Revive Gaming Desk review: a prestige standing desk for work and play

The Revive Gaming Desk is a result of collaboration between esports organisation Fnatic and climate-conscious furniture maker ChopValue, which specialises in taking chopsticks and recycling them into beautiful pieces of homeware, from coasters, chopping boards and wall decorations to shelves and, now, high-tech gaming desks. 

Coming in three variants, Essential, Pro and XL, the latter two even have a standing desk function, making them not just a gaming desk option, but also a candidate for a good working desk for home office for creatives and any professionals who spend long hours in front of their computer. We've even collected some of the best standing desks for you.

We at Creative Bloq were naturally curious about this so I got a sample in for review. Little did I know that over the next two weeks, I would form an emotional bond with a piece of furniture. If you want to see if there are any models left to snap up, we advise you hot hot-tail it to the ChopValue site directly. 

Revive Gaming Desk review: Assembly

The Revive Gaming Desk model I got in was the XL variant, the largest of the three options. So I expected a quite big and bulky delivery. Yet I was still stunned at the sheer weight of the two packages I received (one with the desktop, one with the metal bits and motors that were intended to hold it up). 

Now, I'm raised on a farm, so don't consider myself a weak person. Despite that, I needed help from my friendly neighbour to get the package up the stairs to my home office without permanently damaging at least three different parts of my body. With that over, it was time to put all the bits together.

Even more solid than the desktop are the powder-coated steel-tube parts that make up the two legs, which are shaped in a T-bar base design, with levelling glides for increased stability. Each part is easily identifiable though, and even more helpfully, the many screws and bolts needed for the assembly are separated into isolated pockets of the same bag, each pocket marked with a big letter to help you follow the instructions, which are laid out clearly in the fully illustrated booklet. A Phillips screwdriver and Allen key are included, as were cable ties with adhesive sidings to arrange the cables for the motors along the underside of the desk.

Assembling the pieces was pain-free but isn't fast work for one person, and if you can recruit a buddy to help you, especially when attaching the assembled frame to the upturned desktop and then flipping the whole construction around to turn the desk the right way up at the end, you should definitely do so. The dual motors arrived already attached to the two legs, which was a relief, especially as I knew I'd soon have to disassemble the thing again. Of course, that's obviously not going to be a concern for buyers, who will soon get a strong feeling this desk is a keeper.

A really nice personal touch I noticed when unboxing the desktop was the signatures of several team members inside the box, which made me feel a real connection to the makers of the desk right from the start. 

And when it was assembled and set up? Oh boy, did that feel good.

Revive Gaming Desk review: Design

The central selling point for the Revive Gaming Desk is its design and origin. The XL is made from exactly 9,565 recycled chopsticks, which have been cut into shape and thrust together into the massive desktop sitting in front of me. With the individual appearance of each chopstick still keenly visible, each desk is going to look slightly different from any other, and despite the sanding and polishing of the desk surface, you can feel little imperfections all over it, little bumps and notches as you slide your hand over it. This is not a bad thing, though, as it all feeds into the bespoke nature of it, the eventful past and origin of what makes up the desk still visible to you today, as it's been turned into a prestige piece of furniture.

This lends it a unique character and personality that makes you subliminally go: "This is not a 'product'. This is mine. My own. My preci"—you know what I'm getting at here.

Each desk is marked with a number between 1 and 1,000, along with a Fnatic imprint and logo, and its origin, 9,565 recycled chopsticks, is proudly burned into the desk too.

The desktop on the XL is absolutely massive too. Measuring 140cm wide by 74cm deep, you'll be able to fit an enormous amount of kit on it. I could set up a 34-inch monitor, my laptop on a stand, and my PC computer tower on the desk, along with a full-size keyboard and mouse, speakers, a dock and an external hard drive, and still have space left over. The frame weight capacity is claimed at 75kg, so even if you count the 22kg desktop in that figure, you'll easily be able to load pretty much whatever you need on there without any worries that the standing-desk motors will start to struggle.

The one and only singular thing I could find fault with was the cable organiser. The hole in the back part of the desk made to organise and tidy cables through came with a metal ring and a lid to funnel them through, but the ring and lid were very loose and kept popping out. I don't know if it's just because this being a review unit, it had become looser for some reason, but I thought it should be noted. 

Revive Gaming Desk review: Standing-desk features

Along with the Revive Gaming Desk's wood and metal that makes up the bulk of the desk, there is the motor. With a dual-motor setup, one for each very sturdy leg, wired into a digital display control box, this is a standing desk that you can raise from 65cm up to 117.5cm, to help you prevent back problems from sitting in front of your computer for too long.

The control box has a manual up and down button to raise and lower the desk, but it also has four programmable buttons, where you can save your height settings. So instead of having to hold the arrow buttons when you want to stand up or sit down, you can simply program one button with your desired sitting height and another with your desired standing height, and then press those once and watch the desk do its magic. And with four buttons, you can save sitting and standing presets for two people of different height and setup preference, which is both handy for home if your partner also uses the desk, and in an office setting where you might have multiple users. 

It all worked seamlessly during my test of the desk, and at 5'10", the desk still had more raise in it at my desired standing height, so it shouldn't struggle to accommodate a user of 6' or taller.

Revive Gaming Desk review: Price

Of course, with a piece of furniture like the Revive Gaming Desk, you're not looking at IKEA prices here. In the US, the Revive Essential starts at $965, while the premium XL comes in at a similarly premium price point of $1,345. The UK has similar prices, from £1,000 for the Essential to £1,370 for the XL. It's one of the most expensive gaming desks out there and certainly the most expensive desk that has ever graced my house.

Should you buy the Revive Gaming Desk?

Considering that as my short time with the Revive Gaming Desk was coming to an end, I seriously considered offering to buy the thing so I didn't have to send it back, we're leaning towards a yes here. I tried really hard to find faults with this desk, and the only one I found was a small cable-organiser ring niggle, so if you want a quality desk that will undoubtedly last for decades, and has been made in a climate-conscious way, you probably won't find a better, or indeed more unique option out there. Yes, it's almost as heavy as the van you'll receive it from, and admittedly it is a big investment, but if you are fortunate enough to afford this desk, and are in the market for one, then you'll be hard-pressed to find a reason not to buy it.