IKEA BEKANT motorised sit and stand desks are now available

by Mark Tyson on 27 October 2014, 11:35

Tags: IKEA, PC

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IKEA has introduced a range of motorised seating/standing desks as part of its BEKANT range. The new range is said to be "relatively affordable". Users simply adjust the desk height via a pair of up/down buttons which wrap from underneath to the user edge of the desk.

Research shows that people in seated professions, desk jockeys and traditional PC gamers are at greater risk of a number of lethal and chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes. Leicester and Loughborough University scientists studied data from almost 800,000 people and concluded that – even if people exercise – spending a lot of your time sitting down is just bad for you.

The researchers suggest a number of ways to break up a deskbound day, for example, by having "standing meetings," lunchtime walks, using the work laptop atop of a filing cabinet in the office and so on. Basically people are encouraged to swap out some of their sitting time for standing or walking time. Therefore a motorised seating/standing desk sounds ideal for swapping sitting time with standing without impacting your productivity.

The cheapest motorised BEKANT desk is £445/$479 and is a simple 120cm long rectangle shape but for a little more you can buy a 160cm model with a curved corner (left or right) shape. The main cost is obviously in the stand mechanism.

Focussing upon the mechanism, it allows you to adjust the desk height electronically from 65cm to 125cm. The desk as a whole has a 10 year guarantee, which is reassuring. There's a cable management net just under the desk top. Buyers can choose from a wide variety of top and leg colour combinations. Legs can be either black or white and the desk top can be birch veneer, oak veneer, black or white with black or white edging.

Do any HEXUS readers already benefit from using a standing desk?



HEXUS Forums :: 18 Comments

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Thats pretty good value - I got my Electric desk 2nd hand, but if that had been around at the time I'd have considered new.
Hope the price will go down, then i might be able to afford it
Not bad, but all I could think about during the video was how bad the faux-typing was!
This is not for me.

That's not saying it's a bad idea, and for some people it's very likely a great idea.

But for me, the idea of standing meetings is …. horrendous. Put it this way. For me, after a few minutes, it'd have about the same physical effect as most people spending hours at the tender mercies of a CIA ‘enhanced interrogation’ team putting them in a stress position. After a couple of minutes simply standing, I'm in some discomfort. After 5 minutes, it's very painful. After 15 minutes, it's agony. And I sure as hell wouldn't be concentrating on a ‘meeting’. Sitting, I can do. Walking, up to a point, is okay. Standing? Not for very long.

For me, I want my desk at the right height, relative to my sitting position. At most, I'd want to adjust the desk once, then lock it off. In reality, I've not yet come across a desk so far off the right height that I can't adjust my chair to achieve the perfect combination. So, spending a not inconsiderable amount on an adjustable desk? Not me. On a high quality chair? Hell, yes. But not on an adjustable desk.

Besides, my home “lab” has fixed position, custom-built work surfaces, including a desk position for my main computer station. And my home office has a rather nice and large ‘executive’ desk. Both have nice adjustable chairs.

My main exercise in the working day is walking between them. :D

So, for me, this is of no use.
Saracen
…On a high quality chair? Hell, yes. But not on an adjustable desk…

As a wheelchair user, an adjustable desk makes much more sense to me (ever try adjusting the height of a wheelchair, you either need a heavy mechanism on the chair or a toolkit), although before the chair I felt differently.

Having got used to moving easily between standing and sitting on a stool, either in laboratories or at a drawing board, I never really understood why offices have desks that you have to sit at rather than high desks and draftsman's chairs. Perhaps it is to keep employees from moving around?