Customer Reviews

Atlantic 3533-5009 Elf Jr. Multimedia Rack

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Elf Jr. is an awesome product! The build quality is phenomenal at this price level - Solid, nicely painted MDF; high quality steel rods; and well built plastic "feet" for the base.
For those of you with carpet, especially thick, non-Berber type carpet like myself, all of the nice media racks suffer from small feet and/or the height of the unit makes it difficult to get a solid balance on carpet. The feet for this unit are solid and wide enough and the unit is short enough to provide a very stable balance on just about any relatively level surface.

Oh, and to the reviewer who had trouble building the unit - I will agree that the manual really stinks, but if you follow the pictures and use a little common sense these things are easy to build. The first one took about 45 minutes... number two, which I built a few months later, took less than 30 minutes. If you rely solely on written instructions for putting things together, you may have a difficult time. If you can follow pictures and use a little intuition and common sense, you will have no problem building these units. I don't mean to belittle the prior reviewer, but I don't think his complaint was a fair assessment of the product.

Summary:

Pros:

Great build quality
Flexible Uses
Stackable (built for wall anchors, too)
Solid base for stability
Cheap!

Cons:
May be difficult for a few non-visual people to build

I recently purchased three of these shelves (on clearance at a local retailer) after spending a good hour browsing through 20-30 different CD & DVD storage units, measuring and re-measuring walls and ceilings, etc. The per disc/DVD cost on these is very low (10 cents per CD, 20 cents per DVD). There's not much to them, but I have three stacked (7 feet high!) and it is still very stable, even on carpet. The kit includes hardware for free-standing, wall mounting, wall supports, etc. and the rods can be installed in numerous configurations to fix a combination of CD/DVD/VHS/etc.

All in all an excellent buy!

Very nice looks, sturdy, and easy to put together. I am actually planning to get another one and build a "threesome" out of the two racks and the extra rods they come with. Why extra rods? You can set it up with 4 shelves for cd or with three for dvd, leaving some spares. Nice product.

I have a shelf unit that holds 72 cds and my desk rack holds around 40 so due to my music addiction, I ran out of room a couple of weeks ago. Therefore I went out and bought myself a new rack that's made by the same company. However, when I got it built, it was completely wobbly. Not good. I had to throw it out and was out the fifty bucks.

So, I did a little searching on the internet and found this one. I liked the product and the way it looked in the picture so I bought it. It was shipped to me within a week and I put it together the same night that I received it. It was completely steady and I could lift it with one hand without it falling apart. And so far, I've had no issues with it whatsoever.

My advice is that if you need a good rack and you don't want to spend a lot of money, this product is for you. The only problem is that there are only pictures in the instruction manual but by using good common sense, you'll be able to figure it out.

This attractive media storage rack by Atlantic can stores combinations of CDs, DVDs and even VHS tapes. Of course you can use it for just one of the three types of media, too. In that case it can store up to 232 CDs, 120 DVDs or 60 VHS tapes. It fits nicely up against a wall and the design with its titanium coloring goes with most contemporary and modern décor.

The rack is easy to lift and carry around your room or your home. One cautionary note: I wouldn't move the rack when it was full or even just partially full, either. Empty the rack before moving it so that you don't risk media spilling all over your floor or shelf dividers coming loose and falling onto your floor.

This rack is particularly useful for persons with large CD collections. Amazon correctly notes that the rack holds up to 232 CDs--excellent! At less than three feet high it won't get in the way of most windows or artwork hanging on the walls of your home.

I have some concerns about the overall construction of the unit and its assembly. Frankly, the instructions were very difficult to understand and I had to actually get a friend to help me assemble this thing! Ouch! There are a gazillion small screws connecting things and the assembly can take some while. In addition, please be careful not to overload a shelf--it can cause the shelf to bend downward because of the weight on it and then it looks pretty ugly. Even after you cover up that shelf with media, the media themselves are not even because the bent shelf on which they rest is uneven. Sigh.

Although they say you can stack these, I can't comment on that because I haven't attempted to do that. Sorry!

In short, this is a good rack as long as you are great with mediocre instructions that can be rather cryptic at times. It reliably holds a fair amount of media but as I mentioned above it cannot be manhandled--use care when moving this rack! Once you do get past the instructions, however, I would highly recommend this media storage rack by Atlantic for anyone with larger media collections.

The Pluses: Amazon sells it (save on postage), solid build quality, flexible (VHS, DVD, CD), space-efficient (holds generous supply of discs), convenient (I've learned never to purchase another slotted storage device, which requires reorganizing the entire collection each time a new disc is added).

The Minuses: Aesthetics (wood cabinets are not only more attractive but exude the sense of integration of music and decor), assemblage (allow at least an hour and scan the instructions before diving in, getting a sense of inside and outside, and paying close attention to the numbering of parts), bulk (great for a floor-standing unit but clumsier than I had anticipated for placement on top of a desk or another cabinet).

The clincher: You're preserving a genuine collection of music and movies that expresses and reflects part of who you are. Those "collectors" who compress everything into digital files stored on computers and storage drives, then dispose of the hard-copy "evidence," show little respect for themselves or the music. Less collectors than "consumers," these individuals have merely redistributed "matter"--i.e. random particles of consciousness--in the spatial-temporal universe, fragile frissons in a vast energy field, forgotten files in an 80-gigabyte iPod. The next casualty is bound to be the fragmentation of what was once a coherent "self."

The instructions are useful for the labeling of parts, but the "steps" could hardly be less clear. The pictures on the box are more helpful in assembling this thing. Practical TIPS for quick and sure ASSEMBLY: 1. Locate the bottom; 2. count the number of holes to the top (20); 3. allow for 6-8 holes between DVDs, 4 holes between CDs; 4. each shelf consists of 3 rods--one threaded rod on the side close to you, one "far side" threaded rod and one "far side" unthreaded rod. Screw down the two threaded rods on the LEFT ONLY, the rod away from you TWO HOLES UP from the rod close to you; 5. Do NOT screw down the right side--instead snap the inside plastic rod holders in place and insert the unthreaded rods. They snap into the "far side," DIRECTLY OPPOSITE the "near side" threaded rods (but don't trust visual alignment. Simply count the holes, and you'll avoid later frustration). 6. Now screw down the right sides of the threaded rods--the one on the near side and the other one (2 holes UP) on the far side (away from you). Tighten things all around, put on the "feet" if it's self-standing (ignore them if it's being fastened to a desk or wall), snap in the dividers (if you feel like it), and start rackin' em up! (Or have a coke instead and congratulate yourself for getting this far.)

The pre-drilled holes match the parts and the components are sturdy and well made. It does not take long to assemble the unit if you just ignore the instruction sheet and look at the pictures. The large feet keep the rack from tipping over, especially if there are toddlers around. The assembly instructions are terrible, but the unit does, in my opinion, justify the highest rating.

I bought this rack to hold my dvd's. It holds three rows of them and is very stable even when the dog smashes into it. I will be purchasing an additional one for my cd's to stack on top of it.

Hi. Just got the package yesteday, and was very pleasantly surprised at how nice it looks and how sturdy it it.

While I agree with some of the comments that the instructions can be a bit better, the assembly is very logical and easy to figure out. And as you go through a couple of steps, the instructions also start making a lot of sense - all the information is there, it just takes a few minutes to figure out the style in which it is laid out.

I have rarely seen a better packaged product. Each part is clearly laballed, and all the screws and smaller items are in individual bags, each labelled with a letter that corrosponds to letter designations on the instruction sheet.

One thing one NEEDS TO BE CAREFUL about is not to tighten the screws too much. Otherwise the screws will damage the surface being screwed into, and you may not even realize it - it does not provide that great a resistance. Just be a little careful with this aspect of the assembly.

Other than that, I have no other complaints (and even that is not really a complaint, just a heads-up).

What I like best about it? The flexibility to set it up wiht the shelf configuration one wants (though, one it is set up, you would need to basically disassemble it to chage the configuration, which would be a pain, so make sure you know the configuration you want before putting it together), and the fact that it is very sturdy.

I looked around for a CD rack for quite a while. One of the things I didn't like about most other racks I looked at was that most of them had fixed shelf spacings to accommodate both CDs and DVDs, which meant that if you used it for just CDs you would have a lot of wasted air space between shelves. This one comes with enough rods to set up 4 shelves if you are just using the rack for CDs. I like the black and metal modern style of this one with the low profile design. My one stylistic complaint would be the "donuts" at the top intended for stacking two racks together, but I just chose not to install them. It leaves a half-circle cut at the top, but that doesn't bother me.

Reading the other reviews before ordering this, I had been concerned about some of the criticism about the build quality and assembly instructions. But I was perfectly satisfied on both of those counts. The rack seems plenty sturdy enough, with wide feet to keep the rack stable even on carpet. I've had it for over a month and I haven't noticed any significant sagging of the rods on a fully loaded shelf as another reviewer mentioned.

The assembly instructions are mostly in pictures and don't spell out everything in words, but all parts are properly labeled, so if you follow the pictures carefully as you're assembling it, all of the information is there to build it correctly. I didn't find any errors in the instructions.

Overall I'm very happy with this rack and wouldn't hesitate to buy another one.