Brödan Electric Standing L Desk review

This Brödan Electric Standing L Desk review takes a look at an attractive option for creatives looking to make the most of space in a home office, and to look after their posture too. Standing desks for the creative community have, for some time now, been a byword for productivity and a pleasing, highly functional office space. Designed to reduce the strain on your back and neck during long work periods, they’ve become very popular among the creative, design and photographic communities, enabling easy multitasking and a flexible step for most office environments.

The Brödan Electric Standing L Desk is a motorised option, which unusually for desk setups for home office environments, is able to be configured in a left or right L-shaped setup, meaning that it can be placed in either corner of a room. For this review, I used it daily in a home office for about a month. I'll look at its setup and construction, how easy it is to live with on a daily basis, the benefits of its height range and whether there’s anything I'd change. For more options, see our guides to the best standing desks and the best L-shaped computer desks.

Brödan Electric Standing L Desk review: design

Brödan's offering doesn’t have many competitors, as full-sized motorised L-shaped desks are fairly rare. Partly due to the bulk (and therefore price), many manufacturers stick to more flexible single-standing desk arrangements that can fit into a wider range of spaces. But, if you have the room for it, the design of the Brödan Electric Standing L Desk adds a huge amount of flexibility to a workspace. 

It's configured with three extendable legs, which can be placed in a right L or left L depending on where in the room you want to place it. I tested the darker black/walnut desk setup, although Brödan does also offer a light grey/light oak combination. 

The first thing that’s striking is the bulk and the weight of the packages – if you have a long way to carry it before you set it up - we’d advise caution! The weight is ultimately down to the desk’s durability and sturdiness: the solid wooden tops are more than an inch thick. The legs are also solid and support more than 120kg of weight on top. This is pretty impressive when compared to similar desks on the market. The rounded corners of the desk add a degree of softness to its appearance, and overall the overriding feeling is one of high quality and parts that have been well thought out and manufactured.

Brödan Electric Standing L Desk review: Price and availability

The standing desk’s RRP is on the slightly pricey side, coming in at between $999 / £850 and $1,200 / £1,000 depending on the retailer. It was out of stock on Amazon at the time of writing but could be ordered from Brödan’s own website and from Overstock.

Brödan Electric Standing L Desk review: set up

As we’ve already mentioned, the packages are heavy. The desk comes in two boxes shipped separately: one for the wooden desktops (which are the heaviest units) and one for all three legs, the power unit for the motorised components and the cables and associated clips. 

It’s worth bearing in mind that the table has to be constructed ‘upside down’, with the tabletop lying on the floor and the frame built on top of it. Although the process is fairly easy – the instructions are good and clearly label which screws to use where – when it’s fully built, it is rather difficult to manoeuvre into place. One criticism is that the smaller tabletop that creates the ‘L’ shape is only held on to the other section with a small metal plate and a handful of short screws - the process of turning the table the right way round created a buckled section in our unit with some small cracks. Although hidden, it’s a shame, so our recommendation would be to ensure that at least two people turn it round to distribute the weight evenly.

Brödan Electric Standing L Desk review: use

I found daily use of the standing desk for photo editing and other concentrated work to be a pleasure. Its motorised system is quiet, efficient and speedy, and the three different presets on the simple control panel are simply established by holding the button down when the desired height is reached. The presets are very helpful, and I set ours up to the perfect sitting and standing heights on each one. At the desk’s full height, there is a little wobble, but the leg stabilisers on the bottom that enable it to sit away from the wall do a good job of keeping everything in one place. For its size, it’s among the sturdiest desks we’ve used.

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One other stand-out feature is the tabletop power units, offering two USB ports and two main outlets on the top of the desk. It stops you from having to rummage around under the desk to find your plug adaptors, which makes more of a difference than you’d first imagine. One word of warning is that we’d advise getting a set of adaptors if you're not in the US, as the desk ships with US inputs and outputs. We’d also recommend a spare pack of third-party cable management clips, as we found the ones that ship with the desk are not sticky enough to keep the weighty cables in one place. There’s enough length on them though to tuck them away neatly along the main metal desk supports.

Brödan Electric Standing L Desk: The competition

As we’ve already mentioned, competition is fairly limited for this kind of desk, and with this level of quality. There are a few other options. The closest competition is from Jarvis, which offers a similar corner desk with a bamboo worktop. It comes at a similar price point but looks slightly less durable, although it does offer four rather than three preset heights. There are some slightly cheaper options from the likes of Febizo, but we can't vouch for their build quality or day-to-day usability.

Brödan Electric Standing L Desk: should you buy it?

If you’ve got the space and don't mind the price, the set up time and the overall weight, we can’t recommend this desk highly enough. It may not be for everyone, but we can’t think of a better standing desk of this size. We especially like the desktop power ports, the smooth operation of the motor and the thick, durable feel of the wooden table tops. 

The set-up process wasn't the smoothest, and we also think it could do with better cable management options, but once you have it set up, these aren't issues. For larger home offices or design studios looking to add desk space, the Brödan Electric Standing L Desk is a great option that should last a long time.

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