Arozzi Arena Nordico review: A champion budget gaming desk?

Earlier this year I moved, and with moving comes a fantastic opportunity to redo your setup. Here I got to test out the Arozzi Nordico, a desk that surprised me in both positive and negative ways. Its price sits at $499 / €279 / £240, and it comes in a variety of colors from walnut to white to black.

Assembly

The assembly of the Arozzi Nordico went fairly smooth but it also definitely had its frustrations. I found that having another person for assistance was extremely useful and putting this all together on my own would have been a distinctly more annoying experience.

This was most notable during the part where you attach the legs to the brackets underneath the desk. This is because the screwholes on the legs don’t line up with those on the bracket when the leg is laying flat on the tabletop. So you have to hold the screw with one hand, have your screwdriver with the other and then it’s a struggle to elevate it solo. Alternatively, you just get someone to lift it slightly for you.

Aside from that, and some other confusion of the pictures that anyone who’s ever built IKEA furniture will be familiar with, it was a decently smooth process that took about an hour altogether to be assembled.

The good

The Arozzi Arena Nordico goes together in around an hour. Image credit: Maddie Verboom for Kyusai

The Arozzi Nordico has a lot going for it. At its aforementioned price, it’s distinctly on the lower end of the range for this kind of product, with a similar sized desk from IKEA costing around 50% more, making this quite a bargain. That’s if you’re in Europe or the UK; however, as its otherwise aggressive pricing doesn’t translate to the US, with its $499 MSRP.

The cable management basket at the back is roomy and with its adjustable gap, you can fit almost any monitor mount you may already have to the back of the desk. The baskets come with quick releases to allow for fairly easy adjustment of your cables.

The action for lowering and raising the desk is smooth and responsive. With three saved possible positions, you’ll have no issue adapting the height to whatever your situation requires. Although I’ll get back to the desk’s height in just a moment.

The build quality feels good. It’s not the fanciest of tabletops being made of MDF, but it’s solid, and if you spring for the optional mousepad, you’ll have a decent mousepad with a soft surface to boot. The mousepad itself is nothing special but it does exactly what you want from a mousepad.

The benefit of the tabletop being made of MDF; of course, is the weight saving compared to a solid wood or metal desk, something which is always welcome especially for those who have to carry it up a flight of stairs.

The bad

There’s a couple of quirks that make the assembly process frustrating. Image credit: Maddie Verboom for Kyusai

With that said, the Arozzi Nordico is not without its flaws. To instantly get back to the point of height, the desk has a minimum height of 71cm and that, quite frankly, is too tall. More often I see sit-to-stand desks have a minimum height anywhere between 60 and 65cm, which makes a huge difference.

At 71cm, many people will find themselves having to raise the height of their chair and get a footrest to achieve an ergonomic setup. For context, dear reader, I am 1.75m tall and this desk is not able to get to a comfortable height for me. It’s not a dealbreaker by any means but something that any prospective buyer should be taking into account.

Sadly the bad news doesn’t end there. The Arozzi Nordico does not trade its higher minimum height for more stability. This is because raising the desk above one meter, I found it to be wobbly enough that it would interfere with any serious gaming I was trying to do.

So where does that leave us? Well, despite my issues with its height and assembly, I was still mostly pleasantly surprised by the Arozzi Arena Nordico. At this price point I would struggle to find another desk with a similar feature set without paying a premium.

That makes the Arozzi Arena Nordico an attractive desk for any value oriented buyers, provided they aren’t on the shorter side of the height spectrum. Of course, at 140x70cm, the desk isn’t the largest so anyone looking for a larger setup is better off looking elsewhere.