Keep Calm and Go Electric: Confronting Your Most Common Fears About Electric Sit-Stand Desks

Halloween’s just around the corner, so it’s that time of year when movies and haunted houses are trying their best to scare you. Well, here at Human Solution we’re all about calming your fears this season. Many of you are coming to us looking for a height adjustable desk, yet are leery of going with electric, for all sorts of reasons.

There are some misconceptions about electric sit-stand desks floating around out there that may be keeping you from considering one, even though electric desks are our favorite around here and work for pretty much anyone with access to an electrical outlet by their desk. The main misconception is that electric standing desks are too expensive, a theory which I thoroughly debunked a while back while pointing out the advantages of an electric desk over a manual desk. However, some other fears specifically remain about electric height adjustable desks:

They use too much electricity! Not at all, my energy-conscious friend. Our most popular electric standing desk, the UPLIFT Desk, uses 200 watts, and that’s only when using its height adjustment capabilities to raise and lower the desk. On standby, it only uses 0.2 watts.

I don’t know, should I unplug it after adjusting it to save energy? I don’t think you understand just how little energy it uses. To compare, a computer uses on average 60 to 250 watts, and most people leave that on all day. You don’t shut down your computer every time you walk away from it. You can leave your desk plugged in all the time and still use much less energy than other electrical devices you don’t think twice about leaving plugged in. That way, you’ll always have quick electric height adjustment whenever you need it (which is often, if you’re using it right!)

What if there is a power outage?? Will my desk collapse?? The answer to this is a resounding no. The motor is only running when the desk is traveling, so if the power goes out, all you lose is the ability to move the desk up and down. This may be a minor annoyance in the rare event of a power outage, but this is well outweighed by the advantages of an electric height adjustable desk.

I heard they move too slowly! Won’t a pneumatic desk move immediately? While it does seem like you can move a manual desk instantly, our UPLIFT Desk moves at 1.5" a second, so moving from a sitting to standing position really takes less than 10 seconds for most people.

And with a pneumatic desk, you may spend more time making adjustments in the long run, because it is much easier to make small adjustments with an electric desk. It may take the smallest adjustment to get your desk in the right spot for you, which can be achieved with a quick touch of the button on an electric height adjustable desk because of its infinite stop positions. A manual desk requires you to move it up and down using your own force, which may make it difficult to find exactly the right spot, especially when an accessory like a keyboard tray is involved.

Are you sure it isn’t more expensive to get an electric desk than one without a motor? Yes, our most affordable sit-stand desks are our electric desks. With the counterbalance technology required for a manual desk, they are usually actually more expensive than our electric desks. If you have access to an electrical outlet and are thinking about a sit-stand desk, there should be nothing stopping you. The only thing you have to fear is sitting all day.

Calm down and learn more about electric height adjustable desks at TheHumanSolution.com.

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So not only might the thing break down in a year or two because the motor burns out, but you won’t even be able to recycle the desk’s most polluting components. The control boxes and wiring harnesses within an electric desk are also hard to disassemble, making it difficult to recycle even the recyclable components within them.