Victor Tech DC840 High Rise Height Adjustable Electric Full Standing Desk

Last year I was temporarily unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From March to around August I didn’t work and instead spent most of my time sitting at a desk or an office chair and figuring out ways to spend the day. During this period, I moved out of my apartment and moved in with my girlfriend who lived 30 minutes away from the job I was on a temporary hiatus from.

When it came time to start working again I was looking at an hour daily commute. By no means is this a horrible amount of time. Plus, I enjoyed the drive. But my job also includes a lot of sitting. And a lot of somewhat awkward standing.

I work at a tea wholesaler and retailer. In the mornings I arrive to work and process orders at a computer. From there I may sit more at a different computer and print out labels for bags that we pack tea into. Later on in the day I may enter in shipping labels at another computer. If someone orders large bulk bags of tea I go to a tub full of tea and bend down and shovel out tea until I get the right weight. Other times I may sit for long periods of time and put tea into tins and then put tamper tape and labels on those tins.

There can be a lot of sitting. But usually I would be fine and after work stretch out on the couch and lay back. After moving, however, I had to drive for 30 minutes to get home. Eventually, after a few weeks of settling into this new routine, I noticed that the back of my right leg would often feel sore during the commute or during a long period of sitting. Usually it was a dull pain but other times I felt the need to rub my leg to maybe get some circulation back to it. For some reason I suppose I just shift my weight to my right side while sitting down and that the office chairs and cars I sit in dig into my leg at the same pressure point.

Sitting for extended periods of time just started to become moderately uncomfortable. And I suppose it didn’t help much that I would also sit down at home, in a chair to play a game or write.

Suffice it to say–despite now living closer to work–I wish I had the Victor Tech DC840 High Rise Height Adjustable Electric Full Standing Desk (or Victor DC840 for short) as an option for both my home and my work.

Let me preface this review of the Victor DC840 by saying that I am new to the world of standing desks. In fact, up until recently I didn’t understand how standing for large periods of time while working would amount to anything more than sore, tired feet and legs.

The Victor DC840 is a fascinating solution to the standing desk by being more than just a very tall desk or a piece that you put on top of your existing desk that gives you more height. For the past month, I’ve incorporated the Victor DC840 into my home office as both a work desk and a viable gaming solution. And I’d be lying if I said others in the house haven’t become taken with the features of the desk.

Arriving in two boxes, the Victor DC840 took about twenty minutes to assemble. The desk top, cords, and height control all come bundled in one box while the legs come in a second box. Once putting the desk top facing down, the legs are locked in placed by turning them into two pre-tightened bolts and then using two other bolts to fully tighten the leg. Two feet are then fastened to the legs with four screws. The control box is attached to the underside of the desk top using three screws. All that’s left to do is plug in the wires, use the included cable management ties if needed, and place the desk on its legs.

The framing and motor are already attached to the desk, meaning that assembly is not a chore. However, this will mean that the two boxes the Victor DC840 ships in are quite heavy, so just be careful. I was quite surprised with how simply the Victor DC840 came together because it took me longer to put together the desk I had been using for my current at-home setup.

Five minutes after turning the Victor DC840 onto its legs I was chuckling with glee. Here is a desk that can raise up to four feet high and drop down to two feet in a matter of seconds. Looking back, it seems so obviously simple. Why not have a desk raise and lower by using a motor that spins the legs up and down?

Apparently there is a slew of mechanical standing desks that I was completely unaware of until the summer of 2021. The Victor DC840 feels like an exceptional desk for those looking to sink their teeth into a more comfortable, versatile home office situation.

The desk can raise and lower between 28.7 inches to 48.4 inches. The height control box located on the right side of the desk has an up and down button that can be pressed once or held down to adjust the height of the desk on the fly. An LED readout indicates the current height the desk sits at. Enjoy the current position the desk is at? Hold down one of the four memory buttons to store that height into the memory. Pressing a memory button while the desk is at any height will raise or lower the desk to the height stored in that position.

I spent far too much time fiddling with the simple controls watching the desk go up and down at the touch of a button. It felt really weird. I’m not sure why the experience was so indescribable to me, I really don’t. But there I was, making a desk go up and down like a child.

Maybe I sound completely unprofessional but keep in mind, this was uncharted territory for me. I pushed the desk to its top threshold, the LED indicator showing “top”, and crouched under it. My girlfriend could almost stand under it entirely.

The Victor DC840 also has a few sensitivity settings that prevent the desk from going up or down if it meets resistance. At its normal setting, bumping the underside or the top of the desk sharply with my fist while it is moving between memorized spots will cause the desk to stop moving. However, the sensitivity precautions don’t seem to come into play when holding down the up or down button. While manually adjusting the height of the Victor DC840, I put a decent amount of force into trying to stop the desk from moving, only for it to carry on its merry way. Because I didn’t want to break the desk, I never used too much force on it. The desk can be further adjusted for more or less sensitivity.

Capable of supporting 110 pounds across its 48 inch by 23.6 inch top, the Victor DC840 is a capable desk for most office set ups. Both my 27 inch and 21 inch monitor sat comfortably on top of the desk, leaving plenty of room for my keyboard, mouse, Yeti microphone, a menagerie of cords (sorry, I had just moved), my wrist pad, and an assortment of cups and other detritus. Normally I keep my gaming tower on a separate desk just for convenience but if I had an ultrawide monitor–or just really wanted to make things cramped–I could comfortably sit the tower on the desk. For now, my PlayStation 5 has to suffice.

Unless normal gamers or at-home workers need mountains of space, there’s no reason the Victor DC840 won’t be a wide or long enough desk to suit those needs. On a Zoom call and need to adjust the height? The electric motor is capable of moving the desk 0.6 inches at under 50 decibels. Doesn’t mean anything to you? That’s fine. Just imagine a barely discernible hum and that’s how loud the desk gets when it moves. A laptop, hot console, or PC chugging along makes just as much noise if not more.

So after a month, how has the Victor DC840 performed? I’ve covered the primary features of the desk and its most important qualities, those were all apparent from the first day with the desk. But spending time off and on with it for days and weeks has revealed a lot.

These days at work I do tend to sit a lot and that gripe I’ve had with my leg crops up often enough. I try to walk around every 30 minutes to an hour. Plus it’s easy to feel a bit uncomfortable trying to sit up straight and stare at a monitor and type out information. When I stand up, I feel less lethargic, even less so when I’m not bending over frequently.

Honestly, I could imagine everyone at work benefitting from a standing desk. At home, using the Victor DC840 makes a lot of sense because I can stand and type for longer periods of time and its easier to walk a few steps rather than having to get up out of a chair and then move around and sit back down. Often I don’t want to get back up after sitting down again. If I get tired of standing, just want a change of position, or am simply sore, I can push a button and be in a sitting position again.

The Victor DC840 is a standing desk and a sitting desk. It can be anything between those two definitions if you would like. It can be adjusted based on a whim or based on an actual need.

In the past month I’ve gotten coffee, food, glue, dirt, oil from my hands, sweat from my brow, soda, and more on the desk. I have yet to notice any scratches and everything else has been wiped or washed off with ease. It’s made of a durable 3/4-inch chipboard that feels like a kind of wood. I’ve used the white model but a black one is available and is probably more in line with what gamers may expect from that style of desk. Multiple times, my girlfriend has used the Victor DC840 as her work station. Unlike me, she works from home and is tied to her computer virtually all day with a job requiring two monitors and a laptop, along with notepads and other accessories. She loves the roominess and the ability to change the desk’s position.

The desk has a heft and weight and doesn’t wobble even when at its top height. The feet extend the width of the desk, meaning it isn’t going anywhere without serious effort. I’m constantly impressed by the build quality and expect it can hold up for years. The motor operating the height adjustment is small and gets the job done and I can’t imagine why it would fail unless used improperly.

Yet I was originally contacted about the Victor DC840 for its potential as a gaming desk. And that’s one of the more interesting ways I can imagine a person using the desk. Does it make sense to game standing up? Can you stream like a pro or pull off headshots without sitting back in a gamer chair?

There have been many times in the past where I’ve gotten up off my seat while playing a game to stand up and move closer to the TV. I can’t really explain why, except that maybe I just felt a rush and wanted to get close to the action. But many times because I was tired of sitting I chose to stand up and play my game for a few minutes. However, it was a bit awkward because I usually was staring down at a TV sitting on a low entertainment stand.

The Victor DC840 is an effective “gamer tool” because of its versatility. You can use it as a standing desk to game on for those moments when you don’t need to sit down for hours at a time or simply sit down when you want. You can place a console on the desk or a fairly large TV and go from there. I can hook my PlayStation 5 up to one of my PC screens and write notes on the other while playing.

Think about any gaming desk you may be looking to buy. Do you want it to do more? I think the Victor DC840 is a path to look to. That being said, its near $500 price tag might be prohibitive for some but we’ve paid nearly the same amount for headsets and consoles, right? Plus, I think the health benefits of standing while gaming could be completely underrated. I mean, my leg feels a lot better when I’m sitting straight up and not putting pressure on my lower half.

Will the Victor Tech DC840 High Rise Height Adjustable Electric Full Standing Desk be up everyone’s alley? Doubtful. It does have a high price tag and I imagine that not everyone is completely sold on the standing desk concept. But I’ve opened up my eyes to this brave new world. Recently I’ve gotten pretty tired of feeling lethargic and sore after sitting down for extended periods of time. With work, gaming, writing, and existing involving a lot of time in a chair, it’s good to have an excuse and a tool that allows for standing to be more effective. It may not have fancy racing stripes, LED lights, or other hallmarks of “gamer” items, but the Victor Tech DC840 is without a doubt, a great item for gamers.