With more and more of us working from home, the temptation for working from the sofa can be high. But what might feel a bit of a luxury to start with, could result in significant aches and pains, not to mention sluggish focus and productivity that takes a bit of a battering.
Here at Creative Bloq, we are fans of a good standing desk. They help you to stay active in a job that might keep you glued to your desk for much of the day, plus can improve your posture, reduce back pain and even help to boost your focus and mood. But a lot of them can look quite functional, and while that might be fine in an office, in your home you might want something with a little more style.
Enter the Maidesite TH2 Pro Plus, a motorised standing desk with a bit of extra design flair. It keeps many other bells and whistles to a minimum but adds some subtle differences in finish that make it look more furniture than function. I’ve been living with it for a few months now, here’s how I got on.
Design and assembly
The TH2 Pro Plus is one of the company’s most premium, and most attractive, options. In particular, it features elegantly shaped oval legs, which is ultimately what separates the TH2 Pro Plus apart from the company’s regular T2 Pro Plus. We suspect that the “H” in its name probably stands for “home” since it gives the desk a much more stylish look – particularly handy if it needs to form part of a room that you use outside of work too.
Of course, these oval legs double as the desk’s powerful lifting columns, with the motors built into each of these legs to help the desk move up and down.
There are a good number of options for helping it to fit into your home, with the frame available in a choice of black, grey or white, and the Maidesite FSC-certified desktop is made from eco-friendly chipboard and available in oak, white, antique and black finishes. Sizes available include 47 x 24 inches (120 x 60cm), 55 x 28 inches (140 x 70cm) and 63 x 31 inches (160 x 80cm).
You can choose to source your own desktop if you want, but I reviewed the desk with the black frame and antique-finish desktop in the smallest size.
If you do the same, the desk will come in two parts – the desktop, complete with pre-drilled holes and nuts – and the frame. Both boxes are very heavy indeed, so you’ll probably want someone to help you move it, and assemble it if possible. The booklet suggests it should take around 30 minutes for two people, but I managed assembly on my own in about 45 minutes.
Everything comes well packaged and the instructions are really easy to follow. All the tools you’ll need (an Allen key and a screwdriver) are included – though I’d recommend having your own screwdriver be on hand for some parts – and all the different bolts and screws for the different sections are in numbered bags that correspond to the instructions.
There are also optional wheels included, if you need the convenience of being able to move your desk around easily.
The only bit of the assembly that I found slightly tricky was screwing the tapping screws into the wood when securing the control panel and cable tidies, which is where your own screwdriver will come in handy – the mini one that’s included doesn’t give a lot of leverage.
Speaking of cable tidies, the ones underneath the desk do a fine job of stopping the various cables you’ll need to plug into the control unit from dangling down in an unsightly manner. However, the power cable has no such consideration, and if you’re not flush up against a wall, as I wasn’t, you may want to find your own solution for this to keep things looking neat.
As per the instructions, I secured the control panel to the right-hand side, but it is worth noting that there are pre-drilled holes on both sides, if a left-handed position would suit you better.
Once up and together, the desk looks really smart. It’s sturdy and well made, and while the desktop isn’t solid wood, it looks good and is plenty durable – plus it helps keep its price down too. The curved edges of the desktop are welcome with young children running around and – for a similar reason – so is the child lock.
Its size is perfect for me. I’m not blessed with lots of space at home but it’s compact enough that it doesn’t engulf my room, while also providing plenty of space for my (admittedly small-ish) setup. I also really appreciate that, if my circumstances change and I need something bigger, I can just upgrade the desktop to a larger one and the frame can adapt, keeping costs down.
Features and experience
While some of our favourite standing desks include things like wireless charging, the TH2 Pro Plus is relatively frill-free. There’s a handy cable grommet in the top right-hand corner, and a USB port on the side of the control panel for attaching a phone charging cable, or even a wireless charging mat, perhaps. There are no storage options here though, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve got something else lined up for that if you need it.
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a motorised standing desk, and there’s a small control panel with a small LCD for accessing its various features and seeing the current settings. It protrudes just slightly from the edge of the desk and is angled upwards to make it easy to see and use while sitting.
The screen is mostly used to show the height of the desk, which is in centimetres out of the box, but this can be adjusted if you would prefer it to show in inches.
The manual asks you to reset the panel when you get it out of the box, which apparently calibrates the legs to ensure they are at equal heights. This requires you to hold the down arrow when the desk is in its lowest position – you’ll also have to put it into the mode to access some of the advanced menu options. These include setting upper and lower height limits and adjusting the anti-collision sensitivity. By default, this is set at the most sensitive (19kg) and I’d suggest keeping it that way – it will stop the desk from moving any higher or lower if it notices an obstacle in the way.
You might want to keep the manual close for adjusting these settings, mind you, as it’s not exactly clear what you’re doing without it. Once you’ve done it once though, you’re unlikely to have to adjust these things very often.
On the panel itself, there are four programmable heights available at the touch of a button. That allows me to sit my preference for standing and sitting, and my husband can do the same.
Of course, you can set and adjust your heights manually with the up and down arrows too – the desk has a height range of 24–50 inches (62–127cm), which Maidesite says will suit users from 4'6" to 6'3" tall (1.4m to 1.9m). There’s also a weight capacity of 275lbs (125kg), which is pretty generous.
There is a sit-stand reminder setting built into the control panel, which will vibrate – pretty loudly – at your choice of interval to remind you to adjust your working position. This can be every 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours.
Whether you take advantage of this little nudge from the desk or just decide when it’s time to adjust your working position yourself, the motorised movement is super smooth, and you’ll have no issues with moving the desk up or down while you’ve got a full cup of tea on there. At up to 40mm/s, it’s quick too, so you aren’t waiting an age for it to adjust to its new position.
I’ve been using this desk for several months now and aside from a few niggles in finding my way around the control panel to start with, everything has worked smoothly and without hiccups. Having used a fixed desk at home before switching to the TH2 Pro Plus, I’ve really felt the difference in my working day, and it’s helped to inject a bit of energy into my day when the mid-afternoon slump hits.
Price
The RRP for the desk tested is £549 (about $670), but regular sales on Maidesite’s own website put it around the £389 ($495) mark at the time of writing, which is how it has been evaluated.
That price is made up of the frame, which was £300/$380 at the time of writing (or £280/$355 for white), and desktops that start from £79/$100, depending on size and finish.
Considering the ease of assembly, the quality and design of the materials and the smooth motion in use, that feels like a very fair price indeed.
Should I buy it?
If you’ve been considering upgrading your home office, the Maidesite TH2 Pro Plus standing desk balances out price and performance brilliantly, and looks good while it does it.
Its design-conscious build makes it a particularly attractive choice for anyone who needs to have a desk in a dual-use area in a house, but is also great for anyone who would just prefer something that looks a little softer, while still being efficient and functional.
The range of sizes, and the upgrade potential, makes it very convenient, and the materials used are of great quality. If you’re happy to forgo a real-wood desktop, what’s offered here is near-impeccably made, and has seen no chips, dips or cracks over the busy few months I’ve been testing it.
Aside from its lack of “nice-to-have” features, which you’ll find included on more expensive desks, there’s very little to find fault in with the TH2 Pro Plus. I think anyone adding this into their working lives will be very pleased with the results indeed.
