Herman Miller is a brand that has comfortably operated in the “reassuringly expensive” space for many years. Its office furniture, topped by its signature Aeron office chair, has been a favorite of fancy office fitouts for generations, and in recent years, it has turned its hand to gaming chairs and accessories too. However, the gaming desk was, for a long time, a gap in its roster. A gap that it has today filled with the Herman Miller Coyl gaming desk.
Right off the bat, what’s interesting about this new offering is that it isn’t one developed in collaboration with Logitech, which is a company that has put its name to products such as the Herman Miller x Logitech Embody gaming chair. Instead, its new best gaming desk contender is all of its own premium design, and quite an intriguing design it is.
The standout feature of this new desk is hinted at by its name, which is the chunky coiled red power cable that dangles from the back. Interestingly, this feature is very prominent in the rendered images of the desk, but is all but hidden in the lifestyle shots of the desk, such as the one below, making me wonder if Herman Miller is really all that enamored with the design or not. Regardless, the titular Coyl powers the desk’s electronic sit-stand adjustable-height legs and the multi-socket extension cord built into the cable tray at the back of the desk.
This cable tray is also another notable feature, as it runs the full length of the desk and has a flip-down fabric cover that provides access to your cables from the back of the desk. I do wonder how easy this will be to access once the desk’s up against a wall, but it’s a reasonably neat-looking solution otherwise.
Another standout feature is the included pegboard/accessory mount section that runs along the back of the desk. This metal sheet – which looks remarkably thick and sturdy, based on Herman Miller’s provided video and images – is shown providing a place to mount holders for cups, plants, controllers, cables, and more. Meanwhile, a dedicated headset mounting hook is located on the inside left of the underside of the desk.
On the right side of the desk is a unique-looking height control system that eschews the standard up and down buttons of desks such as the Secretlab Magnus Pro, and instead has a large knurled knob that the company suggests provides “tactile adjustments and feedback.” It’s not clear if the desk has programmable options for quickly returning to a set height at the touch of a button.
In terms of the desk surface, and indeed the overall design, the Coyl looks much more conventional than some gaming desk options, such as the feature-packed Corsair Platform:6 and again the Secretlab Magnus. Here, the desktop is just a plain slab of laminate/wood that’s available in black, white, walnut, or ash.
Taken in as a whole, the Coyl seems quite underwhelming for such a legendary designer as Herman Miller – red coiled cable aside – but I’d expect build quality to be right up there with the best available. Chairs like the Aeron and Embody are built like tanks, with my Aeron being over 20 years old and still going strong. As with those chairs, the Coyl also comes with a massive 12-year warranty. That’s more than double most competitors.
So what’s the not-so-bad price for all this quality? The Herman Miller Coyl price starts at $1,475. Yeah, not cheap. But other premium options push to somewhat similar levels. That Secretlab Magnus Pro is currently $899 but normally retails for $988, while the Platform:6 started at $999 and had options for upwards of $1,400.
The Herman Miller Coyl is available now from the company’s website in North America, with no word yet on when or if it will arrive in other regions.
