The Sonex Model TR-7608 is a reasonably well designed and built TV stand. The construction is of particle board covered with high quality laminate. Although manufactured in Canada, it reminds me of the common "Danish" furniture which often has teak veneer. All of the wood is cut properly and the holes are drilled properly.
-It is important that the tapered legs be installed with the taper out to the side of the stand. If you mount a leg on the wrong end, it will taper into the area where a glass door goes. You cannot mount or use the doors if you mount the legs in the wrong position.
-The parts are labeled with letters in the pictures, but not on the parts themselves. It would be useful if some of the similar actual pieces were lettered. Pay careful attention to the holes and the placement thereof on the parts so as not to get them mixed up.
-I give the instruction pictures and order for assembly a 5 minus, but give the words in the instructions only a 3. There needs to be a blowup picture of the mounting of the slides for the drawers. Each wheel is mounted down and flush with the outside of the stand. On each drawer itself, there is a useful adjustment screw on each side.
-I found it best to mount only one hinge on each glass door before installing it in the cabinet. After installing one hinge on a glass, place the unmounted hinge in the hole in the stand, place the mounted hinge in the other hole, then slide the other end of the glass into the second hinge and tighten. It is easier to do with two people.
-There are two hidden legs in the center of the stand, but they are not quite long enough to support the stand with a big TV on it. A big TV causes the stand to sag. This could be solved with some sort of a spacer, such as a rubber furniture leg pad.
-Installing my components was no problem.
-I was going to give the stand an overall 3 rating but have raised it to a 4 based on a recent price reduction.
The design of this entertainment center is completely flawed. Pre-drilled holes are incorrectly placed, leaving a loose fitting top piece and cockeyed drawers. The placement of the legs and their upper width leave you unable to use the glass doors unless you are ok with only being able to open them an inch or two.
Unfortunately, when I first ordered this product there were no reviews available. Shortly after it arrived (and before I had opened it) a negative review was posted detailing the difficulties with assembly. I contacted the company (not Amazon unfortunately) to make arrangements to return it. They were difficult to work with, and extremley expensive to return items to. I am now the not-so-proud owner of a piece of Cymax crap.
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Good grief! Where do I begin? This is most flawed design for an AV cabinet anywhere. The unit although easily assembled, looks nothing like an AV cabinet. It's more like a large livingroom cocktail table with storage. As a matter of fact, it's just slightly taller than a coffee table. It's exceptionally heavy (109lbs packaged), and it looks fairly nice, but not as pictured.
Now for the good stuff (sarcastically speaking).
1) There is a major design flaw in this thing. The intructions direct you to install dowels (wooden pegs) to sablize the top. Well, when I attempted to do so, the insertion holes on the underside of the top are a full 3.5 inches off! WTF???? Nevertheless, the top stays securely fastened without them.
2) Next, there is the case of the glass doors. There is no way they can be installed onto the unit. Why? Because the drilled holes for the brackets that hold the doors are behind the front legs. When installed, the legs (which taper at the bottom, and flare at the top), block the doors from opening. The doors open only 1 inch! Another WTF moment!! Again, I managed to get past using them, but it would have been nice to have them installed as in the picture because they they would prevent dust from reaching my AV components.
3) Finally, this damned thing will not hold my AV equipment! Thats right, the fit is so tight that my equipment (a Panasonic AV receiver with DVD/CD changer, Kenwood Equalizer, and Sony CD/DVD changer) had to be flipped, and practically skewered in order to get onto the shelves. Again, the problem is those damned legs at each corner of the unit. They block any attempt to install equipment greater than 15" wide into the unit. Lord have mercy! Unless you have micro/mini components, do not get this piece of particalboard booyah!
Oh, and those glass doors? I used those for the shelves to hold my components as they are a lot thinner than the supplied adjustable shelves. I could at least twist and turn and juggle my AV equipment, and scrape the sides of them and the cabinet onto those (no larger than an) anal-cavity shelves.
I haven't gotten my 42" flat screen TV yet, and man, I am almost afraid to place it on this contraption of a AV shelf. While it looks nice, it lacks any real usability, and is just like I said earlier, a large coffee table with two drawer storage. Oh, and dont plan on placing anything in those drawers either. At least not any DVDs with the cases. You will get perhaps 20 in each of them. Oh, maybe the cabinet is trying to encourage me from maintaining an actual DVD library, and to download video on demand, and be done with physical DVD storage. Not! Furntiure doesn't tell me what to do especially when this thing can't do what it's advertised to do. I can't return it it would be a major hassle. So I will suck it up, swallow the $$$ loss, and get the darned entertainment center I saw at Neiman Marcus for $1,100. At least It will be delivered assembled.
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I hope that you read my review. The item itself arrived and the box was in decent shape, so I felt I did not have to open immediately. Once I had opened I found that the top shelf was split in the corner from someone who didn't understand that you must protect corners as they are the first to get damaged. One would think a simple install of Styrofoam would have made sense. When you think about it, what package have you ever seen without it? Sonax, and Amazon need to get their acts together. I say Amazon as they have a responsibility to check their suppliers so that we don't have to constantly return items. Sonax just seriously needs to hire a packaging engineer; yes they have them. I'll be returning this item, even though I like it because I simply cannot deal with the split corner. I would have liked to just replace the top shelf, but Amazon won't support that option. I guess I've learned my lesson; I will never buy furniture from Amazon again.
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Item assembled fairly easily. No problems with doors. other that a small imperfection under the laminate the piece looks great and functions as expected
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This is a small shelf. I originally planned to use it as a book shelf but it didn't work out that way. So I put it on one of my kitchen counter tops. It turns out to be very useful. It is now my coffee gadget shelf.
