The marketing team keeps threatening to launch a podcast. It has been pitched at least three times this year. Every attempt stalls at the same point: somebody listens back to the pilot and realizes our laptop mics sound like we're recording through a drive-thru speaker.
\nYou can burn a whole week on lighting, intros, and show notes, and still come back to the fact that the audio is the audio. An got tired of it and ordered a JLab Talk during a Sunday evening doomscroll. It showed up a few days later, sat on her desk, and quietly made the Loom videos we send to clients sound like actual humans were recording them.
\nThree of us in Đà Nẵng have now added one to the shopping list. Mạnh, who has never opened a podcast app in his life, ended up ordering one for Teams calls because he was tired of people asking him to repeat things.
\nNot everyone. If you record once a quarter from a phone, a USB desktop mic is overkill. The people who quietly benefit the most from something like this aren't podcasters. They're the ones who spend half their day in Meet, Teams, or Zoom and sound slightly muffled on every call.
\nCardioid for one person at a desk. Omnidirectional for a small room. Stereo when you want depth. Bidirectional for a two-person interview across the desk. Most cheaper mics just give you cardioid and call it done. Four patterns means you can keep using the same mic when someone walks over and joins the recording, instead of scrambling for a second device.
\n96kHz, 24-bit, with a frequency response that covers the standard range of human hearing. For anything outside an actual treated studio, that's more than enough. The sound is clean enough that whoever edits the file won't have to fight noise floor all the way through.
\nVolume. Gain. A quick mute button on top. And a 3.5mm headphone jack on the mic itself for zero-latency monitoring, which sounds like a tiny thing until you spend a month not having it and realize it's the difference between confidently knowing you're recording and guessing.
\nUSB-C cable out of the box, 6.5 feet of it. No drivers, no account, no firmware dance. Mạnh plugged it into a MacBook Pro and it showed up in audio settings within about four seconds. (Worth flagging: a handful of reviewers report the mic not playing nicely with certain MacBook setups. We haven't hit it in our office, but it's not universal.)
\n💡 Tien's Note
The mute button is bright, obvious, and lights up when muted. Sounds trivial. On a long call where you need to cough or tell someone off-screen to stop barking, it's the feature you actually use twenty times a day.
4.3 stars across 521 reviews. Sixty-six percent of them are 5-star. That rating tells you what you need to know: most people like it, a noisy minority don't, and the middle is \"fine\".
\nWhat the good reviews say: sound is clear, controls are intuitive, build feels solid for what it is, works well for podcasts and video calls, even field recording from a phone with an adapter.
\nWhat the complaints are, honestly:
\nNone of this makes it a bad mic. It makes it a mic that does one thing well (desk audio) and asks you not to expect it to be three other things (portable, boom-mountable, decade-durable).
\nFor what a team lunch in Đà Nẵng costs, it gets the marketing team's Loom videos past the \"is that really you?\" threshold, and it gets Mạnh's Teams calls out of the muffled pile. That's what we paid it to do.
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\nThe running joke on London to Đà Nẵng flights is that I always pack the same bag. Laptop. iPad. Phone. AirPods. A portable speaker for the hotel. Kindle. Sometimes a camera. At the other end, every single one needs to be plugged in by 8am local time for whatever call is already booked. In my old carry-on there were four separate chargers, three USB-C cables, one Lightning cable that shouldn't have still existed, and an extension lead because most hotels have exactly one accessible outlet near the desk.
\nThe Baseus 120W 6-in-1 charging station replaced most of that. It's a small black brick with six ports (four USB-C, two USB-A), a built-in five-foot extension cord, and a GaN chipset that keeps the whole thing about the size of two stacked iPhone boxes. One plug into the wall. Up to six devices at once.
\nI've been carrying it in my backpack for five months. It has outlasted the AirPods case that arrived the same week.
\nNot everyone. If you have a single laptop and a phone and that's the extent of your device life, a wall charger with two ports is enough. This is for people who have too many things to charge at once and usually one outlet to do it from.
\nEnough to fast-charge a MacBook Air (roughly 30 minutes to 50%, 110 minutes to full) on the top USB-C port while the other five ports handle everything else. If you have a MacBook Pro that wants 96 or 100 watts, this will charge it, just not at full tilt. For an M4 Air or a Windows laptop under 70 watts, it's genuine fast charging. The single-port 65W figure is the one to pay attention to when you're picking a charger for a specific laptop.
\nFive feet. This is the feature that sold it to me over the alternatives. Hotel desks in Europe and Southeast Asia are always arranged such that the outlet is either behind a bolted-down cabinet or under the bed. The extension cord means I plug the brick in once and the brick sits on the desk where I can reach all six ports. No separate power strip, no tangle.
\nGallium nitride means the charger is smaller and runs cooler than the same wattage from a silicon charger would. Baseus quotes 90% energy conversion, which is the marketing way of saying it wastes less heat. In practice the brick gets warm under full load (charging a laptop and two phones at once) but not hot. A few reviewers say \"it does get very hot\", and at the extremes of load I can see that, but in normal mixed-device use it's been fine.
\nAbout 77 by 84 millimeters. Less than half a kilo. Smaller than the MacBook charger I used to carry, and that charger had one port. It fits in the front pocket of my backpack next to the passport holder and I forget it's there.
\n💡 Tien's Note
If you have a recent Samsung phone and rely on Samsung's 45W Super Fast Charging 2.0, this one caps at about 34 watts rather than the full 45. One reviewer tested it specifically and got the same result I did. For iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and most other USB-C devices it delivers the full rated speed, but Samsung's proprietary protocol is the one asterisk. If you're a Samsung user chasing peak charge times, look for a charger that specifically lists Samsung 2.0 support.
4.7 stars across 108 reviews. 87% five-star, 2% one-star. The product is recent enough that the review count is modest, but the distribution is strong. Reviewers consistently flag the same positives: the extension cord, the compact size, the silent operation (no fan, no coil whine), and the ability to charge six devices at once from one outlet.
\nA few things to know before buying.
\nFirst, long-term reliability on the ports. One reviewer had two of the six ports stop working after a few weeks. Baseus replaced the unit for free and customer service came out of the exchange well. But two ports failing on a single unit is still two ports failing, and it's worth being aware of. If yours develops an issue, the warranty seems to be honored without drama.
\nSecond, the Samsung caveat from the note above. This is the specific case where the charger under-delivers versus its full rated wattage. On every other device I've tested it on, it hits the advertised numbers.
\nThird, this is not an international travel adapter, it's a US plug. If you fly between London and Đà Nẵng you still need a physical plug adapter on one end. The charger itself handles 100 to 240 volts so you don't need a voltage converter, just a plug shape adapter. Worth mentioning because the marketing copy leans heavily on \"travel power strip\" and some buyers expect more than one plug shape in the box.
\nThe carry-on is lighter and the tangle at the hotel desk is gone. The lost-charger count for the last five months is zero. For a piece of kit that costs less than a single day of most hotel rooms on this route, the math is easy. If you travel with enough devices that you've started rationing outlets, this is the one.
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\nDũng brought a walking pad into the Đà Nẵng office in February. He set it up under his desk, stood on it for fifteen minutes during a standup, and announced he'd do half a kilometer a day while answering tickets. Nobody took him seriously. By the end of the month he'd done about a hundred kilometers and two other devs had ordered walking pads of their own.
\nThe walking pad is easy. It's the desk that becomes the problem. A standing desk, specifically one that goes up and down under an electric motor, so you can walk in the morning and sit after lunch. We tried a hand-crank model first. Nobody adjusted it. The whole point collapsed in a week. The DUMOS 48-inch electric standing desk is what we settled on for the second wave, and we now have four of them across the two offices.
\nIt goes from about 73 centimeters to 118 centimeters, three programmable height presets, one motor, rustic wood top, steel T-legs. Supports 80 kilos on the top. It is not a fancy desk. It is a functional electric standing desk for less than what most agencies spend on a monitor.
\nNot everyone. If you already sit all day without back pain and don't care, skip. If you're outfitting a full team and budget matters, this is a reasonable choice.
\nThree programmable heights. I have mine set to sitting, standing, and walking-pad standing (slightly higher). The press is one button. The motor is quiet enough that you can raise and lower it during a call without anyone on the other end noticing. This is the feature that separates an electric desk from a manual one, and it's the single reason the walking pads actually get used.
\nCovers most sitting and standing positions for most adults. If you're under 155 cm tall the lowest sitting position might still be a bit high; if you're over 190 cm the standing height will be fine but on the edge. Test your standing height before you order by measuring from floor to your elbow with arms bent at 90 degrees.
\nA 27-inch monitor, a laptop in a stand, keyboard, mouse, a notebook, and a mug all fit. Not generously but comfortably. If you run dual 27-inch monitors, buy the 55 or 63-inch version. The rustic wood finish is a veneer, not real wood, and waterproof enough for the occasional spilled coffee, which has already happened twice in Đà Nẵng.
\nSteel, T-leg design, supports 80 kilos. It wobbles a little at the highest setting with a heavy monitor on top, which is what every reviewer who takes the time to mention it says. It isn't dangerous wobble, it's \"you can feel it if you lean on the front edge\" wobble. At sitting height it's rock solid.
\n💡 Tien's Note
Put it together on a carpet or a blanket, not directly on a hard floor. The top is two separate boards that meet at a seam in the middle, and you will want to flip the whole assembly over at least once during setup. Doing that on tile is a scratch waiting to happen. The seam is visible but a standard desk pad covers it, and after a week you stop noticing.
4.4 stars across 1,027 reviews. 73% five-star, 6% one-star. The positives line up with what we've seen: assembly is straightforward, motor is quiet, height range is generous, value for money is unusually good for an electric standing desk. Every reviewer who compares it to their previous manual crank says the same thing, which is that they actually use this one.
\nThree things to know.
\nFirst, the top is two boards joined at a center seam. It's the cost-saving choice. Looks fine once a desk pad is down, but if you hate visible seams on principle, the single-board versions from other brands exist at roughly twice the cost. One of ours arrived with a small chip on the corner. DUMOS replaced the panel within a week. Customer service was good, the replacement shipped from their US warehouse, no argument.
\nSecond, the packaging is hit or miss. Several reviewers mention desks arriving with chipped or damaged boards. Out of our four units, one had the chip mentioned above. The other three were clean. Inspect before you assemble, because reporting a damaged panel is easier with the unit still mostly in the box.
\nThird, the assembly alignment. A reviewer mentioned needing a pocket drill to finish one of the steps because pre-drilled holes didn't quite line up. I didn't need a drill on mine but I did need to wiggle a few screws into slightly misaligned holes. Not a dealbreaker, but if you're expecting fully flush IKEA-level alignment, temper expectations.
\nDũng is now at somewhere near eight hundred kilometers on the walking pad. Hoàng got a desk and walking pad of his own in March. Thảo keeps threatening to join them and hasn't yet. For what a decent office chair costs, we got four desks that moved a quiet office trend from \"Dũng's thing\" to a real part of how the team works. If you're outfitting a home office, one of these is fine. If you're outfitting a team, four of them is still less than one boutique standing desk. That math tends to settle the argument.
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\nThe London flat is not big. There's an office, a bedroom, a kitchen that could comfortably host four people if nobody tries to move. When someone from the Đà Nẵng team is in town for a week, they get the spare room, and by the second evening we're both working on laptops in the living room because the office only has one desk and one chair.
\nFor three years I worked around it with a lap desk and a lot of cushions. The solution, eventually, was the Rolanstar lift-top coffee table, which is a coffee table when you want a coffee table and a desk when you raise the top. It takes about a second. It was the piece of furniture in my living room I stopped thinking about first, which is the best thing I can say about any piece of furniture.
\nThe top is split down the middle. One half lifts up toward the sofa at laptop height. The other half stays where it is for a coffee cup. Two drawers below, a hidden compartment under the lift, an open shelf for books. Roughly a meter square when closed, about 68 centimeters tall when the lift is fully extended.
\nNot everyone. If you have a dedicated home office with a proper desk, this is the wrong piece of furniture for you. Buy a coffee table that just looks nice.
\nGas-assisted, not a compression spring, which matters because compression springs go bad and gas struts don't, at least not as fast. The top lifts smoothly, holds at height, and comes back down without slamming. Laptop height sitting on a sofa is roughly where you want it. It will also hold a plate, a glass, and your elbows without wobbling, which is the test that actually counts.
\nThree hidden areas. The compartment under the lift-top is the biggest and most useful. The two drawers underneath hold remotes, chargers, the one notebook you actually use, and a few paperbacks. There's an open shelf on one side for the books you want visible. Total footprint is modest but the storage is on the order of what a side cabinet would give you.
\nThe larger half of the top rotates 180 degrees once raised and gives you a surface roughly a meter square. Enough for two people to eat on. Enough for four in a pinch. We've never used it that way. The feature exists, reviewers use it for family dinners and board game nights, and it's part of why the thing has over two thousand ratings instead of two hundred.
\nMelamine veneer over engineered wood with a metal frame. Not solid wood. It is heavier than it looks at nearly 32 kilos assembled, which is why it doesn't walk across the floor when you slide a laptop onto it. FSC-certified wood, for what that's worth. The gray finish I chose has more beige in it than the listing photo, which a few reviewers called out and I agree with.
\n💡 Tien's Note
Before you start assembly, read the last few pages of the instruction manual. The default build has the drawers facing away from the sofa. If you want them facing toward you, you have to mirror part of the assembly. There are no instructions for that configuration, you have to figure it out from the diagrams. It's not hard, you just need to know before you start, not two hours in.
4.5 stars across 2,274 reviews. 77% five-star, 4% one-star. The positive reviews are unanimous on one thing: for the size of the footprint, the storage and the convertibility are genuinely useful. The negative reviews are mostly about assembly.
\nAssembly is not quick. The listing says 45 minutes. The honest number is closer to two hours with one person, ninety minutes with two, and occasionally four hours if you are unlucky with alignment. The hydraulic lifts go in last and are fiddly enough that almost every reviewer who did it alone mentions needing another pair of hands for the final step. Mine took about two hours with a second person holding the top while I attached hinges from underneath.
\nA few structural notes from the reviews that I verified after living with it for six months. The internal back panels and drawer bottoms are thin. They aren't load-bearing but you should not be storing a stack of hardbacks in the drawers. The top has a slight wobble if you lift only one edge instead of using both hands. Reviewers ask for a crossbar between the two hinges and they're right to, it would stabilize it further. Ours hasn't been a problem in daily use because I lift from the middle.
\nOne last thing. The hidden compartment under the lift-top only opens when the top is up. A side-panel door would make it easier to grab something quickly without clearing the coffee cup off first. For stashing things you don't need often, it's fine. For anything you reach for daily, use a drawer.
\nWhen a colleague from the Đà Nẵng office flew in last month for a workshop, she worked from my sofa for three days on the raised half of this table. The other half kept her tea. I don't think she noticed the furniture, which is the compliment. The best piece of multi-function furniture is the one you forget is multi-function.
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\nWhen we grew the marketing team in Đà Nẵng last year, the desks ended up with a patchwork of second monitors. A 23-inch Dell from 2019 next to a no-name 24-inch next to a VA panel nobody had asked for. The color temperature shifted three times across one row. Nobody cared until a new hire walked in, clocked it, and asked, politely, whether she should bring her own.
\nThat's the moment you lose the \"office aesthetic doesn't matter\" argument. Thảo put a line through the budget spreadsheet and told me to pick one monitor, cheap enough that buying six wouldn't hurt, good enough that nobody would want to swap it out in a year. The MSI PRO MP251 E2 is what the research ended on. We've had six of them running for about four months now.
\nIt is a 24.5-inch 1080p IPS panel at 120Hz, matte coating, three inputs, and a stand that tilts and nothing else. Unremarkable on paper. That is approximately the point.
\nNot everyone. If you're editing video or grading color, this is not your primary monitor. But it's a near-perfect second monitor, and a good enough primary for anyone whose main tool is a browser, a spreadsheet, or a chat window.
\nThe Đà Nẵng office has a wall of windows on the south side. For four hours a day the light is direct. The matte surface handles it without the washed-out gray that cheaper anti-glare coatings give you. This is the feature that quietly sold me on the first one before I committed to buying five more.
\nYou notice it on cursor movement before anything else. Scrolling is smoother. Dragging windows around is smoother. Nobody on the marketing team plays games during work, but the refresh rate still makes a felt difference on daily tasks. If you've been on 60Hz forever, you'll spend the first week quietly impressed.
\nHDMI, DisplayPort, and VGA. That VGA port is there because MSI knows it's selling into offices where something old is still hanging around. The built-in speakers are thin and not worth using for anything but a Teams call in a pinch, but they exist, which is more than most budget monitors offer. There's a small slot on the top of the stand that holds a phone upright, which is the kind of detail you either notice or don't.
\nTilt only. No height adjustment, no swivel, no pivot. If your chair is the wrong height, you're either VESA-mounting this (100x100mm, standard) or living with it. For the cost of the monitor, the trade is honest. For a dedicated primary workstation, it would annoy me.
\n💡 Tien's Note
If you're buying more than two, VESA-mount them on arms from the start. The base eats real desk space, the tilt is limited, and arms make the whole row line up at the same height, which is the thing that actually makes an office look like an office.
4.7 stars across 140 reviews. 81% are five-star and they line up neatly with what we've seen: no glare, even color, easy setup, 120Hz felt as a real upgrade. One reviewer replaced two Philips IPS monitors with these and said the viewing angles were noticeably better. Another had it for a year and said it still worked perfectly as a second monitor.
\nThree things to know before buying.
\nFirst, the plastic back is thin. A reviewer in Egypt flagged this and I'll flag it again: don't drop the monitor, don't over-tighten VESA screws, don't be rough during setup. Our six went through a building move in March and one came out with a hairline crack near the bottom edge. Cosmetic. But on a sturdier chassis it wouldn't have happened.
\nSecond, the stand. Tilt only. Reviews keep returning to this. If you sit lower than average you will feel it. A VESA arm or a monitor riser solves it.
\nThird, the eye-care features are fine, not class-leading. A reviewer who had moved from a BenQ said the low-blue-light mode on this MSI is less nuanced. Believable. Our team hasn't missed it, but if you stare at this thing eight hours a day and your eyes are the bottleneck, a BenQ or Dell at twice the cost is a real alternative.
\nThe power cord is heavy relative to the socket it sits in. A few reviewers mention the cord pulls itself partway out of the back of the monitor under its own weight. It hasn't happened to any of ours, but the complaint is consistent enough that it's worth routing the cable with a bit of strain relief rather than letting it dangle.
\nThe office looks like an office now. Six matching monitors, six matching stands, six mostly-identical pools of light. The new hire no longer offers to bring her own. For what a single mid-range gaming monitor costs, we outfitted the whole row and had change left for mouse pads. If you need a clean, unfussy second monitor at volume, this one does the job and then gets out of the way. Which is exactly what you want from it.
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\nThere's a specific kind of quiet in the Đà Nẵng office when the grid goes down. The lights cut, the A/C stops, and for about ten minutes nobody says anything, because we're all waiting to see whether the router lasts.
\nThis happens more often than a London office would expect. Typhoon season, the grid takes a dip two or three times a week. The C1000 we bought last year keeps the router and a couple of laptops going for a few hours, which is usually enough. The question Mạnh put to me last month was whether a few hours was actually enough. His answer was no. Mine was \"probably fine\". The Anker SOLIX BP1000 expansion battery arrived the following week.
\nIt doubles the C1000's capacity. That is the whole pitch. 2,112Wh instead of 1,056Wh. It stacks on top of the main unit and plugs in with a cable that is, I'll say upfront, uglier than the marketing photos suggest.
\nNot everyone. This is a very narrow product. It works only with the original Anker SOLIX C1000. If you already own one and you've hit the capacity limit in real use, it's the right move. If you don't, go read the last section of this post before buying anything.
\n1,056Wh on top of the C1000's 1,056Wh. That's 2,112Wh combined. One reviewer ran a 1,300-watt portable A/C on the pair without issue, which gives you a sense of the ceiling. For our actual use (the router, two laptops, a small desk fan through most of a typhoon-season outage) the combined capacity is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the rated output of the C1000 itself, not the stored energy.
\nSame battery chemistry the newer power stations have moved to. Longer cycle life than the older NMC packs, safer thermally, and the reason Anker quotes a ten-year lifespan (3,000 cycles). If you're cycling it daily, that is a real number. If you're using it twice a month, you'll probably replace the setup before the chemistry gives up.
\nFull charge in under two hours if you enable UltraFast mode in the Anker app. Slower on a normal AC cycle. Important caveat: the BP1000 cannot be charged on its own. It has to be plugged into a C1000 to take power. This is obvious once you understand what \"expansion battery\" means and frustrating for anyone who missed that detail before buying.
\nStacks directly on top of the C1000 with the same footprint. Around nine kilos for the BP1000 alone. Carrying the stacked pair is a two-hand operation. Ours lives permanently on the floor under Mạnh's desk, which is fine, but calling it \"portable\" is a stretch if you're not young.
\n💡 Tien's Note
If you live somewhere with unstable power, buy the BP1000 and the C1000 at the same time if you can. The connector cable is long enough to stack them cleanly, but short enough that sourcing a spare from a different seller is a pain. And do not, repeat do not, buy this one if you own the C1000 Gen 2. It will not work.
4.5 stars across 216 reviews. 84% of those are five-star and say roughly what you'd expect: doubles capacity, stacks cleanly, handles the loads it's rated for. The 9% one-star reviews are where the useful information sits.
\nTwo things to know before buying.
\nFirst, the drain order. When the BP1000 is attached, the expansion drains completely before the main C1000 kicks in. If you were imagining the two batteries working as a single pool, they don't. You drain the add-on to zero, then start pulling from the C1000. A few reviewers argue that repeatedly cycling the expansion to zero is worse for it over time, and they aren't wrong. This is the single most common complaint, and Anker has not changed the behavior.
\nSecond, the two-C1000s argument. Several reviewers (the loudest with thirteen helpful votes) point out that if you're going to spend this much on an expansion, you might as well buy a second C1000 and have two independent power stations. For a single-room backup, the expansion is still the right call because of the stacked footprint. For a household where one unit lives in the kitchen and another in a bedroom, two C1000s win. We keep the stacked pair in one room because the Đà Nẵng office is one open space. If you don't have that setup, think again.
\nOutside North America, the warranty story has rough edges. One UK reviewer had a unit that refused to accept charge and spent weeks cycling through firmware support with Anker before it was resolved. The product is relatively new in the Anker lineup and the outside-US support experience is not as clean as the US one.
\nOurs earns its keep about three times a month, which is enough. When the grid drops in Đà Nẵng and the router stays up, nobody notices, and that is exactly the outcome we paid for. The test for this category isn't whether a product works on a calm Sunday, it's whether a year from now, on the third outage of the week, you're still glad you bought it. For C1000 owners in the right scenario, this one clears that bar.
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