SimpliHo

Item arrived completely broken-down into one shipping carton, well packed with plenty of insulation sleeves and material to prevent damage during transit. Pieces were clearly marked with alpha-numeric tags. I was pleased to see that they included a bag of "extra" hardware in case something got lost. Assembly went fine until it was discovered that no pilot holes were drilled for the backing (like 20 holes) and also for the magnetic closures. This resulted in a frustrating amount of time spent precisely marking and drilling for the screws. Finished piece looks very good, although the decal says not to use for anything larger than a 42" TV, which is nonsense. Our 55" fits fine.

When I unpacked the entertainment center and checked the parts, the railing for one of the drawers was damaged.I contacted the manufacturer's support and they confirmed that parts are not available, yet I have been trying for 25 days to process a return and the manufacturer is still giving me the run around.It's a good study product. There are a lot of parts so construction can be time consuming, but the instructions are fairly clear. It's unfortunate that the manufacturer's support is so unhelpful.

The instructions were clear enough and the parts were well labeled which probably is about the highlight of this piece. I'm used to putting furniture together and this took a long time, like it will take you hours. The parts did go together although I ended up using my own allen wrench because using the one provided for the number of screws needed would have taken even longer.The top arrived broken (see the photo). The front apron was broken off likely from weight of the other parts pushing on it in transit. I had to glue it back on and then screw it back down but if you are going to be sitting low you would see the flaw in the finish that is now clearly visible on the underside. Speaking of the finish, it is mediocre, yes, its black painted but I wouldn't call it a fine finish nor would I call the piece overall high quality. You can see flaws in multiple places. It might qualify as "rustic." For this level of quality, it probably should have had a 2 or even a 1 in the price rather than over $300. I regret not shopping local stores for a smaller scale dining buffet or similar tv stand that was already assembled because for the price, I'd call it mediocre. I probably would have given it 3 stars overall were it not for the fact that it arrived with a broken apron which is front and center on the piece. Overall, a disappointment.

Potential buyers of this TV/media stand should know this it's apparently a clearance item from Simpli Home, and they don't have any replacements for defective parts. That may explain why they include so many extra pieces of hardware, but it doesn't help with defects in the actual cabinet components. I was able to complete assembly, but contacted the manufacturer to get replacements for several damaged/defective pieces.Simpli Ho's response: "We would like to inform you that the part which you required are out of stock with us and also, we regret to inform you that we currently do not have any estimated time of arrival for the parts, therefore requesting you to contact the retailer and they will take care of the issue for you in an expedited way to resolve this issue in a timely manner."I did contact Amazon and they were fantastic, providing a partial refund that I'm completely happy with.Here are the issues I ran into:1. First, as you can see in the attached pictures, one of the drawer panels (NL) was cracked. Considering how well packed the product was, it’s not clear how this happened, but I found that there is some visible separation in the plywood layers at both ends that likely contributed to the problem.2. I can’t count how many assemble-it-yourself pieces of furniture I’ve put together over the years, and I’ve probably used hundreds of cam locks & bolts. But I’ve never ever had a problem getting a cam lock to lock. Yet, almost every one of the cams for the side panels was still loose after the half-turn, and some of the locks used in other pieces were as well. I had to hope that attaching the top, center and bottom shelves with hex bolts would mitigate this issue, but to ensure that the cams didn’t fall out over time I applied some wood glue to keep them in place.3. It’s great that every piece is labeled with stickers, but manufacturer should make them easier to remove. Placing a big sticker warning label inside the cabinet is uncalled for. Took me hours to use Goo-Gone on these stickers.4. Poor alignment caused by loose cam locks (amongst other quality issues) causes the assembly of side panels (B) and dividers (E and G) to not be square and flush with the rear edges of the top (A), center (C), and bottom D shelves. When I attached the top, I had to loosen the bolts holding the dividers to C in order to get the hex-bolt holes to align properly.5. Back panel should be a single piece. Because of the misalignments I described above, achieving a good fit with multiple panel pieces is impossible. Screw holes for the back panels can be so poorly aligned with the dividers that the screws pierce the edges.6. The picture may be difficult to make out, but one of the door (F) edges was scraped.

It looks very nice because it is real wood. The markings on the individual pieces could have been better regarding which side is front and back. I had to undo and re-attach pieces twice (the first time was due to my inattention but not the second time) and at the end I had to swap the positions of two of the drawer tracks. I could not figure out what I did wrong to mess up the positioning of the drawer tracks. Over 2 days, I think it took me about 6 - 7 hours to put the cabinet together alone. I am still not sure that the drawers are operating as smoothly as they should. I will have a handy friend look at the drawers and eventually they will be installed correctly if they are not already. Right now, the drawers do not open and close like fine furniture. The opening and closing operation is kind of jerky. There is a gap above the doors but it is only noticeable when one is sitting in front of the doors. I assume that gap was intentional. The hardware is pretty basic so you may want to replace it with more attractive hardware. But despite my assembly mis-steps, it looks so much better than a veneered particle board cabinet ever would look. The only post-assembly minus is that it holds less DVD/CDs within the cabinet doors than the TV cabinet that it replaced. Although the replaced TV cabinet was narrower, it had two shelves for DVD storage at each end and those 4 shelves held a lot of DVDs. Unfortunately, my new TV had legs at each end of the TV instead of a center stand which forced me to buy a wider TV cabinet.