4 and a half inch carbon fiber woofer
pumps out some pretty impressive low-end,
but what stood out to me most was the high-end.
I am not sure what kinda magic is going on here,
but these are some of the clearest speakers
I've ever heard in my life.
Being able to hear every instrument,
every nuance is incredible,
and then things like Stereolink,
where a single control on one speaker controls both of them,
is icing on the cake.
Now, to the right of the desk,
this is the LaCie Bolt 3,
which is a two terabyte Thunderbolt 3 external SSD
with insane speeds.
Inside are two one terabyte M.2 PCIe drives,
which pump out over 2,000 megabytes per second
on the write side, and over 2,500 on the read.
So, with this, you're essentially getting
the same performance of the MacBook Pro internally,
but on an external drive.
What's kinda cool is that it comes with a removable stand
that attaches magnetically, and also a magnetized cable door
that pops open to plug things in,
and closes to keep things nice and tidy.
As far as the rest of the setup,
to keep things clean and to connect through Bluetooth,
I'm rocking the Apple wireless keyboard
and the Logitech MX Master.
I've finally given up the Performance MX,
and it seems like any problems or bugs I had
with the MX Master before are gone,
and so far, after this switch,
I am really enjoying this mouse.
Rounding out the desk, things would not be complete
without the Tomons Desk Lamp,
which gives me some of that Toy Story Pixar action.
Now that my setup is complete, though,
it is time to hop on a plane, and head to St. Louis.
So, made it out to St. Louis, holy balls is it cold.
My face is numb, but that is beside the point,
because it is now time to meet Ms. Meredith, the mom.
Let's go.
Now, because Meredith and her son
were going to see family for the holidays,
the timeframe was extremely narrow,
so what I did was overnight the computer, the monitor,
the speakers, the accessories, from B&H and Amazon.
Luckily, they came through.
The only thing missing, though,
was the most important part of the setup, the desk itself.
So, after we made sure everything else was there,
we headed out to IKEA.
Now, I gotta tell you guys,
Meredith is an incredible single mom.
The initial tweet of her being that involved with her son
spoke volumes to me,
but getting a chance to hang out with her
was a completely different level.
She battles Vascular EDS,
and, no joke, just came off surgery this week,
and instead of staying back, resting,
she was right there with me at IKEA,
going to Lowe's to rent a truck.
And seeing how selfless she is,
and how much love she has for her son is incredible.
- You know, that keeps me going.
My disease is second to the fact that I'm a mom,
and I make everything fit into the mom part first.
And, you know, I obviously do what I can
to take care of myself,
but it's all secondary to being a mom.
You get inspiration from having a kid
that's unreal.
Like, I didn't know what inspiration was
until I had a kid to fight for.
You know, it has kept me going
when things were not looking great.
- Now, to keep things a surprise,
she was able to work with her sister-in-law
to keep her son distracted.
Trying to do this in a single day
may have been a little ambitious, time was flying by.
But it was now time to build out the setup.
(bright music)
Now, for her son, BB, there were four elements of my setup
that I really wanted to bring to his,
the first of which being the same desk,
which we were able to find,
a 15 inch Space Gray MacBook Pro
that he could dock into a monitor,
white speakers so he could get
that really clean, white, Stormtrooper look,
and, most importantly, I wanted to give him a splash
of that TLD lighting, which ended up working amazing,
because after talking to Meredith,
he had been wanting Philips Hue forever.
So, it's the end of the day,
been battling the clock,
but, somehow, managed to pull everything off.
Meredith is on her way right now to pick up BB,
who has no idea what is coming next.
(muffled talking from outside)
(deeply exhaling)
My heart's, like, pounding.
(sweet music)
How's it going, dude?
- [BB] Hi.
- [Jonathan] Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, too.
- Yeah, surprise.
- [BB] Is this real?
- Yes, sir.
You know, seeing her say that, like, you clean your desk
because of-- - Yeah, yeah.
- My videos, was cool.
- Yeah, I watch all of 'em.
- That's so cool, dude.
So, I figured I was building my desk,
and let's make you a setup like mine.
- I can't even say thank you enough.
It just amazes me so much that you would actually
think about that tweet,
and end up coming to my house,
and showing up with a amazing desk.
- The experience of it, I think, was a lot of fun, you know?
I knew you were gonna do something great for him,
but I didn't really think I'd take a part in it.
So, it was neat to spend the day, you know,
with you, and you know, getting to meet you,
that's just great, (laughing) that's really cool.
This was a great way to spend a day.
He's happy, he's so happy, and surprised,
and I don't get to do that very often,
so, I mean, who gets to hang out with, you know,
with somebody that they admire that much?
So, to see him actually get to meet you in real life,
I think, as awesome as the desk is,
just getting to hang with you
is probably what will stick with him for life.
- So, the jet black in the Apple phone...
(phone rings)
Is that Austin?
("Fade Away" by Logic)