Electric Standing Desk, 55 by 28 Inch One-Piece Maple Top with White Steel Frame

This is a motorized sit-to-stand desk with a 55 by 28 inch work surface that raises and lowers between 28.1 and 45.7 inches. It suits a home office where the desk has to work for a full day of sitting and still let you stand for calls, and where the desk is visible from the rest of the room rather than hidden in a spare bedroom.

Two details make this worth the price over the cheaper lift desks. The first is the desktop: it is a single one-inch panel rather than two half-panels bolted together down the middle, so there is no seam running through the middle of your workspace and no gradual sag where the two halves meet. The second is the controller. Four programmable memory presets mean you set your sitting and standing heights once and press a button, instead of holding a rocker switch and eyeballing it every time. The motor runs under 50 decibels, which is quiet enough not to interrupt a call.

The top is a light natural maple tone and the legs are white powder-coated alloy steel, a combination that stays visually quiet in a room rather than reading as office equipment. A removable clamp-on power strip with three outlets and two USB ports attaches to the back or the side, and a cable management clamp keeps the cords off the floor. The desk ships in two boxes and assembly is a two-person job that may require a drill.