For the money this desk is awesome. Could it be better? Probably. But for the money it gets extremely high grades. First, the packaging is so protective. Who hasn't had the horror of lugging a big box of unassembled furniture home (or had delivered) only to open it and find some of the pieces smashed or broken? But this has been packaged in a way to really help prevent that. The cardboard box is extremely heavy duty and sturdy and they have placed plastic corner supports to help prevent the dreaded damage that happens to the corners. And on the inside they have further protected the worktop with rubber corner bumpers. I have never had anything so well packaged. The assembly instructions are pretty easy to follow. Each part is CLEARLY labeled with a letter....but not stuck on the actual item but insted on a plastic wrap around the item, so you don't have to struggle to try to remove these stickers. The hardware are all individually packatged and labeled...AND....just in case....they also provide a packet of extra pieces in case you lose one. The instructions are all drawings....no words....so they are very easy to follow but if you have difficulty with those types of instructions you may not like these. Because some reviews had managed the difficulty of flipping the table over if doing this by yourself.......and because I was doing it by myself......I was pretty afraid of breaking the top, which is really 2 separate pieces. So instead I opted to assemble the top right-side-up, instead of upside-down as instructed. It took me a minute to be extra careful to envision which direction to place the top on the legs in that orientation, but it was definitely a lot easier for me to not have to flip the table over. There were many reviews stating that the drawer was not very good and I agreed with them. It was more like a felt storage box and I felt the grey color was not in keeping with the desk that I got (Rustic Brown) so I opted to just not install that drawer and to have a more clean look. The Rustic Brown option was the best option for where I was putting the desk, but as expected, it is the kind of fake wood look that is like a photo of wood that has been laminated on top of some kind of particle boards. I do fear a little that it will scratch but time will tell. For the price I didn't expect anything more. The two boards for the top are held together with 4 wooden pegs and then 3 metal brackets. I used my own glue on the wooden pegs as they were so loose they were basically not doing anything to hold the pieces together. The brackets are a good idea. Even with all those connections, the 2 pieces do not exactly join seamlessly. It's fine but not perfectly perfectly even flat across. If you are looking for this to be a nice piece of furniture in a nice room with other hardwood expensive furniture, then you will be disappointed. But if you know exactly what this kind of disassembled furniture (like the stuff from Target or Christmas Tree Shop) is like then you will know just what this is. For the price that is what I expected and I was so pleased with the packaging and easy instructions that I rate this very highly. Now must of us are probably buying this for the standing feature. I have not used it enough to speak to it's quality, but so far it is working very well. I have used an expensive standing desk at my previous job and this seems to work on the same smoothness level as that one. Even better, this one has preset positions that you can store in memory (3 of them) so I find that to be very convenient. The previous desk I used did not have this and it is definitely a bit of a pain to have to judge the right position each time you change from sitting to standing. In the future, if I ever decided I needed a better aesthetic, I am sure I could simpley replace the top with my own wood as it very simply screws onto the moving base. I am quite pleased with this.
