I Didn t Expect This To Be The Best Shape Desk

My desk is always cluttered between my notepads, handhelds, and a bunch of other random tech accessories and it just seems like every day there's one more piece added to the mix piling on top of my desk. But then the solution struck me as I was eating alphabet soup for lunch one day. Those floating letters got me thinking, what's the best letter shape for your desk? I've only ever used an I-shaped desk and how can I claim to know anything if I've only used one letter desk shape? I couldn't live in ignorance anymore, so my team and I went online to find every different desk shape to put an end to this question once and for all. Now I ended up with a few decent options, so we put them to the test to find the best. The first desk I'm testing for the video is this U-shaped desk I stumbled upon on Amazon. I say stumbled because you can't actually go into the search bar and type in U-shaped desk. It's called the PAMRE 71 inch large computer desk. The Amazon listing is for only $120. I opted for the stained wood color, but there's no way it's real wood, right? There's no way a $120 desk is that good. All the desks I usually end up liking are in the $300 to $500 range. Plus if you look closely at the monitors, the scale is all wrong. Everything looks photoshopped to look smaller than reality. Nothing whets the appetite like a little false advertising. When this thing arrived a few days later and was finally built, I was left with this suspicious looking U-shaped desk. I mean, it looks way smaller than I thought, and it's super lightweight. But then I realized to actually test these setups, you can't just look at them. You need to build a setup and try them out for real. So I came up with a repeatable setup I could use for each desk that included two monitors, a chair, a keyboard, a mouse, and a laptop docking station. Along with a few extras like my notebooks, to-do list, gaming controller, and more. Just to see how all the normal desk clutter fits into these setups. The only thing I didn't do was cable manage. So if you see some nasty looking cables, cut us some slack because my team had to rebuild this setup multiple times for this video. So after actually building the setup on this desk and getting everything installed, I had a chance to sit down and just soak it all in. I did a bit of work, took some notes, and a few things really jumped out at me. Now the obvious benefit to a U-shaped desk is you've got some more desk space and the side spaces are close and accessible to you. Everything is within reach, super convenient in theory. But when I first sat at it, something immediately felt wrong. A creeping sensation hit me like the walls were closing in and my chest started to tighten. The desk is claustrophobic and tight. It's like you're stuck in a little circle and if you move, you're going to bump into the walls. But the problems don't stop there. The depth is also a bit short for my taste. The shallowness puts the monitor much closer to your face. It's really tiring to look at when it's that close. It also has a power strip built in, which you would think is awesome, but it was in a horrible position and my monitor just ended up sitting on top of it. Plus it has all these legs in the way, so if you turn and want to start taking notes, you just start bumping into things. The sides don't extend out quite far enough either, so you have to lean uncomfortably when using the side areas. But there are some good parts to it too. It has this storage on front where you can put your keyboards, your controllers, and handhelds, and it looks pretty cool. I also like the stained wood look, even though the tabletop is quite thin and cheap looking. But overall, I'm not ready to discount the U-shaped design yet, but I do think this desk in particular could just be 25% bigger and it would solve 90% of its problems. But let's move on to something less claustrophobic. This next desk shape is a bit more common and it's much easier to find online. You could actually search for this and they're called L-shaped desks. These can be nice because they slot easily into a corner of your room and they utilize the space well. When I did my last desk video, I got a million comments asking me to test these out, so I reached out to Uplift Desk and they sent it out for us to test for today's video, but no money exchanged hands, just a desk. Uplift Desk is cool because they let you build your exact setup however you want, down to the length of both sides, the desktop material, the grommets, and more. It's cool, but it's pricey because this setup came out to be a whopping $1,500. Granted, it's a super sturdy desk with a thick desktop, chunky legs, and it moves up and down. At least it's not in the $100 cheapo range like the last time. However, I'm not sure if it's supposed to make this sound when I move it, but we may have assembled it wrong. Sound aside, I gotta say it's already looking better than the U-shaped desk, but alas, we gotta test it. If you're looking for the perfect shaped desk, the next thing that matters most is what you sit in when you're not standing. So let's talk about a chair many are calling one of the best, the LibraNovo Omni from today's sponsor. This chair raised a whopping $9 million on Kickstarter last year, making it one of the biggest chair launches ever. Now they're back, better and greener than ever. LibraNovo recently launched a moss green option, and I gotta say, it looks pretty good. Everything from the wheels to the back to the headrests are this beautiful green color. It really stands out and says, I'm special while also being appropriate for office use. They still have their classic midnight black and space gray options as well. Not to mention the headrest on it also has been improved. It can now be pulled back farther for a more comfortable fit. If this is your first time hearing about the LibraNovo Omni, what makes it different from other chairs, it's actually built around movement and spinal health. The adaptive lumbar shifts with your spine as you lean or twist so your lower back stays supported instead of fighting the chair. You can also dial in your recline tension so it pushes back exactly the way you want it. Light and flexible or firm and supportive. And when you're sitting for long hours, the micro movement massage feature keeps your spine from getting compressed so you don't get that end of day lower back stiffness. I find myself adjusting the lumbar support throughout the day to give my back a break, which can be easily done with the push of a button. And if you enjoy the reclining life, they also offer a footrest, which also comes in the moss green color. So if you want to upgrade your setup, you can get the LibraNovo Omni using the link below. They're currently running a special promotion so you can save money and sit better. This desk is interesting because it has a couple of cool features like a grommet that pops up and down and it can charge your tech. It also has a hole you can feed your cables in and out of. I also ordered a drawer for a bit of extra storage and it has a cup holder, extra nice. All these extra features make it feel homey, make it feel like you could hang out here for a long time to work. Then I got the monitor set up, the keyboard, the mouse and everything and I sat down and gave it a good feel. Instantly, the distance from my eyes to the monitor was much better. The desk has enough depth so you can slide the monitors back a healthy amount and it's 27.5 inches instead of only 19 inches on the U-shaped desk. Could this be the one? The perfect desk shape for me? I was seriously considering that until I scooted forward and got to typing and that's when I realized I made a grave error. The sharp 90 degree angle between the desk made it super awkward to type on. I don't know if I should rest my arms on the chair armrest or the desk or both but then I had a duh moment and came to the conclusion that this desk is supposed to be used with all your monitors on one side. That's a little unfortunate because I sort of like the idea of working in the corner and then turning to more desk space if I wanted to but after painstakingly moving everything to the right side, it was now pretty comfortable to sit at and use. Now one side of the desk is for working at the PC while the other side is for taking notes, writing on my to-do list, charging my phone, storage. It's like each side of the desk now serves a purpose. So in that regard, it's not that bad but I think I would prefer a desk that lets me use it with the monitors on the corner. That just makes sense, right? And that's when I stumbled onto my next desk. This one might be the one that is the perfect setup since it solves this exact problem and that's an R-shaped desk. Specifically, a lowercase R. An uppercase R desk would make literally no sense. I found this one on Amazon as well while scrolling through the endless abyss of desks and I almost passed by it. It's the TerraVist desk for $190. Ah, another cheap desk. Why are all these interesting letter shapes so cheap? There's a million standing desk companies out there. Someone needs to make these into some reasonable mid-range products with high quality. This desk in particular also flirts with some mild false advertising by photoshopping monitors and laptops onto the setup that are just not right. It gives me flashbacks to the U-shaped desk but there's one thing about it that caught my eye. It looks exactly like an L-shaped desk but with one crucial change. Instead of a hard 90 degree angle where the two limbs meet, it now uses a smooth rounded angle. Maybe this is the one. One of the Amazon images show an ample 30.62 inches away from your eyes to the monitor. Hopefully this one won't be a problem like it was on the first desk. So I put in my order and waited for it to arrive and once it was assembled, I could feast my eyes on the new desk. It's got some interesting things going on. Much like the first U-shaped desk, this one is cheap and light. The wood tabletop is pretty thin and rickety but it does have some cool things like a built-in bookshelf and storage so you don't need to clutter up your space unnecessarily. Cautiously optimistic though, I went ahead and built my two monitors setup and I put it straight in the corner. I also like how it has this little gap in the corner of the wall where I can stuff all my cables through. Who needs cable management when you can have a cable black hole to stuff them in? Now as I finished the setup, I couldn't help but hope that this would be the one. I'd already plunged our entire office into chaos building three massive desks to answer a question that's borderline a meme at this point but as I sat down and tested it, I gotta say it's pretty comfortable. I can slot into the corner of the desk and look at all my monitors and then roll to one side and utilize all the extra space. It felt like the end game solution but something was bugging me and that's when it hit me, the monitors are way too close to your face. The Amazon image lied to me, it said 30.62 inches so I grabbed a tape measure and put it to the test and to my devastation, I was actually 24 inches away from the monitors, not what they said it would be and you can't slide the monitors back farther since they already hit the walls so unless you wanna pull your desk out and push your monitors back, you're out of luck but I wasn't ready to give up yet so I tried a slightly different setup. I moved the monitors so one was on the left, one was slotted back into the corner and then I used my laptop as a third monitor on the right. This let me slide things back a little bit farther and put them at a more comfortable distance. Instantly, it was better but still a bit too close so not quite the perfect solution. However, there is some magic to this lowercase r solution. If we could just get one with a little more depth to the desk, maybe an extra four to five inches, this could be the near perfect setup and then if they added the standing desk functionality, make the desk sturdier, thicker, we'd be in business. So maybe the true answer is that the perfect desk doesn't exist yet but there's still one nagging question in the back of my brain. How does all this compare to a normal boring I-shaped desk? Why go for a capital L, lowercase r or U when you could just get a bigger and better desk? Well, I think this comes down to the space you have available. The other letters take up a lot of extra room but some of them work really well in an empty corner and you can utilize that space better. On the other hand, if you have a huge empty wall, like I do, an I-shaped desk will fill in that space better without having a piece just jut out. Or maybe the solution is to just utilize the space you have better. Adding a bit of storage or drawers could go a long way to reduce clutter and operate in a more efficient space. Going bigger might just be taking the lazy way out but if space was no constraint and I was already utilizing my space perfectly and I needed more, I think the lowercase r is the best desk shape. But not when the only options are cheap Amazon listings. If you want to pick out a really good standing desk that isn't sketchy or cheap, check out this video next.