J
John Nolley II
February 07, 2023
Nice layout but on the flimsy side
I got this to be a second desk for working from home--essentially, so I could use my work laptop with a second monitor and external keyboard. It's about what I expected: A decent, functional desk with some issues, but with a nice layout for what I needed.Size & Features:It's nicely-sized for a small space. My home office is 10'x10', and I already have a writing desk with dual monitors and my personal laptop setup, and built-in bookcases down the opposite wall, leaving not a ton of space for a second desk... but this fits just fine.I like the computer tower area (which I use to store my laptop bag), as well as the little drawer/bin beneath it (again, useful for holding some of the loose items that end up scattered around my office). The single monitor platform is a bit oddly-placed, but it works quite well for my setup, as I have the laptop screen itself off to one side, with the laptop sitting on a separate stand to elevate it a bit.I'm tall, though, and the desk is a little low for me, particularly with the keyboard drawer. I may remove the drawer to help with that, and just put the keyboard on the desktop. For what it's worth, the drawer also doesn't pull out far enough for it to really work with my keyboard--and we're not talking a massive gaming keyboard, either. If I pull the drawer all the way out, I can either have the keyboard essentially on the edge of it--with no room for any wrist rest--or have it sitting slightly under the top of the desk, which is awkward to type on.Durability / Build Quality:It's pressed wood, of course. It feels on the cheaper side of pressed wood, though that means it's a little lighter weight than some of the seemingly-hundreds of pieces of pressed wood furniture I've assembled over the years. The veneer looks good but has already started to peel loose on one of the corners (fortunately not visible at the moment). It's definitely on the thin side.The desktop itself flexes a little when I put any weight on it. I'm using it for a laptop, so no big deal there, but if I put an elbow on it during a meeting, I can feel the wood flex. I'd be a little worried about breaking it in half if jolted too much, honestly. The drawer glides are... not great. It wobbles from side to side and doesn't come out smoothly. It's not the alignment; I've checked and rechecked that. It's just the glides are cheap.I do worry when I bump my knees against the cross-piece running between the two verticals that I'm going to either damage it, or possibly pull the screws loose and cause the whole desk to collapse. So far, that hasn't happened.On Assembly:It's not that hard to put together, all things considered. The instructions aren't bad; the illustrations are mostly good, though there were a couple of weird "close ups" that could have been better drawn. Yes, the text has some poor-translation or writing issues, but really, I was able to mostly work off the illustrations. The pieces are pretty well-labeled, and the variety of hardware used is small--so no guessing, "Do they mean the 1" long screw, the 1.25" long screw, or the 1.5" long screw?!A few complaints on the assembly process itself, though: First, a few screw holes were slightly countersunk, but the rest weren't at all (meaning the screw heads stick up slightly over the surface). Second, the holes for the ubiquitous cam bolt sockets aren't countersunk at all (maybe because the wood panels are thinner than a lot of pressed wood?). Third, and most importantly, there are NO SPARE PARTS. Luckily, I didn't need any, but I really appreciate DIY assembly kits that include a few extras in case something goes wrong or a piece was malformed or left out. Would it have hurt to include an extra cam bolt, an extra socket, and a couple of extra screws? The veneer is also so thin that if you even slightly mis-align a screw or cam bolt, the moment you turn it, you're going to damage the veneer and even the pressed wood beneath, so be careful!Still, I've put together a ton of furniture over the years, and overall, this was not that bad of a build. I've had cases where I had to disassemble some parts which weren't well described in the instructions (had to do that recently on a cat tower, for example). This was a pretty simple build and didn't suffer that problem. Also, the parts aligned pretty well; I have experienced many issues in the past with pieces that just don't quite fit right, with a dowel hole or cam bolt just slightly misaligned or with such tight tolerances it made for hours of blue language during the process. I think the overall build took about 35 minutes from unboxing to completion.On Shipping & Packaging:Amazon shipped this in an outer box which was significantly larger than the desk's own box... with no padding between the two. I really think the second box was unnecessary, both in terms of materials and possibly contributing to damage to the first shipment.Yep, I had to send back the first shipment, because upon opening it, one of the vertical panels was cracked down the middle, and several other pieces had the veneer gouged and dinged. All I can figure is the box was abused a bit at the warehouse or in shipment, and the vertical panel got torqued, and maybe the box got dropped or slammed around a bit during shipment.I also wish slightly higher-quality foam padding could be used, as it inevitably means a ton of tiny fragments of foam adhered via static electricity to all the surfaces (this is a common issue with DIY furniture packaging, mind you, and not unique to this desk).Summary:It's a nice-looking desk with a neat layout that fits small spaces well. For the price paid, I didn't expect hardwood construction. I do think the durability and quality could be a bit higher than they were. We'll see how well it holds up over time.
✔ Verified Purchase
