This is the most customizable desk we’ve ever tested, and it works for people of a wide range of heights (between 5-foot-4 and 6-foot-9).
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Of the desks we’ve tested, the Uplift V2 Standing Desk offers the best mix of performance and features. Its controls are responsive, and it barely wobbles, even at tall heights.
It accommodates people of the average female and male seated and standing heights. But if you’re shorter than 5-foot-4, the desk likely wouldn’t work for you if you were sitting without a footrest.
Uplift’s walnut laminate and bamboo desktops are attractive, and you can get them in a curved design if you prefer. In addition to those finishes, you can choose from nearly 30 other finish options, four frame colors, five grommet colors, and three keypad colors. And there are multiple add-on accessories, so you can truly make this desk your own.
For more, read our guide to the best standing desks.
This standing desk converter is a sturdy, compact riser that's easy to use and available in several sizes and finishes to suit various office setups.
Of all the standing desk converters we tried, the FlexiSpot AlcoveRiser Standing Desk Converter M7 was the top choice among our testers. It’s easy and quick to adjust, sturdy yet light, and available in a wide range of sizes and colors.
This two-level converter can handle up to 37 pounds of equipment. Plus, it includes a roomy keyboard tray that can accommodate a laptop or a full-size keyboard and mouse with room to spare.
For more, read our guide to the best standing desk converters.
This mat’s varied terrain encourages movement, so standing is less tedious and achy. And you can easily move the mat when you switch between standing and sitting.
You’ll need a comfortable place to stand while you work at your standing desk. The Ergodriven Topo’s contoured surface gives you lots of different ways to place your feet, and our testers found this mat more comfortable than others with topographic features.
However you stand, the Topo relieves pressure on your heels, legs, back, and shoulders. It’s also resistant to spills and punctures, and you can move it around with one foot, instead of having to bend over to reposition it.
Several Wirecutter staffers have used this mat for years. Even desk-mat skeptics have shared that they move around on the Topo more than they expected to, and this is where the real benefit of standing versus sitting comes from.
For more, read our guide to the best standing desk mats.
This is one of the most adjustable chairs available—anyone can make the Gesture comfortable, regardless of their height or size—and it’s built to last.
The Steelcase Gesture is expensive—about $1,400 at this writing. But if you sit for long periods, this chair is well worth the investment for its support, adjustability, and comfort, all of which should last for over a decade.
The Gesture is one of our longest-lasting picks—we’ve been recommending it since . And it’s one of the most comfortable, supportive, and durable office chairs we’ve ever tested. From the back support to the fabric quality to the dependable adjustment knobs, everything has stood the test of time.
The Gesture also comes in the widest range of fabrics and finishes of the office chairs we’ve tested, so you can customize its appearance for your workspace.
For more, read our guide to the best office chairs.
Balancing structure and comfort, this cushion’s proprietary material offers substantial spinal support without pushing you forward. Because it lacks straps, you have to readjust it often.
The small but mighty Tempur-Pedic LumbarCushion Travel is the best lumbar-support cushion, relieving pressure without producing the dramatic, sinking-in feel of most Tempur-Pedic mattresses and bedding. The cushion’s slight curvature molds to your spine, keeping you in a comfortable, upright position.
The LumbarCushion Travel also has a removable, machine-washable cover that’s chic-looking and easy to clean. And in our testing the pillow’s proprietary foam didn’t lose shape or density, even after prolonged use.
For more, read our guide to the best lumbar support pillows.
This footrest has a washable cover that’s easy to remove and feels great on bare feet, and the high-density foam offers firm yet cushy support. It can be used as a foot rocker, and it’s height-adjustable.
If your feet don’t touch the floor when you’re sitting all the way back in your desk chair, you should consider getting a footrest. In our testing, the ComfiLife Foot Rest outshone all of its competitors. It offers firm, all-day comfort, thanks to its foam construction, which provides a plush surface and a soft give.
For added movement, you can even flip it over for rocking. The base is detachable, so you can use it at a height of either 3.9 inches or 5.9 inches, and it stays in place on both hard and carpeted floors.
We also love that the cover is easy to remove when you want to toss it in the washing machine (just remember to use the gentle cycle).
For more, read our guide to the best under-desk footrests.
Made of thin yet dense memory foam, this contoured cushion encourages better seating posture than completely flat alternatives. At 2 inches thick, it does not provide much added height.
For proper ergonomics when you’re sitting at your desk, your legs should be at about a 90-degree angle to your hips. If your seat is too low and your knees are higher than 90 degrees, you should adjust your seat higher. If your chair doesn’t have that feature, we suggest adding a seat cushion.
We recommend the Tempur-Pedic Seat Cushion for people who prefer cradling, firm support and helpful posture adjustment over ample cushioning and height. Testers praised this cushion for offering firm, stable support without requiring too much adjustment. The 16-by-16-inch cushion fit well on the three chairs we tested it with. And its stretchy nylon-and-spandex cover is fully removable and machine-washable.
For more, read our guide to the best ergonomic seat cushions.
This lap desk is the total package in terms of style, comfort, stability, and build quality, and it includes a few storage features.
The LapGear Designer Lap Desk has a clean, simple design, and it comes in a variety of colors and patterns. It’s sturdy and well made, and it feels comfortable and cool in your lap. This lap desk weighs about 2 pounds, and it measures 17.75 inches across—wide enough to fit both a 13-inch laptop and a mouse or a larger laptop (up to 17 inches) alone. It has a handle, so you can carry it around or hang it up. You’ll also find a spot to perch your and an elastic strap for storing index cards or a pen. Toward the front edge, a short, unobtrusive plastic laptop rest keeps your stuff from sliding off. This lap desk works equally well for left- and right-handed people.
For more, read our guide to the best lap desks.
This high-security shredder offers the best balance of price, sheet capacity, and ease of use. But the pullout bin isn’t as large as the ones in other models we’ve tested.
The Royal 14MC 14-Sheet Micro Cut Paper Shredder is a Costco-exclusive model (available to non-members for about $4 extra), and it offers the best value for a paper shredder. It has nearly twice the sheet capacity and a longer warranty than competing micro-cut shredders that cost about the same.
Like other micro-cut shredders, the Royal 14MC shredder chomps documents into tiny shreds, making any sensitive paperwork all but impossible to reassemble. Through batch after batch of our paper-shredding tests, it ran jam-free and quietly (for a shredder), and we found the large buttons and indicator lights simple to understand.
For more, read our guide to the best paper shredders.
This safe is certified to withstand high-temperature fires for twice as long as the competition. However, it weighs 42 pounds and has the footprint of a mini fridge.
The Honeywell Lightweight Fire and Waterproof Chest is independently verified by the safety organization Intertek to keep personal items safe during a fire for up to an hour—twice as long as the competition—in conditions as hot as 1,700 °F. And Honeywell says the chest will keep floodwater out for 100 hours.
It’s large enough to hold both letter- and legal-size sheets of paper, and they don’t have to be folded. The additional protection makes the Honeywell noticeably larger and heavier than other safes of similar capacities—it weighs 42 pounds and takes up the same amount of floor space as a mini fridge.
For more, read our guide to the best fireproof document safes.
This label maker trades a built-in screen and keyboard for an easy-to-use smartphone app. It’s compact and portable, prints quickly, and automatically cuts labels. And Brother’s design software offers plenty of customization options.
The compact Brother P-touch Cube Plus is a Bluetooth label maker that consistently prints good-looking, high-quality labels durable enough to survive multiple runs through the dishwasher. But what we love about this label maker is how easy it is to create and print labels with Brother’s Design&Print 2 smartphone app, which is equipped with a huge library of fonts, templates, and symbols. Offering a rechargeable battery, the ability to auto-cut labels as they print, and compatibility with a wide range of tape sizes, the Cube Plus is a convenient, portable device that can get the job done no matter the labeling project. Although it lacks the built-in screen and keyboard that many longtime labelers may be used to, we’ve found that the familiarity of typing on a keyboard makes this model easier to use overall.
For more, read our guide to the best label makers.
If you need a pen to take notes during a teleconference or to hastily scribble down an idea, the Uni-ball Jetstream RT is the one to grab.
It’s widely available, and it created some of the smoothest, quickest-drying lines in our testing. It doesn’t bleed, it doesn't skip, it doesn’t feather. It dries indelibly and so quickly that left-handed people can use this pen without worrying about smudging.
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The Jetstream RT also requires very little pressure, so once you get a feel for it, you can write quickly because it pretty much glides over the page, especially if you write in cursive.
It comes in sizes from 0.38 mm up to 1.0 mm, with a bunch of different bodies in different styles.
For more, read our guide to the best pens.
This metal pencil is a pleasure to use, thanks to its smooth grip section and satisfying, solid knock.
At under $10, the Blick Premier Mechanical Pencil is a stellar value. It writes smoothly, and in our tests, the lead never snapped because this model has a lead-cushioning mechanism to prevent breakage.
Most other retractable options require you to hold down the knock (usually the top of the eraser cap) while pressing down on the tip to retract it. But the Blick Premier pencil extends or retracts the lead sleeve instantly, with a single click, similar to a retractable pen. This mechanism helps you avoid the issue that is all too common with other retractable mechanical pencils: mistakenly advancing the lead when you intended to retract the tip.
For more, read our guide to the best mechanical pencils.
After interviewing experts, researching over 100 notebooks, and writing zealously in 34 of them side by side over several weeks, we have picks in a number of sizes and styles.
This notebook is a pleasure to use, thanks to its sturdy yet lightweight cardstock cover, excellent paper quality, and lie-flat design. The medium size can serve a wide range of purposes.
With page numbers, index pages, two ribbon bookmarks, and sticker labels, this notebook has all the bells and whistles. It simply feels a bit more special than competing notebooks.
We recommend the Apica Premium C.D. Notebook (A5) for people who want a softcover notebook that is the size of a trade paperback book. The smaller, A5 size doesn’t take up too much room on a desk, and its lie-flat design allows you to easily write on both sides of each sheet. The paper is thick and smooth (but not plasticky), and it works well with a variety of pens, including inky fountain pens, with little feathering and minimal ghosting.
The Leuchtturm Hardcover Notebook Classic (A5) is our top pick for a hardcover notebook that helps you organize and keep track of your thoughts and ideas. It features tiny details, such as index pages and labels for archiving, two thick ribbon bookmarks, labels for the spine and title page, page numbers, and a sturdy back pocket.
The Maruman Mnemosyne N166 Steno Pad (A5) is a medium-size notepad that’s easy to flip through to refer back to your notes. Because this notebook is top-bound, lefty writers should find it easier to use than other formats. The paper is smooth and thick, yet slightly translucent. Inky pens (rollerball, gel, and fountain pens) glided across it nicely in our tests. And it has enough tooth to make writing with a pencil or a ballpoint pleasant.
For a variety of other styles that we recommend, read our guide to the best notebooks and notepads.
This planner is a cross between a simple calendar and a beautiful journal. And you can fill it with a range of inserts for any type of planning.
This more-compact version can fit in large pockets or small bags.
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Of all the planners we considered, the Traveler’s Company Traveler’s Notebook was the most popular with our testers.
The simple leather folio holds thin notebooks (secured with an elastic band), and you can invest in whatever notebook inserts fit your planning needs. It’s the only system we found that works for all types of planning.
This is the original Traveler’s Notebook, a style of planner often interchangeably called the Midori (the company’s name before ). You can find many other notebooks of this style inspired by the original (sometimes called “fauxdoris”), and some of them are great options if you like more colors and patterns.
For a variety of other styles that we recommend, read our guide to the best paper planners.
This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.