This is a very robust, well made, functional, yet stylish piece of furniture. The materials are consolidated wood (not a true solid wood) but superior to MDF which has a habit of breaking. I was particularly impressed by the construction which instead of self tapping screws evident in the 'a**emble yourself' furniture that usually rip out after a while; these are recessed clamping wood blocks. This desk was intended for a second floor office in a residential building. The doorways were narrow but we found that we could easily remove the plinths and replace them in order to get the desk through the door. The plinths were doweled and screwed, speaking once again to the very good construction. The Ebony finish is beautiful. A smooth satin finish. The drawers run smoothly. The center drawer is designed so that it can be used as a keyboard drawer or a standard drawer. I've never found it a comfortable position to have the keyboard slide out in that way. Frankly it's not ergonomic. As a result of the dual purpose design; the center draw is not as robust as the others. A minor complaint in the design: there are cable access points in each far corner of the desk. When you feed cables through the holes, you then have to remove one or two of the drawers in order to feed the cable through another hole into the knee hole area. If you need to periodically unplug anything, such as a laptop power pack; then you will very quickly end up not feeding it through the cable hole; and worse will probably put some kind of power distribution (surge protector) on the desk itself. There is space behind the drawer to keep one of these permanently in the pedestal, but you couldn't easily reach it. It would be possible to screw on to the inside back of the desk (behind the drawer, so compeltely hidden) but you can't get your hand through the cable outlet to access it.
