Flexispot Odin E7Q review: Great standing desk comes at a cost
Purchasing a desk that’s right for you is essential, and if you want one with all the latest bells and whistles, it might set you back a fair bit of cash.
Working from home has only become more prominent over the past few years (for obvious reasons), and having a desk that can work for multiple instances can be incredibly flexible, especially if you are short on space.
The Flexispot Odin E7Q does a lot right, with fantastic build quality, almost silent motor and easy-to-use controls, but it’s certainly expensive.
GGRecon Verdict
Overall it’s hard to find faults in a desk of this quality. Construction is simple enough, and while pre-drilled holes would undoubtedly have helped my anxiety, it was fine without them. Better cable management systems would also be excellent, but some sticky pad cable ties soften the blow of letting everything hang loose.
If you are looking for something that can hold all your consoles, monitors and everything else you can think of and still switch positions without flinching, this is a perfect option - but it comes at a price.
Currently, even at its cheapest, that’s almost £1,070 for the frame/desktop combo, but you can feel secure in your investment given the quality of the components and materials - but Flexispot's E7, with two legs, is roughly half the price, too.
Building the desk
Click to enlargeThe Odin E7Q is a daunting beast when it first arrives, coming in three cumbersome boxes that were a struggle to just get in the lift in my apartment building. The legs are in two separate boxes, and the desktop arrives in another box.
Everything came expertly packaged and, for the most part, felt very secure. While unboxing everything, it became evident very quickly that this is not a single-person job. Due to the sheer weight and size of the Odin, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to build this independently. I’m 6’3 and reasonably strong, but this desk at its full size is nearly as tall and as heavy as me. Thankfully I am able to recruit friends in such instances, and with an assistant to help manoeuvre the pieces, it’s a relatively simple task.
It should be made clear that I am not a very handy person, and unless it's basic Ikea furniture, I have no real experience with any form of crafting that isn’t done in-game. One of the major worries I had was putting everything together. The website clearly states that the desktop for this model does not come with pre-drilled holes, and when it arrives, you are tasked with drilling the holes yourself.
That, for me, meant going out to purchase a drill and then video-call my dad while he explained how to use it. Upon learning the ways of the drill and measuring everything up, everything that followed was easy. As far as I could tell, you didn’t need to create a hole for each screw before putting it in. Instead, you simply drill the screw into the desktop.
This, with a little bit of measurement, meant it’s not far off being pre-drilled anyway. The instruction manual clearly lays out where everything should go, and labelled screws/parts help define each step. Besides the fear of drilling the wrong holes in the wrong places, everything else feels like putting together the flat-pack furniture I have done many times before.
While it’s not too difficult to put together in the end, the final product is enormous. You’ll need a lot of space to both construct and even display this desk in your house. While it’s a case-by-case basis, just finding a place for it to go in my flat was hard enough as is.
One major criticism, especially for a desk of this size, is cable management. With the Odin having four legs, each with separate motors in them, there's a total of six wires all reaching for a control box before factoring in your own setup.
You can pay extra for better cable management solutions, but for a product of this price, hiding wires shouldn’t come as an additional cost. You do get a cloth cover to hide the control box, but it’s nowhere near enough to conceal most of the cables.
The Odin E7Q in use
Click to enlargeThe Odin E7Q has an incredibly minimalist design; there's no RGB or anything like that here. We opted for the standard black desktop, but on the Flexispot website, there are four more options if you are looking for some variety; Maple, Bamboo, Dark Bamboo and White. Other than the wires mentioned above, the only other thing you’ll see is the control panel.
Of course, the primary feature of the Odin is the seamless ability to turn it into a standing desk, and once you set up this handy control panel, it’s just a case of pressing up/down on a keypad. This is where the quality of the product shines the brightest.
Considering it’s lifting plenty of heavy monitors and equipment, it’s almost entirely silent. Open bottles of water don’t move an inch, and if anything gets in the way of it moving, it comes to a complete stop. As someone who can barely sit still at the best of times, the idea that I can switch to a standing mode instantly without disturbing my workflow is incredible.
Click to enlargeNot only that, as someone who uses the desk to film on, I can set certain heights as favourites, using the keypad’s re-mappable buttons, I now have a dedicated filming height at the tip of my fingers. According to the website specifications, this model has an adjustable height of between 60.5cm and 125.5cm giving you plenty of room to find the perfect height for you.
After only a short period of using the Odin, I’m already noticing the positive effects of the standing functions, but naturally, it takes more time to see the long-term ones. As someone who constantly has to keep moving to stay concentrated, I’ve found myself switching the desk height multiple times a day to mix up my arm positions. This level of flexibility really helps break up the 10+ hours of sitting at the same spot every day.
At 160cm wide, there is more than enough room to fit a multi-monitor set-up. Even with three large monitors on top, I have enough space to fit an entire recording set-up with tripods, microphones and lights at the end. It’s also 80cm in depth, so you shouldn’t have to worry about fitting all your accessories on it either!
The Verdict
It’s hard to find fault in a desk of this quality. Construction was simple enough, and while pre-drilled holes would undoubtedly have helped my anxiety, it was fine without them. Better cable management systems would also be excellent, but some sticky pad cable ties soften the blow of letting everything hang loose.
If you are looking for something that can hold all your consoles, monitors and everything else you can think of and still switch positions without flinching, this is a perfect option - but it comes at a price.
Currently, even at its cheapest, that’s almost £1,070 for the frame/desktop combo, but you can feel secure in your investment given the quality of the components and materials - but Flexispot's E7, with two legs, is roughly half the price, too.
Review unit provided by the manufacturer
