Standing/sitting desk: Cintiq edition!

September 13, 2018 1:06 PM

I’ve been through the previous asks on the subject, and watched various performance videos, but my needs are not typical. I could use some insight from Folks That Actually Own Them. How wobbly is “wobbly”? Can you use a manual eraser while standing? And will bringing my monster Cintiq to the front edge make it unstable?

An accident last year means that I have to vary my position from sitting to standing frequently in order to work at all. I will be typing at my desktop, but also drawing by hand and using my 27-inch Cintiq. (I have a separate easel for wet media.)

I was about ready to order a Fully Jarvis based on previous asks, but a concerned family member (who knows my justified rep for knocking stuff over) expressed doubt about the ability of this desk to withstand me and my equipment. Specifically, although the Cintiq will be mounted on an Ergotron arm at the back of the desk, I do tend to pull it forward and rest it on the edge of my current, sit-only desk. So at least part of the tablet’s weight will be on the front of the desk. And maybe a book or two. Or three.

The Jarvis specs indicate it can handle the weight, but will the placement of the weight be a problem? Also, I will perform some manual tasks there, including ink drawing. If you have a Jarvis, do you find the desk to be stable enough for non-tech tasks? Does it seem as though it wants to tip forward under a load?

posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

That thing looks sturdy enough, the boy in the video was sitting and standing on the desk without issue. I have an XP-Pen 22, which isn't quite a Cintiq, but surely can't weigh too much more. Seems like you should be able to sit on the desk at the edge and it'd be fine, so even the heaviest monitor should be fine. I'd be more worried of knocking the monitor to the ground than the desk itself collapsing. Wobblyness, though, that doesn't seem knowable just from looking. Sorry to chime in without owning one myself, like you were seeking, but I am also curiou about the answers to this. I now have a desk job where I sit on my ass all day and it's crazy how much worse my body feels and looks compared to my other job where I'm standing up and running around all day. I'm not ever going to use my free time to exercise, but I've been flirting with the idea of a new standing desk to keep me on my feet when I go home. Plus standing and working on my drawing-monitor would help me get into the traditional media workflow where I'm usually standing at an easel (or crouched on the ground like a goblin).

Maybe I should just ask you in a few months how it's worked out before dumping several hundos into heavy objects.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:18 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have a Jarvis, and I love it. At standing height, I'm totally comfortable aggressively leaning on it (I'm ~220 lbs and 5'8" ... so this isn't at its highest setting). It's super solid front to back.

However, I hate the Jarvis dual monitor arms (I just bought them, and am looking at returning them). They are the bit that fails your eraser test. I just tried erasing while standing, and the desk moves a bit side-to-side, but not noticeably more than my dining room table. It didn't feel problematic to me, but the monitor wobbled a LOT due to slop in the tab that attaches it to the arm.
posted by Metasyntactic at 4:40 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I’ve got a 27” iMac and a 22HD Cintiq (no arm, just plopped right on there!) on my Fully Jarvis as we speak and have never had any trouble! There’s a very slight wobble in general on the desk when it’s at standing height but I’ve never been worried about it collapsing or anything falling off.
posted by caitcadieux at 6:05 AM on September 14, 2018

Response by poster: I got the Jarvis! So far, so good, and my Cintiq and I (on its Ergotron arm) are very happy!
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 4:12 PM on November 13, 2018