Who actually makes it

NewHeights is a brand of RightAngle Products, and RightAngle is an independent American manufacturer with no connection to ESI or Fellowes. I had this filed under the ESI cluster and that was wrong. If you came here from one of the ESI pages, the transition story does not apply to this desk. RightAngle is still RightAngle, and the Bonita ET is a current product rather than an archaeology exercise.

Ten shapes, and two of them are corners

Here is why this desk is worth a page. Most electric bases are a straight span between two legs, and the worksurface menu is a list of rectangles. The Enmo I wrote about earlier offered six tops and every one was a rectangle. The Bonita ET offers ten, and the list actually addresses rooms with corners in them.

On the two-leg base you can order a rectangle, a rectangle with radius corners, a peninsula with a left or right radius, or a proper corner top in either Corner-Diagonal or Corner-Radius. Move up to the three-leg base and you get six L-shapes: left or right return, left or right cockpit, and left or right two-piece.

The leg count is the part worth reading twice. A corner top runs on the two-leg base, so you are held up by 250 lb of lift. The L-shapes need the third leg, and that takes you to 350 lb. If you are planning to hang two monitors, a laptop arm and a stack of books off a corner desk, that difference decides which shape you order.

The catch, and it is a documentation one

All ten shapes are in RightAngle’s catalogue. The dealer I found selling the Bonita ET online lists exactly two, both rectangles, at 24 by 60 in and 30 by 60 in. So the corner tops exist, and getting one means going through a contract dealer with a quote and a lead time rather than clicking a button.

That is normal for this class of furniture and it is still worth saying out loud, because a catalogue page showing ten shapes reads like ten things you can buy. Two of them are things you can buy today.

What the desk does

Twenty inches of travel, from 27 to 47 in, which is a wider range than most and covers both a short person sitting and a tall person standing. It moves at 1.5 in per second on a single 24V DC Ketterer motor, with a welded frame rather than a bolted one. There is soft collision detection and overload protection.

The controller is a two-button up and down switch, and unlike the older bases in this catalogue there is Bluetooth and a phone app behind it, plus voice assistant support. Whether you want your desk on your wifi is your business, but the option is there and it is the only thing in this catalogue that has it.

The warranty is the best in this catalogue

RightAngle states it plainly: 10 years on brackets, columns and feet, and 5 years on other components, with laminate at 5. That is a length and a scope, from the manufacturer, in writing. It is the only product I have looked at in this catalogue that answers the warranty question without me having to ask a dealer.

They also publish their endurance testing, which almost nobody does. The ANSI/BIFMA cycle test runs 4,000 cycles with 100 lb on the surface. RightAngle says its own internal requirement is at least 20,000 cycles with 90 lb, and the unit they tested reached 21,375 before they stopped. Working from three height changes a day across a 260-day year, they put that at 27.4 years of use.

Take the 27.4 years as arithmetic rather than a promise, because it is. The cycle count is the real number, and five times the BIFMA test is a genuinely strong result.

So why is it a pick

Because of where the paperwork lives. This desk plugs into a wall. It has a motor, a control box and a transformer, and it sits under a surface where people put their knees. For that class of product the bar asks for a safety listing, and on 5 August I wrote that there was none.

That was wrong, and it was wrong in a way worth explaining, because the same mistake is easy to make with any powered furniture. The listing does not belong to RightAngle. It belongs to Laing Innotech, the German company that makes the control box, and Laing’s own manual for the LTC series states ETL Mark Approval against ANSI/UL 60950-1 and CAN/CSA-22.2 No. 60950-1.

Four things tie this desk to that control box. RightAngle’s own spec sheet names Ketterer as the motor maker. A dealer states that the electronics are produced by Laing Innotech. RightAngle’s own switch installation sheet is headed LI LD6EC, and LI is Laing Innotech. And GyroSense, the collision detection RightAngle lists under Safety, is Laing’s own technology, which RightAngle’s blog confirms is fitted to the Bonita. Laing’s mains LTC range ships US variants in two-motor and three-motor forms, matching the two-leg and three-leg Bonita exactly.

Two things still bother me. The standard named in that Laing manual, UL 60950-1, was withdrawn in December 2020 and replaced by UL 62368-1, so I cannot tell you what a desk shipping today is listed against. And UL 962, the furnishings standard a buyer would most expect to see here, appears nowhere at all.

The comparison that made me suspicious in the first place is still a criticism of the writing rather than the wiring. The Enmo, a discontinued desk from a brand that no longer exists, published its UL962 listing on its own spec sheet. RightAngle publishes nothing, on a product it is actively selling.

So ask RightAngle for the current file number before you order. You will have an answer in a day, and you will have it in writing, which is more than the website gives you. That is a reasonable thing to ask of a company selling a powered desk, and it is the only condition attached to this recommendation.

What is wrong with it

Drawbacks

Questions people ask

People arriving from the discontinued Fellowes Levado end up here, because this is one of the few electric bases still shipping.

Read how I check numbers.