Reviewing Everything on my Desk! (2026)

Summary

Marques Brownlee reviews every piece of equipment on his desk, many of which he has used for years or even over a decade. Unlike typical reviews where he spends days or weeks with a product, this video focuses on gear he knows intimately from years of daily use. He scores each item and provides honest assessments of long-term ownership, including what he plans to replace soon.

The standout items include the XDesk Air Pro (formerly Next Desk), a massive 8-foot aluminum sit-stand desk he’s had for nearly a decade and calls his “forever desk” (9/10), and the Herman Miller Embody chair which gets a perfect 10/10 for long-term comfort. The most surprising revelation is his Mac Pro rating — just 4/10 — as the $18,000 M2 Ultra tower has been abandoned by Apple through three chip generations with no update in sight. He plans to replace it with an M5 Ultra Mac Studio. The dual Pro Display XDRs ($7,000 each with stand and nano-texture) get an 8/10 despite being 60Hz panels with no webcam or speakers.

On the peripherals side, Brownlee reveals a quirky workflow: he uses both a mouse and a Magic Trackpad simultaneously for Final Cut Pro editing, with the trackpad handling timeline scrolling and gestures while the MX Master 4 mouse handles everything else. The Rainy 75 Lite mechanical keyboard, Yamaha HS8 monitors, and Sennheiser HD 650 headphones round out a setup where familiarity and long-term reliability trump cutting-edge specifications.

Highlights

”Apple has abandoned the Mac Pro”

“This is probably going to be one of the first things to go. I’m not giving up on it yet, but I’m pretty sure Apple already has.” — Marques Brownlee, 2:37

yt-dlp --download-sections "*2:37-3:25" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rszuZ-9PY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "mac-pro-abandoned.mp4"

”Each display is seven thousand dollars”

“It’s a 60 Hertz, 32 inch, LED backlit LCD, 16 by nine, no webcam, no speakers, and it’s five thousand dollars. And the stand it’s actually standing on is also another thousand dollars, and the nano-texture finish is another thousand dollars. So each one of these is seven thousand dollars.” — Marques Brownlee, 4:17

yt-dlp --download-sections "*4:17-4:54" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rszuZ-9PY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "pro-display-xdr-price.mp4"

”The speakers buzz before I get a call”

“If you have a phone like right next to it for long enough, sometimes like RF interference you can actually hear on the speaker, and I’ll hear like a little faint buzzing sound. Sometimes like right before I get a call or a text message I’ll hear the speakers buzzing and I know I’m getting a signal, which is crazy.” — Marques Brownlee, 8:11

yt-dlp --download-sections "*8:11-8:48" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rszuZ-9PY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "yamaha-rf-interference.mp4"

”The tools are just tools”

“Now we all know that the tools are just tools. This sculpture is not great because of the chisel that the artist uses, but you better believe that if that artist uses the same chisel for 10 years straight, they’re going to know it really well.” — Marques Brownlee, 0:30

yt-dlp --download-sections "*0:30-0:58" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rszuZ-9PY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "tools-are-just-tools.mp4"

”I had to import one from Amazon Japan for $75”

“I like the color the shape the texture the firmness of it and then when it started to wear out because I’d used it for so long I looked online to try to find another one and it was kind of impossible to find and I think I had to import one from Amazon Japan for like 75 dollars.” — Marques Brownlee, 14:11

yt-dlp --download-sections "*14:11-14:59" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rszuZ-9PY" --force-keyframes-at-cuts --merge-output-format mp4 -o "artisan-mousepad-japan.mp4"

Key Points

• XDesk Air Pro desk (0:41) - 96x38 inch aluminum sit-stand desk, quarter-inch thick, doesn’t bend under weight. 9/10
• Herman Miller Embody (2:01) - Best investment ever made, super comfortable, molded to his back over years. 10/10
• Mac Pro M2 Ultra (2:37) - $18,000, now three chip generations behind with no update. 4/10
• OWC 64TB SSD (3:25) - PCI card SSD inside Mac Pro for live backups of all content
• Pro Display XDR (4:06) - Dual $7K monitors, nano-texture effective but impossible to clean. 8/10
• Opal C1 webcam (5:46) - External webcam; Brownlee invested in the company so won’t review it
• Grovemade shelf (6:00) - Monitor shelf for small storage; pricey but effective. 10/10
• Apollo Twin DAC (6:41) - Audio interface with “giant glorified volume knob”; software is very buggy. 4/10
• Yamaha HS8 monitors (7:33) - Active nearfield monitors, 8-inch woofer reaches 40Hz, no subwoofer needed. 9/10
• Sennheiser HD 650 (8:48) - Open-back headphones for studio use, can hear people while editing. 8/10
• Belkin 3-in-1 charger (10:03) - Two Qi pads and Apple Watch charger, not super fast. 6/10
• Oppo AirVOOC charger (10:38) - Fast wireless charger that works with any phone size. 8/10
• Mouse + Trackpad combo (11:04) - Uses both simultaneously for Final Cut Pro editing gestures
• Rainy 75 Lite keyboard (11:41) - Heavy aluminum mechanical keyboard, great for the money. 8/10
• MX Master 4 mouse (13:04) - Silent, haptic feedback, engraved with his name. 9/10
• Artisan Ninja FX mousepad (13:55) - Imported from Amazon Japan, needs replacing every two years. 9/10

Mentions

Companies

• XDesk (0:41) - Maker of the Air Pro desk, formerly called Next Desk
• Herman Miller (2:01) - Maker of the Embody chair, rated 10/10
• Apple (2:37) - Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR manufacturer; Mac Pro hasn’t been updated in 3 generations
• OWC (3:25) - 64TB PCI SSD for backup storage
• Opal (5:46) - Webcam company Brownlee invested in
• Grovemade (6:00) - Wooden desk shelf maker
• Universal Audio (6:41) - Apollo Twin audio interface maker
• Yamaha (7:33) - HS8 studio monitor maker
• Sennheiser (8:48) - HD 650 headphone maker
• Belkin (10:03) - 3-in-1 wireless charger
• Oppo (10:38) - AirVOOC wireless charger maker
• Logitech (13:04) - MX Master 4 mouse maker
• Keychron (11:46) - Previous keyboard before the Rainy 75
• Artisan (13:55) - Ninja FX mousepad, imported from Japan

Products & Technologies

• Mac Pro M2 Ultra (2:37) - $18K tower, 24 cores, 76 core GPU, 192GB RAM, 8TB storage
• Pro Display XDR (4:06) - $5K 60Hz 32” monitor, $1K stand, $1K nano-texture
• Apollo Twin Gen 2 (6:41) - Thunderbolt DAC with buggy software
• Final Cut Pro (11:10) - Video editing software dictating mouse+trackpad workflow
• M5 Ultra Mac Studio (3:57) - Planned replacement for the Mac Pro
• OnePlus (10:48) - Cable attached to the AirVOOC charger

People

• Andrew (12:00) - Colleague who recommends keyboard setups
• Adam Bobrow (14:40) - Table tennis personality; Brownlee keeps his paddle on the desk

Surprising Quotes

“It’s such a minor complaint. Everything else about it is amazing. I’m giving it a 9 out of 10.” — Marques Brownlee, 1:54

“This company doesn’t really sell that much stuff or make that much other tech. It’s just this particular desk, which I got nearly a decade ago. It happens to work perfectly and I think I’m going to — this is like my forever desk.” — Marques Brownlee, 1:13

“Fun fact: you can hot swap Apple Watches and they actually, like, pick up where the other one left off. It’s kind of sick.” — Marques Brownlee, 10:19

“The finish on them wears off and rubbery it just doesn’t look great after a while and I think this is going to do way better.” — Marques Brownlee, 13:41

Transcript

Marques Brownlee: 0:00 Hey, what’s up? MKBHD here and welcome to reviewing everything on my desk. This is fun because I review a lot of things on this channel and it’s going to be stuff that I’ve had for a few days or a few weeks or sometimes a few months, but this is the stuff that I’ve been using the longest that I know the best. A lot of this stuff I’ve been using for many years, some of it for over a decade. So yeah, this is stuff I’m going to know like the back of my hand because I’ve been making videos with it for many years.

Marques Brownlee: 0:30 Now we all know that the tools are just tools. This sculpture is not great because of the chisel that the artist uses, but you better believe that if that artist uses the same chisel for 10 years straight, they’re going to know it really well. So let’s start with the desk itself, which is actually kind of ridiculous. This thing here is called the Next Desk Air Pro. It has four legs, it’s a sit-stand desk, and this surface on top is enormous. It’s 96 inches across by 38 inches deep, so it’s basically eight feet by three feet.

Marques Brownlee: 0:58 And it’s mostly crazy because this whole thing is like a quarter inch thick. It’s this piece of aluminum and with all this weight on it, like this is a massive surface to have all this stuff here, it doesn’t bend at all, which is kind of crazy. It doesn’t rock or really shake, it’s rock solid. This company doesn’t really sell that much stuff or make that much other tech. It’s just this particular desk, which I got nearly a decade ago. It happens to work perfectly and I think I’m going to — this is like my forever desk, this thing was like a rock.

Marques Brownlee: 1:27 Fun fact, I got this so long ago the company was still called Next Desk, but now they’re called XDesk. But you can see here over on this little controller over here, it still says Next Desk, so that’s how you know it’s an OG. Really my only complaint with this thing is that when you’re raising and lowering the height of it, you have to keep holding the button. On almost every other standing desk I’ve ever tried, you just press the button. You press the one button for your one height and the two button for your two height. This one you have to hold the one button to set it to your one height. It’s such a minor complaint. Everything else about it is amazing. I’m giving it a 9 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 2:01 So the next up is the chair, which is maybe a bit underrated in some setups, but this is also one of the most highly rated, kind of famous chairs of all time. It’s the Herman Miller Embody and it’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made. Super comfortable. It has a ton of adjustability, but at this point I don’t adjust it anymore, it’s just kind of molded around my back. So yeah, it’s super comfortable. I had one back in college, I’ll probably have one for the foreseeable future. Great chair. I feel like the investment in your comfort and your back makes it worth it. I’m giving this thing a 10 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 2:37 So alright, next up on top of the desk is — let’s start with the computer, which is the Mac Pro. And god, where do I start with this? This is probably going to be one of the first things to go. I’m not giving up on it yet, but I’m pretty sure Apple already has. This is the M2 Ultra tower Mac Pro. I got it, I think this is now six years ago and it was like 12, 13… 18,000 dollars? At the time it was Apple’s most powerful computer. M2 Ultra, 24 cores, 76 core GPU, 192 gigs of RAM, and 8 terabytes of storage.

Marques Brownlee: 3:11 But now starting to age a little bit, cause we’ve seen the M3 generation of chips, and there’s an M3 Ultra in a Mac Studio, that’s the new most powerful Mac, and the M4 generation of chips, and then the M5 generation of chips, and the Mac Pro has not been updated for any of those. So it’s still obviously a very powerful computer. The one reason I got it is because I have one PCI card inside it, and the Mac Pro was built around expansion. So I do have an OWC, I think it’s a 64 terabyte SSD for all of my live backups. Everything that we make, I back up to that SSD.

Marques Brownlee: 3:43 So this thing’s been fine. It has all the pros and cons of a normal tower PC. A lot of people ask why I don’t put it underneath the desk. It’s because with a sit-stand desk, if I put it underneath the desk then the cables have to move up and down and reach it, so it sits on the desk so the cables can be nicely hidden. Yeah, this is, this is going to be replaced pretty soon. I hope there’s an M5 Ultra Mac Studio soon that I can swap this out with and then like a Thunderbolt OWC SSD for backup. That’s probably what this is going to be soon. Until then, it’s fine. It’s like four out of ten.

Marques Brownlee: 4:06 So that brings us next to the displays that I work with every single day, which is the Pro Display XDR. There’s two of them. I’ve had a dual monitor setup forever, but the Pro Display XDR, on its face, it’s actually kind of insane. It’s a 60 Hertz, 32 inch, LED backlit LCD, 16 by nine, no webcam, no speakers, and it’s five thousand dollars. And the stand it’s actually standing on is also another thousand dollars, and the nano-texture finish is another thousand dollars. So each one of these is seven thousand dollars.

Marques Brownlee: 4:42 And for that price, you could get an entire setup that looks actually a lot like this, and that’s actually what we made the new studio video on, so you can check that out at the link below the like button. It’s pretty sick. So of course this is a ridiculously niche product. You can watch my full review of the Pro Display XDR from a couple years ago so you can understand what they are and who they’re for.

Marques Brownlee: 5:07 I will say, in this like brightly lit studio with a whole wall of windows over there, the nano-texture is actually extremely effective, but it also makes them impossible to clean. So if you touch it or if you get anything on it, it’s just hard to get rid of that forever. So I really try hard to keep these clean. But everybody else in the studio doing color has these, so we all know if we’re matching and comparing and contrasting reference color, it all works the same.

Marques Brownlee: 5:34 I happen to use them on my daily setup which means I do a lot of also non-video editing on them, and that’s when I wish they were higher refresh rate, and that’s when I wish maybe they’d have a couple more features, but they don’t. And I also have speakers and a webcam separately, so they’re fine. This is my Opal C1 webcam plugged into one of the ports on the back of the monitor. It’s nice that they have ports on the back. I’m not going to review this webcam because I invested in the company, so obviously I think they’re great, but I’ll stay away from that. But I’m going to give these an eight out of ten.

Marques Brownlee: 6:00 Now these displays are standing on the desk, not on this shelf here, but I do still have the shelf because it’s nice for a little bit of extra storage. So this is made by Grovemade. I mainly keep like smaller items in here, cables, SIM card removal tools, pens, flash drives, a Sharpie, stuff like that. Uh, it’s just a handy little place to sort of stow things away. These are pretty pricey. I remember Grovemade sent them over and they have a bunch of different colors. This is the black version. I think they’re pricey because they should be able to support a bunch of weight if I actually did have dual monitors on top of it, but they’re not. So you could easily replicate this exact same effect with something way cheaper. That said, it does exactly what it’s supposed to and I like the way it looks. 10 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 6:41 So then next up, all the way over here is my audio interface. So there’s a digital to analog converter in here, a DAC. A lot of people do this internal inside the computer, this’ll be a PCI slot in the Mac Pro or whatever they’re doing, but this one’s external and it plugs in via Thunderbolt and it also is this giant glorified volume knob which I find very satisfying. But yeah, it plugs into both the speakers and the headphones. And there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that comes with it, like there’s a whole bunch of software, there’s a bunch of plugins that you can use with it. I don’t use almost any of those. The software is also honestly really buggy. I have to reset it all the time. Sometimes I update it and it forgets what it is and I have to download new firmware. It’s kind of more of a pain than it should be.

Marques Brownlee: 7:20 But it gets the job done. There’s a lot of other things again that could get the job done, but we’ve been using this here for again many years. I just wish it didn’t have so many issues. It’s like a 4 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 7:33 Now the speakers, I think they’re iconic at this point to just the look of my desk. I love these things. So this is a pair of Yamaha HS8s. They’re active nearfield studio monitors, reference monitors, whatever you want to call them. Yeah, I’ve had these forever, I love these, and they happen to be pretty good at everything. Like they’re good for just general reference listening, video editing, audio editing, but also just for music listening. I don’t need a subwoofer with this setup because these will get all the way down to the 40 hertz range, and this big 8 inch woofer does great. There’s also 1 inch tweeter up here.

Marques Brownlee: 8:11 They only have a couple sort of weird quirks. Matter of fact, this is a wireless charger that I’ll get to in a second right next to it, but the shielding on these is imperfect, I guess, uh, because if you have a phone like right next to it for long enough, sometimes like RF interference you can actually hear on the speaker, and I’ll hear like a little faint buzzing sound. Sometimes like right before I get a call or a text message I’ll hear the speakers buzzing and I know I’m getting a signal, which is crazy. Anyway, typically they perform great, they sound great, I know exactly what they’re supposed to sound like from sitting between them for so long. I have no complaints. There are probably technically better monitors out there that I could switch to, but I know these so well. 9 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 8:48 Okay, so the headphones of choice, these are a couple years in now, are these right here. These are my Sennheiser HD 650s and I wear them a lot during the day. Oh, and they happen to be on this pretty generic Canto stand. Any stand will do. But I like these a lot because I wear them a lot and they’re very light and comfortable and they’re open back and they sound really good. So Sennheiser has a whole range of products. You can see that they’re open back. They have this sort of a mesh looking look here, but I’ve basically been wearing open back headphones in the studio because people will talk and ask me questions while I’m editing or doing whatever on the computer and I can hear them and I don’t have to take the headphones off and that’s pretty nice.

Marques Brownlee: 9:34 They also sound really good, really great for reference, again for editing and also occasional music listening. And yeah, they’re wired, they plug right into the DAC, they don’t really have any flaws. There are again, technically better headphones out there, but I just know these really, really well. I was trying to think of what I would change about them or what I would do to them. The only thing I could think of was wireless would be nice, but that means adding a battery and probably some weight and maybe less comfort, so I guess I probably wouldn’t do that. These are great. 8 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 10:03 Now I got two chargers on my desk. One is this one right here. This is a Belkin 3-in-1 charger. It’s a 3-in-1 because it can charge a phone here with a magnet, it can charge another phone here without a magnet, two Qi wireless chargers and one Apple Watch charger. So I’ve got an Apple Watch Ultra here. Fun fact: you can hot swap Apple Watches and they actually, like, pick up where the other one left off. It’s kind of sick. Anyway, yeah, I can just slide it this way when I don’t want it, but obviously this is useful for charging devices. It’s not super fast. It’s probably like a 6 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 10:38 And then over here is my fast charger. Again, I already know it’s too close to the studio monitor and I’m just fine with that. But this was made a long time ago by Oppo, I’m pretty sure, because it’s an AirVOOC charger and I’ve got a OnePlus cable attached to it with a whole bunch of power underneath the desk. And this is nice because basically any phone, no matter what size, will work if I just place it on it, usually lines up with the wireless charger in the phone, the coils on the back of the phone. That’s usually my good fast wireless charger. 8 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 11:04 So then in the middle here I’ve got a kind of a weird combo setup going on and it’s because of the way I’ve edited in Final Cut Pro for like the last decade, so you can blame Final Cut Pro for this, but I have a mouse and a Magic Trackpad. Uh, this is the USB-C one, not that it matters, but I use the wireless trackpad and a mouse at the same time for side scrolling on the timeline usually or scrolling and moving around and pinch and zooming, and then the mouse for everything else, even though the mouse has all that functionality built in. Just the way my brain is wired.

Marques Brownlee: 11:34 Anyway, so that’s there, that dies every couple weeks, that sucks, I hate that. But this is the mouse, but I’ll start with the keyboard. It’s called the Rainy 75 keyboard. Now I’ve had a mechanical keyboard at my desk for a while. This is actually the newest addition. I had a Keychron before this for a couple of years. Basically everything that I know about keyboards or do with keyboards is from that Keychron, but the Rainy 75 is really nice. It’s got a really heavy aluminum case, it sounds great.

Marques Brownlee: 12:00 With the keyboard on my desk is because of what Andrew’s told me to do and he’s usually right he’s like try this you’re going to love it and then I have it and it’s great. So my only real requirements for a keyboard basically are that one it works for a Mac two it has all the common keys that a Mac uses and I don’t need a numpad and three it’s wireless and that does all these things. And this is also like a rock solid super heavy keyboard it also has this artisan MKBHD keycap on the corner which is pretty sweet and a couple other custom keychron dolch keycaps so it’s a bit of a hodgepodge setup going on here but I know people want to hear it so…

Marques Brownlee: 12:43 Big fan. Battery life on this thing is pretty good for a couple weeks at a time I always turn the backlight on these keyboards all the way down just to make them last longer and also price-wise this is the rainy 75 light it’s one of the better priced items of this entire setup really really good for the money so that is something I don’t regret switching to recently. 8 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 13:04 And then this is the mouse this is the MX Master 4 this is their newest you can see they’ve actually engraved my name on it they brought these here to the studio a little while before they came out and they said try it out let us know what you think. Turns out they’re great they’re silent they have really good software on the four they added haptics. So I’m not a gamer I’m not using like a super high refresh rate like super low latency mouse this is just again it’s a 60 hertz display and I just need to get my work done and edit and this does great for that.

Marques Brownlee: 13:41 It’s gotten the job done and it’s definitely going to age a lot better than the previous MX masters as people who have those mice know that the finish on them wears off and rubbery it just doesn’t look great after a while and I think this is going to do way better so I really like the mouse. 9 out of 10.

Marques Brownlee: 13:55 And then last but not least is something I maybe get the most questions about which is the mousepad this is the artisan ninja FX mousepad it’s something I got into specifically maybe five six years ago no probably longer than that. I like the color the shape the texture the firmness of it and then when it started to wear out because I’d used it for so long I looked online to try to find another one and it was kind of impossible to find and I think I had to import one from Amazon Japan for like 75 dollars but they still sell them so you can still get them I’ll try to link everything I’m talking about below but I have a mousepad over here on the right for my mouse and I have a second one over here that I’ve had for years.

Marques Brownlee: 14:40 Which is just my soft surface for things that I keep on my desk because this is metal so these are the phones that I haven’t wiped yet that I’m still testing my table tennis paddle from Adam Bobrow shout out to him and whatever car keys of a car I’m testing my Ridge wallet of course hand sanitizer some keys this stuff that you sort of just have on the desk lives on this one. 9 out of 10. I wish it was a little bit more durable because I have to get one every like two years because they sort of wear in but it’s pretty great.

Marques Brownlee: 15:00 But that’s my desk that’s all the stuff that I’ve been using being on the daily for an extremely long time. As someone who has a lot of choice in this, you kind of get an idea, a little peek behind why I chose this stuff, what stuff’s working well, what stuff’s gonna be gone soon. If you want to see a similar version of this setup for the price of less than one of these displays, click here for the studio video. Trust me, that stuff’s also really good. Alright, catch you in the next one. Peace.