****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I think very highly of this unit. But know what you are getting in to if you choose to build this yourself. If my description is scary, find a reliable Handyman/woman to build it for you. This is not a simple furniture-in-a-box undertaking. You need to be patient enough to sort all your parts, and work through 20+ pages of "instructions" with very careful attention to detail. You need to expect it will take several hours to build. (Yes, really.) And you need to be insightful and intuitive enough to follow instructions that have NO WORDS. The "Assembly Instructions" are 20+ pages of crystal clear diagrams of how to assemble generally 2 to 4 pieces of the unit at a time. Even though the parts and hardware are clearly labelled, it is a real challenge to figure out which surface is up or which edge faces forward when the only clue is to carefully study the size and location of pre-drilled holes in the piece in question. Even with my experience and care, I had two sub-assemblies I had to dismantle when I tried to join them because I had gotten two pieces reversed in earlier steps.Now, lest you think this is all tortuous labor, the good news is that every piece of wood and metal is labeled with a letter, and every bag of screws and parts are labeled with a number. They have already broken down the parts bags into 20+ different bags associated with various stages of assembly. You use no glue at all, so all steps are reversible. The engineering of the build, and the machining of the parts are precise. A huge relief when you are joining heavy pieces or subassemblies that require aligning a half dozen cam screws. They all fit perfectly.One of the main reasons this is such a difficult or complex build is that achieving this high level of strength in a piece of furniture designed to look light and modern requires a lot of over-lapping pieces. Assembling these type of overlapping top and bottom pieces to a center shelf means precisely following the order of insertion of screws and hardware so that all fasteners can be installed at the correct time in the correct way.What you wind up with is a 90 pound behemoth that LOOKS relatively sleek and minimalist. The central spine of this unit is a strong sparse box design that provides substantial strength to the shelves, and the strength of an I-beam to the TV mount.A couple of points of clarification from other reviews. 1) This unit does not need to be ATTACHED to a wall, but it must be placed with it's back against a wall ("at least as tall as the television" in the instructions). So it can't be free-standing. But the large, front-biased base makes it very safe from the front, so long as the back is in contact with a wall. 2) The TV mount is full strength steel, but minimal - a fixed cross beam, and dual position fixed hangars to mount to the TV - which allow you to simply hang the TV on the crossbar. No reaching around behind the TV to drive screws. There are no hinges or gimbals - no way to tilt or steer the TV. I have not investigated it myself, but I suspect the cross-beam is strong enough that you mights be able to attach a more active mounting gimbal between your TV and this unit's cross beam to gain that flexibility. I leave that to you as a separate exercise.So, "A" as a piece of furniture; slightly above average hand tool skills; and super-human spacial relationship skills for envisioning the correct parts and correct orientation of the parts from a booklet of line drawings.
