Editor's Note: The Branch Duo Standing desk is currently 15% off during the brand's Black Friday sale.
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Since 2014 my “desk” has been a piece of an old Brooklyn bowling alley I refinished and fashioned with black steel pipes for legs back when those sort of industrial Pinterest DIYs were very much de rigeur. But the truth is: It wobbled, it wasn’t particularly comfortable to sit at, and it made me slowly retreat from my home office until the room became nothing more than a repository for mystery USB cables. If I was going to reclaim my space, I needed a different anchor point.
I am admittedly a moderately disorganized person, and need a desk that forces some order to my workspace. I also move around—a lot. When I’m in my Manhattan office I regularly move from desk to counter to meeting room because I find sitting still a challenge. So I’ve always found the idea of a standing desk appealing, but I’d written off many older models as too irritating to adjust. I was in need of one that was versatile enough to let me go from sitting to standing and back again repeatedly without messing up the actual flow of my work.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve been trying out the Branch Duo standing desk and it has been all that. And most importantly, I actually want to work in my home office again.
Design
Like most of Branch’s desks and tables, the Duo has clean lines and Scandi appeal—a dream for minimalist office set ups. It has the kind of utilitarian look and feel that makes me want to actually get some work done, aided by the design’s capacity to take on organizational extras like a cable management system and hidden outlets.
My office is on the small side, but the midsize, 48"-long desktop fits comfortably in my space. For a particularly tight squeeze in a studio apartment though, Branch also makes a petite 36" top, and for someone with a corner office, a luxuriously large 58" long top. And while I went with a fairly neutral walnut top on a white base, Branch does have a lot of color and finish combos—seven different tops and four different bases—to let you customize the look.
The most important feature of the Duo’s design though, is its ability to serve as a stationary or standing desk. The telescoping legs operate via a discreetly placed paddle on the front corner of the desktop and offers a digital read of the desk height so you can set it to the right level without trial and error. (As an ergonomic standard, you’ll want to aim for the distance between the floor and wherever your elbows are when at a 90° angle).
My Experience
As ever with DTC furniture, my Branch Duo journey started with assembly. Because it’s an electronic as well as a piece of furniture, the process was a little more complicated than a simple dining table, but the whole thing took about 30 minutes and I was able to do it myself. The only problem to note with delivery was that all my accessories (a drawer, a cable management system, a set of plugs) arrived about a week after the desk. And if you don’t assemble everything at the same time, the process of flipping the desk upside down after it’s already upright was a bit annoying.
Though once it was up and running, I instantly took to the design. The ease of switching between sitting and standing let me do it regularly throughout the workday, which I found gave me a little extra pop of energy.
With respect to the desk’s movement, Branch takes pride in its low decibel motors and I did find the desk to be relatively quiet when adjusting from sitting to standing; it had the hum of a low-powered fan. The desk also comes with the ability to program height presets (one for sitting, one for standing), which is easy to miss because the program button blends in so well with the rest of the desk.
Finally, I found the design helped with some of my, er, shortcomings. I am a notorious spreader. My desks have always been a mess of cords, cups, and miscellany that cause passersby a great deal of anxiety, as I’ve been told. But the extras available for the Duo have so far kept it far clearer than previous workspaces, and tucked things away such that I never felt cramped or crowded.
Standout Features
The push-button nature of the adjustment system makes the Duo a flexible piece of furniture that easily accommodates however I’m feeling (am I ready to stand for a couple hours or do I need to spend the day sitting?). But the extras are the things that help organize my office.
I love the size of the drawer, which runs almost the whole length of the desktop, and can hold most of what I was keeping in a small three drawer cabinet that’s now been moved out. And an underappreciated feature of the Duo (which, to be fair, you can find on other desks if you look for it) is the cutout in the back, that helps easily tuck cords away, giving a clean feel.
I didn’t choose it, but for the smart-home-heads out there it’s worth noting that the Duo comes in an app-compatible, Bluetooth-enabled version as well. The app lets you adjust the desk from your phone and tracks how much time you spend sitting versus standing.
Final Verdict
The Branch Duo offers a desk that feels like a long-term, quality piece of furniture at a fairly affordable price ($550, but I’ve seen it on sale more than once for well under $500). Because it’s so easy to adjust, it’s a great choice for someone who, like me, has some trepidation about committing to a standing desk. And all the extras can leave even an organizationally challenged professional feeling better about their space.
More than anything, I found the thought behind so many of the design elements—the quiet movement, the prodding towards a clean, clear workspace, the encouragement to move throughout the day—has a human feeling to it that I welcome in a space that lacked it in my house.
