Fully Jarvis Tabletops For Standing Desks

[Editors’ Note – April 21, 2023 – MillerKnoll, the $3B parent company of Fully.com, officially shut the company down on April 20th, 2023, after an 18-year run. Indeed, Fully’s phone lines and chat function have already been disabled, and the only way to reach customer service for product support is via email. We first reported this on March 8th after being notified by a number of Fully’s suppliers that the company was discontinuing operations.

Founded by ergonomics industry pioneer David Kahl in 2006, the company – which was originally known as ErgoDepot before a rebranding a few years ago – was acquired by Knoll. Knoll itself was shortly thereafter acquired by Herman Miller. This cataclysmic event is the latest in an ongoing set of challenges the industry has endured since the pandemic.

As a consequence of the company being wound down, we have taken down the scores for all of the Fully products we’ve reviewed to 0.5-star (including the Jarvis Standing Desk, Jarvis Standing L-Desk, Fully Jarvis Reclaimed Wood Standing Desk, Fully Jarvis Albright Standing Desk, Fully Jarvis Evolve Standing Desk, Fully Remi Standing Desk, Fully Jarvis Whiteboard Adjustable-Height Conference Table, Fully Jarvis Bamboo Adjustable-Height Conference Table, Fully Jarvis Tabletops For Standing Desks, Jarvis Monitor Riser, Jarvis Bamboo Desk Drawer, Fully Jarvis Single Monitor Arm, Fully Jarvis Dual Monitor Arm, Fully Jax Single-Display Monitor Arm, Fully Floatdeck Balance Board, Fully Sidekick Mobile File Cabinet, Fully Cable Management Kit and Fully Cable Management Tray). Fully has sadly been added to the Office Fitness Industry Dead Pool.

Ostensibly, Fully’s, “most popular products,” i.e. those that they still have a lot of inventory remaining, are being offered through the Herman Miller and Design Within Reach websites. We checked these listings and they are at full list price, unlikely to be purchased by any savvy shoppers. The nearest alternatives to Fully products are going to be found at iMovR (American-made) and UpLiftDesk (similar Chinese-made products). For more details on the company’s closure, see our article on Is Fully.com Out Of Business?]

While most people buy their standing desk as a complete system, i.e. getting the lifting base and the desktop together from the same seller, you may find yourself needing to acquire a new desktop on its own. For example, you may already own a standing desk but the top has gotten damaged, or you may want to upgrade to a different size and/or color. Whatever the reason, there are a mountain of options to choose from. Read our Guide to Buying Your DIY Standing Desktop to ensure you know what to watch for when purchasing a standalone top for your desk or table. 

In this review, we explore the bamboo and HPL desktops individually sold by Fully, and discuss where they may excel and where they might fall short of consumer expectations.

Fully Wants You to Smile for Their Desk Tops

The best thing we can say about Fully’s standalone tabletops is something we can say about their business as a whole. Through two acquisitions in as many years, Fully now falls under the MillerKnoll collective of 18 commercial office furniture brands, a far cry from the original Portland, Oregon-based “B-corp” roots of the company.

And as part of a larger multi-billion dollar corporation, with everything else that entails, customer service is a key component of their business as they try to build loyalty rather than just make a quick sale. They want their customers, whatever problems they have, to leave with a good impression, and they will bend over backwards to make that happen.

With staffing shortages and other difficulties, it might be difficult to get a hold of someone that can help, but they will do their best to resolve your issue in a positive way. This is evidenced by the lack of complaints on customer service in their reviews and even some positive ones.

Jarvis Bamboo Tabletops

Like UpLift and a lot of other desk manufacturers, Fully is very big on promoting their bamboo desktops as the best choice for someone who is environmentally conscious. Their bamboo tops, sourced from China, are one of the cheapest things you can put on a sit-stand base for a reason, and it’s not because bamboo is a fast-growing crop (as both Fully and UpLift hyperbolically claim).

The facts around the environmental scourge that has been created by the mass farming of bamboo grass and converting it into a wood product are in shocking contrast to marketers’ claims. The urban myth surrounding bamboo’s environmental goodness continues to spread as these online marketers parrot each others’ claims despite a preponderance of scientific evidence to the contrary. As you can read in our comprehensive report of Bamboo Standing Desks – Separating Fact from Fiction, if you care about the environment, this is the very worst selection you can make for a desktop. Fully also repeats this offense in the marketing for their Cooper Standing Desk Converter, also offered in bamboo.

Aside from their specious claims about environmentally friendly bamboo, there are problems with the quality of the material in use. One user comment from May of 2022 noted, “The desk looks nice but keep in mind the size of your table top. The Fully frame can’t handle large table tops of bamboo and it won’t feel solid. Rather you’ll have to deal with ricketing and bouncing of all your objects if you type too hard or drop your elbow at the end of the table. And it only gets worse with time.” 

And they aren’t alone. Another user reported, “The biggest issue I have is due to the length of the desk 1inch bamboo is not solid enough to keep the monitor from moving. It flexes in the middle of the desk when you put too much pressure on the keyboard which makes the monitor shake. This happens when the desk it up or down…. I would not recommend the longer bamboo if you have a large monitor and are heavy handed with the keyboard.”

Granted, this is going to be an issue with pretty much any tabletop, bamboo or otherwise, but Fully’s bamboo seems to suffer from it more than we have seen from other manufacturers. In the end, be aware of the width your base should be able to support and stay stable. This can be affected by how far apart the legs are, the strength of the crossbar, and multiple other factors. However, if you put a wide top on too narrow of legs, you’ll just transfer that instability to the outer wings of the tabletop.

And just the durability of Fully’s Jarvis bamboo desk tops is below par. User comments confirm the propensity for delamination of bamboo tops… it’s inherent to their production process, and it doesn’t seem to matter who is producing them. As one commented, “… Bamboo will form small stress cracks, then starts a major structural deficiency and will separate around the ends. I have the 72″ straight wing style and the layers are separating….which is odd because it’s supported the entire length of the desk by the cross-beams. A bamboo replacement top is going cost $445?!“

Jarvis HPL Laminated Tabletops

You can choose a traditional HPL (high pressure laminate) desktop. This is the classic lamination on top and bottom, with edge banding on all four edges. While definitely more durable than powder-coated options, there are still open seams for air and moisture to get into and degrade over time, which is also a place for bacteria to gather. Edge banding eventually strips away, and the sharp corners and edges aren’t as nice as ergo-contoured edges like on the bamboo top. For most people, HPL is a familiar and acceptable option. Fully offers it in six colors and anywhere between two and six sizes, depending on the color. More options than some competitors, but far fewer than others (see our round-up of all the standing desk tabletop options in the market). 

While Fully’s offerings of full standing desks have a wider variety of top styles, the Jarvis model is the only one they currently offer as a standalone desk top. They do have a solid wood option, which will be covered in another review, and an L-shape to add to the common rectangular tops. However, they are not offered in the broadest array of sizes and colors.

When compared to the more premium iMovR desks (the closest model line to the Jarvis would be the Jaxson) with much more durable Surf(x) 3D laminate, ergo-contoured edging, and literally thousands of color and size combinations, Fully’s offering of 4 laminate colors and two bamboo hues seems a bit lacking, to put it delicately. It isn’t even the same 4 laminates offered on the standard and the L-desktops. The limited selection is due to the fact that, like most of its competitors, Fully stocks these imported table tops in inventory, versus manufacturing them on-demand in the USA as iMovR does. 

A big issue for some customers seems to be that these tops are not laminated on the underside, which you can’t see in pictures, leaving it a little unsightly underneath. Many people may not care, since they won’t often see it, but some customers complain a lot about it. Maybe offering the option would help reduce complaints or returns, not to mention protect the desk from other environmental hazards like moist or dry air that can degrade the lamination around the edges. Either way, that kind of information should be noted in their marketing materials so shoppers can be informed in their purchases, but it is characteristically undisclosed.

Our Verdict – Fully isn’t the Full Package

Fully does well on the customer service side of things, but that doesn’t quite balance out the fact that so many of their desktops need extra customer service in the first place. The quality is typical of commodity-grade desk manufacturers from China, which is pretty low in this industry. And the price isn’t all that competitive among its peers in that grade of tabletops. If you’re seeking to replace a degraded Fully desk tabletop, we would recommend upgrading to a high-quality American-made desk top that will last under a 15-year warranty. And if you are on a super tight budget, there are cheaper options with a wider variety of styles to choose from.

Don’t forget to learn all you need to know about finding the perfect desktop for your standing desk workstation in our primer – DIY Standing Desk: Choosing the Right Table Top.