Gaming chair startup SecretLab unveils Magnus, its first gaming desk with 'magnetic ecosystem'

Cal Jeffrey

Posts: 4,176   +1,424
Staff member
In a nutshell: Secretlab, a company best known for its gaming chairs, has just unveiled its first gaming desk. The Magnus Metal Desk has a minimalist aesthetic with modular accessories to personalize it for specific setups. Pre-ordering starts today.

The Magnus looks simplistic, but Secretlab has had it in development for three years. The flagship feature is what Secretlab calls a "magnetic ecosystem." The steel-alloy surface allows for the attachment of optional modular magnetic accessories, including cable anchors, cable sheaths, headphone hangers, and a diffused RGB strip.

The desk also has an assortment of leatherette desk mats. The Secretlab "Signature Stealth" cover comes free with purchase, but the company is partnering with other companies to offer different decorative designs. So far, it only has two third-party mats—one from Cloud9 and another from Team Liquid. The leatherette covers have a magnetic layer so that the accessories still attach firmly to the desktop. It also helps keep the mat from sliding around.

The desk itself has a couple of cool features. First is its cable tray situated under the rear of the desktop. The back of the desktop has a hinged opening for easy cable management. The hinge comes forward when lifted, so having the desk flush against a wall does not prevent the cable tray from opening smoothly. The enclosure also houses the RGB lighting strip, which lights up the lip of the tray door and the wall behind the desk.

The cable tray is open on both sides so users can route cords down either rear leg and hide them with the magnetic cable sheaths. Additionally, users can organize and keep mouse and keyboard cords, charging cables, and other peripheral wires out of the way with magnetic anchors that attach anywhere to the top of the desk.

The Magnus is 29-inches high, which Secretlab says is ideal for promoting good posture, a hallmark of all its gaming chairs. The tabletop comes in two sizes. Both are 27.6-inches from front to back and either 59- or 47-inches from side to side. The smaller version goes for $399, and the larger is $449.

As mentioned, both sizes come with the Secretlab Stealth mat, with third-party covers available for $49 extra. It's important to note that these prices are for desk purchases only. Buying them separately, expect to pay $99 for the third-party covers and $79 for the Stealth.

The RGB strip is entirely unnecessary, but for those that like that sort of thing, it runs $59. Other accessories range from $13 to $29, with a bundle for $44. The package deal contains two cable sheaths, three cable anchors, and 10 fastening straps for keeping your cords nice and tidy.

The headphone hanger and magnetic bumpers for the back of the desk are not yet available. Pricing and availability should be coming soon. Secretlab expects shipments to start going out on June 2 or earlier. I pre-ordered a Titan gaming chair a while back, and it arrived a few weeks earlier than expected. So I suspect shipping estimates include a cushion for worst-case shipping situations.

Permalink to story.

 
Just like the cheap crap that make up 'gaming chairs' this is yet another piece of 'gaming' trash where for around the same price you can make something better - especially with all those Amazon trinkets sprinkled around the desk calling them features...
 
How many guys have been using duct tape to build setups like this for ages? Be honest. Also, not sure about the magnets...how do they work??
 
3 cables... aww... how cute. Reminds me of when people make a big deal out of upgrading to a wireless mouse in order to get rid of the cable and I'm sitting there thinking to myself "How neat, then I only have to worry about the other 29 cables instead of 30 if I get one of those". lol - I have daisy chained power strips 6+5+5 outlets under my desk and I looked at it the other day because I wanted to unplug my NAS and had a real Gandalf "I have no memory of this" moment.
 
How strong are the magnets and what happens if you set a hard drive down on the desk?
The desk itself isn't magnetic, its steel. Just the little anchors are magnetic. So laying a hard drive down on it isn't going to cause damage.

I think it looks like a pretty good desk. The adjustable feet look great and it looks nice and solid. Love my secret labs chair
 
I don't think any metallic or magnetic sections on a computer desk are a good idea. There is quite a lot of static electricity around that may lead to pretty disastrous effects on both the case and any components with external outlets in the area.

A simple example, I am using a Corsair K95 Platinum keyboard and it on its own (or in combination with electric fields from nearby sub-woofer and power cables, who knows?) is generating enough static electricity to cause discharge through my fingers or a USB cable to the case USB ports or the case card reader. After a few discharges where the card reader stopped operating (Windows said "device not recognised") and once the discharge went through the USB ports into the motherboard and then via the graphics card's DisplayPort outlet to the monitor that flashed like a Christmas decoration, I consciously started touching a metal object like a nearby radiator or the desk's legs every time before interacting with any cables or the PC case itself.

Believe me, this is very serious and although I was lucky enough to pass through this with no damages to components, static electricity is there and only waits to be discharged where inappropriate. Magnets, magnetic attachments and metallic parts of a desk with objects like USB-connected keyboards and mice (with or without RGB powered by the PC) is not the right way to attach accessories. I'd go any way for a hard attachment, hooks or any tested ways to do so instead. Cheaper, tested, resilient and proven in time.

Because, it may not happen every time, but when it does and kills your MoBo attached components you'll find it the hard way possibly having to build a new system from scratch...
 
From the right angle any setup can look pretty boss, the wires still need to be stuffed or managed somewhere, willing to bet the majority of what you see in that picture is staged and most things aren't even plugged in thus have no wires to manage.

As for the desk itself, the only neat feature is the adjustable legs, those actually look really practical, having the Ikea style adjustable legs I can speak from experience in saying a solution that is actually adjustable by such small increments would be highly appreciated. I can almost never get the Ikea legs to lock at the height I want them to lock at, even trying to predict where they will lock when twisting them tight seems to always fail, it must have taken me half a dozen tries and over 30 minutes to adjust just two of the legs on my desk... But I digress.

The rest of the crap looks like someone discovered the power of magnets for the first time and instantly developed a huge fetish for them.
 
For that amount of cash I could build a better desk with wood, and customize it the way I want it, based on what it would be used for :/. An still have money left over.
 
The desk itself isn't magnetic, its steel. Just the little anchors are magnetic. So laying a hard drive down on it isn't going to cause damage.

I think it looks like a pretty good desk. The adjustable feet look great and it looks nice and solid. Love my secret labs chair
Yes. the desktop is steel, but the optional desk mats have a magnetic layer in them to stick tight to the desktop and to facilitate the magnetic anchors. That said....
How strong are the magnets and what happens if you set a hard drive down on the desk?
These magnets are not strong enough to damage a hard drive. It takes a very strong magnet to affect an HDD. At least 30-40lb to stop the disks from spinning and more than that to corrupt the data.
 
Back