Standout Designs Majestic Angle e5822 TV Cabinet Review

Introduction

The most often forgotten about component in a home theater system is the storage device in which your precious equipment is contained. Some folks choose to place their gear in metal racks while others favor more decorative solutions that blend in with their room décor. One thing that always irks me about A/V furniture is the assembly process. I’ve assembled so many of these in the past that I no longer have the time nor inclination to do another one. Enter Standout Designs, a premium A/V furniture company that ships fully assembled A/V racks. Unlike most no name prefab stuff sold at department stores, their products actually don’t suck. The Majestic Angle e5822 was actually designed to accommodate real A/V gear and not the pretend cardboard box cuts outs that are often shown on the display floor. Read on to take a tour of the Majestic Angle and find out why I think it’s truly a unique product for its genre.

Design Overview & Set-Up

The Majestic Angle e5822 TV Cabinet (what a mouthful) by StandOut Designs is not like your run of the mill A/V furniture. The Angle is made from Pennsylvania solid lumber chosen for its beauty, strength and sustainability. You won't find any cheesy particleboard, MDF, veneer, or laminates on this product. Even the back panel is made from responsibly-harvested American solid wood. On that topic, I find it refreshing that not only is StandOut Designs producing green friendly products, but they are building them right here in the USA! Now that is something you rarely find these days. The Angle comes in 3 finish options (black, espresso, or cinnamon for a $50 upgrade option). I chose Cinnamon for my review sample.

Since the Angle comes fully assembled (sans the glass shelves and door covers), it shows up on a large truck in a very big and heavy box. The delivery company had a lift gate to unload this furniture which was quite hefty. The cabinet with the glass weighs approximately 125 lbs in Ash and 115 lbs in Maple. Total shipment weight is about 185 due to the pallet. Packaging is all recyclable. My review unit came undamaged thanks to the very thorough packing job of StandOut Designs. Once I got all the packing off the cabinet, I gazed at the beauty of the real wood and workmanship of this product. I then noticed the silver feet hoping that they had hidden wheels to make my job of moving this cabinet into position on my parents' hardwood floor easy and stress free. StandOut Designs didn’t disappoint. The Angle's stylish brushed nickel feet feature concealed fixed wheels plus levelers adjustable from inside the cabinet making moving and leveling on floors easy. Now that is how I like to roll, and it is obvious StandOut Designs is on page with me.

The Angle comes standard with clear glass doors but they also shipped me their upgrade glass tint and speaker grill covers. They also offer wood panels for the doors which I don’t recommend unless you are using an IR repeater system to control your equipment. I installed the tinted glass in the doors because they looked fabulous.

A close inspection of this cabinet revealed to me that a lot of thought went into its design to allow the end user great flexibility for installing their A/V gear. For one, the cabinet depth was over 19 inches. Most A/V furniture I’ve seen is no deeper than 16 inches making it impossible to install anything but an entry level receiver and have enough depth to run wiring. I didn’t have this problem with the Angle as I installed a mid priced Denon A/V receiver into it with with ample room to spare. Peering inside the Angle, I was plesantly surprised to find many drilled out holes to route cabling between shelves and the two equipment bays. I did however sometimes wish the bottom holes were a bit larger or perhaps oval shaped to accommodate the myriad of thick speaker cables and power cords I routed to connect my system.

I was happy to see venting holes at the bottom of the cabinet as well as thermistor controlled fans in each equipment bay. Each enclosure bay features a thermo-controlled exhaust fan that spins at 1000 RPM, emits less than 16 dBa, yet moves nearly 40 CFM. Controllers turn fans on at ~87 F and off at ~80 F using an external probe at the source. StandOut Designs claims the fans feature quiet, long-lasting SONY-designed fluid dynamic ball-bearings. That sounds cool to me, no pun intended. You can mount the fans on the outside of the cabinet should you require more cabinet depth to accommodate bigger gear. I left the sensor probes behind the gear instead of on top. During my testing, I didn’t hear the fans come on at all as the ambient temperature just didn’t get high enough to warrant them.

The glass shelves have a big circular hole in the center for ventilation and even routing cabling if you need to. This again demonstrates the installer friendly mindset of StandOut Designs.

During the installation process, I was getting a bit annoyed of snaking cabling through the smallish holes and wished that the backpanel would come off. I was perplexed by the removable screws on the backpanel so I took them off to see what would happen. The result was nothing. The back panel seemed affixed to the cabinet regardless of the screws being on or off. I continued doing the install and noted that I would list this as a con in my review. Finally I have something genuine to complain about… or so I thought.

When I went on StandOut Designs website to get some product info, I noticed in their bulleted features that the back panel was in fact removable. They even proved it with a picture. In speaking with StandOut Designs, they instructed me how to remove the backpanel more easily. Using the screws as a lever, you simply slide the panel to one side while lifting out which is admittedly is not easy if the fan panel is in place. I will revist this on my next trip to my parents' house and bring along my rubber mallet to give it a few whacks just incase the panel doesn’t come off for me.

Despite the back panel being removable, I do wish the manufacturer would have provided a larger cutout on it to route cabling through. All of the speakers in my parents A/V system are in-walls and thus their cabling is terminated on the wall behind where the cabinet resides. It would have been easier for me to route all of the speaker cables throught the back as opposed to snaking them throught the bottom of the cabinet. A wide cut out towards the bottom of the back panel that spans both equipment bays would have been ideal especially since most people would likely place their A/V receiver and power conditioner on the bottom shelves like I did. StandOut Designs informed me that they try to keep openings in the rear to a minimum in order to force the fans to draw air from the front of and through the cabinet. They are however considering offering larger openings for easier cable routing in future iterations of this product.

I also noted towards the back sides of the cabinet, behind the storage area for CDs/DVD’s, there is a considerable empy area on both sides of the unit that probably could have been more cleverly utilized for cramming cables intofor tidying up the install. There, I am glad I finally found a valid cricism or two of this fine product.

Conclusion

For those wishing to integrate a home theater system into their family or living room and are mindful of blending it into their room décor, the Majestic Angle e5822 from StandOut Designs may be the product for you. Its construction and quality of materials are light years beyond much of the run of the mill junk you find at department stores. Despite the fact that so many people wall mount their flat panel displays these days doesn’t negate the necessity of a storage place for their A/V equipment. The Angle gives you the option of placing itself under your wall mounted display or placing your display on top of it. I installed a brand new 52” Samsung 1080p on top of the Angle with no issues and in fact could have even placed a larger display on it as the top shelf is rated to hold up to 200lbs. Considering the thoughtfulness of design that went into making this product a truly dedicated A/V furniture rack and the fact that it’s not only affordable but made in the USA, means it gets my highest recommendation!

Standout Designs Majestic Angle Summary
Standout Designs
700 Hepburn Street, Suite 17
Milton, PA 17847

(877) 325-9663
http://www.standoutdesigns.com

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Ease of Setup/Programming/Integration
Features
Appearance
Performance
Value