Excellent Sit/Stand Desk & High Chair Combination on Budget

After months of researching, I finally decided & purchased a sit/stand desk and a high chair to go with it. The winners are the Bekant sit/stand desk from Ikea and the Deluxe Mesh Back Drafting Chair from Costco.

There are other choices of sit/stand desks available online such as on Amazon, one of them is the ApexDesk 71″ W Electric Height Adjustable Standing Desk. However, the winning decision factors for me are the size, price, hands-on experience, and ease of return.

First, the size of the desk, the dimension of the Ikea Bekant sit/stand desk is 63×31.5″, and the dimension of my old non-sit/stand desk, incidentally also an Ikea product is about 59×31.5″. I actually need a little bit more length on the desk and 63″ is the perfect length sitting next to my bookshelf, as with the 71″ Apex desk,  I would have to relocate my bookshelf which would be a hassle.

Most sit/stand desks cost $500 or more, the price of an Ikea Bekant sit/stand desk when I purchase it is $489 for the black-brown, black color. The white color one is $20 less. So the price range is within my budget for a sit/stand desk, the Apex sit/stand desk is about $599.99 last checked. By the way, other color choices are available for the Ikea Bekant sit/stand desk, but some of them are only available through their online purchase which costs $99 more for the delivery. By the way, the Ikea Bekant sit/stand desk can raise up to 48″, which is more than enough for me since I am not tall. The Apex sit/stand desk can go up to 50″.

When I found out Ikea has the sit/stand desk on their website, I decided to go to the Ikea store not too far from where I live. I was able to actually see it and put my hands on it to see how it works. After pressing the up & down button a few times, I am quite satisfied with how smoothly & quite it operated. Right then I thought to myself this is it. However, the desk stands were out of stock that day and I had to wait a few days before I actually bought them. With other online selling sits/stands desks, I can only see the pictures and rely on the product description and buyer reviews, it would be a great agony when I found out the desk is not the right fit for me after it’s been delivered, which leads to the easy of the return part of my purchasing decision.

Ikea offers a 90-day return/exchange policy and a one-year warranty which to me is decent. However, since they have a store close to me, the return is much easier to deal with if I need to return it due to defect, in contrast with the online purchase of other sit/stand desks, which I will have to repackage it securely to send it back,  and who knows how long I have to wait to get the replacement or refund…I am getting a headache just thinking about the ordeal. However, this is not to say that those online sit/stand desks are not worth the effort totally, some buyers are very happy with their purchase.

Also, I like to mention the setup experience of the Bekant sit/desk, as you may know, most furniture from Ikea requires assembly by the purchaser at home. You may think the sit/stand desk has moving parts so it must be pretty complicated to set it up, but I found the assembly instruction is very easy to follow, and by far the easiest furniture/equipment assembly I have ever done so far. Even though the instruction states the setup process should be done by two people, I did it all by myself. By the way, you can place the up/down push button on either the left or right-hand side of the desk which is nice. The desk also comes with two hard plastic keys/rods (one is for spare) which you have to insert into the push button base to operate the button, this is good for preventing kids from playing with the push button, a good safety feature I must say.

I love the sit/stand desk so much that after about a week or so of using it I started to worry about the wear & tear on the motor already, due to my often “obsessive-compulsive disorder symptom”. So I figured why not get a high chair? but it has to be inexpensive since I have already spent considerably a large sum of money on the sit/stand desk which by the way is worth every penny. After doing a bit of research, I found the Deluxe Mesh Back Drafting Chair from Costco.com.

I used the same purchase decision-making criteria as the sit/stand desk. The price of the chair is only $94.99 when I purchase it. Even though there are only a few buyer reviews on this product on Costco’s website but the rating is pretty high. Since Costco has a very liberal return policy and I can return it to a Costco warehouse near me, I decided to purchase it.

It arrived about a week later since it was an online purchase. I quickly found out the assembly is a lot more frustrating than the Bekant sit/stand desk.  The instruction is not as well written & illustrated as the Bekant sit/stand desk. It took me a while to figure out that I should insert the foot stand from the bottom up into the support rod before inserting the support rod into the chair stand. And one of the screw nobs was pre-screwed in the wrong part which made me think the washers are missing from the other screw nob. At one point I almost wanted to give up and return the chair to the Costco warehouse. With perseverance and ingenuity;-), I finally figured out how to put it together and all is good. One of the buyer’s reviews is accurate on the strong odor of the chair. However, the smell has dissipated considerably after a day or two.

Now after setting the sit/stand desk to the desired standing height, I don’t have to adjust it up and down often which I believe can lower the wear & tear on the motor.

The whole idea of the sit/ stand desk is that you don’t have to sit down all the time while working at your desk. A recent research report states that even if you work out/exercise for an hour every day, the benefit of working out will be canceled out by sitting idle for a long period of time. And people who sit for a longer period of time have a 50% higher chance of heart attack than people who alternate sitting and standing.

Anyway, this is my personal experience on the Bekant sit/stand desk from Ikea and the Deluxe Mesh Back Drafting Chair from Costco.com. I believe there are other great sit/stand desks & high chairs out there, please share your experience if you come across one.

Last Updated: 11/29/2021 –

I have owned the Ikea Bekant sit/stand desk for a little over two years now, what’s my thought on it? Get a hand-crank one instead!! Now the motor has the issue of raising the desk. The desk can’t lower or raised effectively anymore. It can only be raised a little bit with each press of the up button, continuously pressing the up button won’t work anymore. Fortunately, with the high chair, I don’t really need to adjust the desk anymore once I found the optimum height. So, my final thought on the sit/stand desk is to get a manually hand-cranked one with a high chair. It’s much cheaper, and the money you save is enough to buy the high chair with spare change.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked at home most of the time now, and I decided to purchase another sit-stand desk so that I can separate my personal work from other office-related work. This time I chose the VIVO Height Adjustable 63 x 32 inch Stand Up Desk. It’s a hand-cranked version. It actually does not take much effort & time to raise or lower it, and it costs about 50% less than the electric version. The desk setup video instruction on the Amazon product page is very helpful.  I highly recommend it!

For more ergonomically designed office products, please check out the ErogSOS page.

By the way, I just realized how great the Grammarly Tool is for helping me with writing. I found so many typos and grammar issues when I first wrote this post since I didn’t know about this tool. It’s quite embarrassing. You can read my blog post regarding the Grammarly Tool if you like to find out more about this great writing assistance tool.

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