If you buy a desk top made out of this honeycomb crap, if you put any weight on the desk top (e.g. sometimes rest your elbows there), be prepared to throw it out after a couple years - the whole surface will over time heavily deform under weight and will no longer be flat.
You're either unlucky or exaggerating. I've had cardboard honeycomb furniture for years and years with no major degradation.
If the surface coating gets damaged or the surface gets pierced or it becomes waterlogged from spills or environmental humidity, it will quickly go bad. But they're pretty resilient to normal household use.
You get what you pay for. A LACK honeycomb table costs 7€. What can you expect at this price?
I think I was neither, as I repeated it three times and always got the same result (I was moving every couple of years, so I threw out the crooked desk top when moving and bought identical one in a new place). Eventually, I stopped getting those $40 honeycomb desk tops and got a wooden one, from IKEA as well (made not from solid wood, but from sort of glued together mosaic of small wood pieces, don't know what it's called) for around $100, which is still good as new after 8 years of usage.
I think expecting a $40 piece of furniture to survive multiple moves is unrealistic on your part. You get what you pay for, and $40 for a desk that makes it through even 2 residences is $20/location for a desk which is ridiculously cheap.
It wasn't a desk, just a desk top (i.e. a flat rectangular surface, 150cm x 70cm x 5cm IIRC). You screwed legs to it (sold separately), and thus had a simplest possible desk. Also, I agree that it was cheap, but it was a piece of furniture that has already shown signs of wear after a year and was ready for landfill after 3 years of usage. Under Polish law, I could probably successfully sue IKEA for selling me faulty product, because I could reasonably argue in court that no furniture, no matter how cheap, should be expected to last only 3 years. I mean, desks are not socks.
The only way I damaged it was with a double screen clamp.
I find the honeycomb amazing, bought my huge desk 35€ while I was a student, and the only thing that damaged it was the double screen arm clamp that damaged the surface of the desk.
