MEEDEN Wooden French Easel Box: Beechwood Sketch Easel with Foldable Legs - Portable Tripod Easel Stand for Outdoor Sketching Painting can Hold Canvas up to 34"

A mixed review. Having been looking at this for a while I took the plunge and bought it. The easel itself is fine if a little light but then again, it's a portable easel so that's expected. Where it went wrong was the detachable side table was missing. I contacted Amazon via their web chat thing and their only solution was to repack it, send it back to them and they'd issue a refund. Which would take up to a week to hit my bank account. Whereupon I could order another one. Which, given the reviews that this easel gets, might have another problem. So I contacted Meeden customer services and within two days they have promised to send me the missing part thus saving me all the hassle.Amazon seem to be taking the easy way out which I can understand but I'm now less inclined to use them if there's an alternative. I was looking at a massage gun prior to the recent "Spring Sale" at €22 and held off only to find that is had been increased to €30+ in the so called sale.So while I continue to use Amazon they're no longer my first choice.***UPDATE***The missing part arrived by post this morning about a week after I contacted Meeden customer care. So while they didn't pack the part in the first place, they were very quick to remedy it. I'd still be waiting for a refund from Amazon.

Lovely quality easel unfortunately one of the nuts and was washer missing , and instructions for how to assemble are not adequate. It doesn't say how to release tripod legs can be released to assemble the easel.

First, a note to anyone getting one of these: the assembly instructions are inside the main box. I found them after assembling following a video by a helpful Australian guy on YouTube. There are no instructions for the metal tray, but it essentially just clips on the side of the open box.Overall, this easel looks great and I would have absolutely loved to use it, but a build defect made this impossible.Problem 1: There was a loose screw, and I found out this was because the brace for the back leg wasn't attached to the bottom of the box. The hole where it was meant to attach was there, so I figured this was an easy fix. Unfortunately they hadn't threaded the hole, so there was nothing for the screw to screw into, and pushing it in was not secure enough (it immediately sprang loose).Problem 2: When I opened the box, there was a loose piece of wood. I realised this was meant to attached to the inside lid of the box and be fastened through a hole on the side, but unlike an identical piece on the other side, this one didn't have a wing nut, so couldn't be fastened.If it had just been problem 2 on its own, I could have replaced it with a new wing nut and been happy. Unfortunately I had to request a refund because problem 1 wasn't fixable (and be aware that Amazon doesn't give replacement parts for this and, while it's under warranty, Meeden is based in China, so if you could get in touch with them it would take a while to arrive).I could have got a replacement but since Meeden gets reviews for missing parts relatively often by the looks of it, it would be a lot like playing roulette. I'll have to find another brand.

Your loved one will love to have it. Bought it 2 years a go and it is still works perfect.