Sanus NF Series NFA-245 Audio Stand Review

Sanus NFA 245 First Impressions and Build Quality

Face it, when people call you to talk about their great home theater or 2-channel audio room they just set up, they rarely tell you about the piece of furniture they store all their gear on.  In fact, most of the rooms I help folks set up use either an old piece of furniture or some other make-shift AV stand and sink all their AV budget into their gear.  While I certainly understand wanting to get the best gear for your money, I have found that having a high quality AV stand to store your gear in can be the finishing touch that takes the room from the "man room in the basement" to the family theater that you or your spouse will be proud to include on the home tour next time guests are over.  Not to mention that stands like the NFA245 are designed to not only look great, but to also help ensure that gear is in optimum operating conditions that will prolong the life of your equipment and improve its performance.

The NFA 245 is the five-shelf entry in the Sanus Systems Natural AV Foundations Series.  It is designed and marketed as an audio stand, but as you will see in this review, it also has Home Theater applications thanks to its height.  The stand is a fairly contemporary design made from real hardwood, glass, and steel rods and should look great in just about any room in your house.  Three different wood finishes are available (Mocha, Black & Cherry), making it easy to match the stand to your furniture.  The Natural AV Foundations Series stands are great looking solutions for storing your A/V components that will give them plenty of air flow and compliment the look of your gear.

First Impressions

The Sanus NFA 245 comes double boxed; the outer box measures approximately 4' x 2.5' and weighs about 80 pounds.  While the size is a little awkward, it is not so heavy that I couldn't carry it upstairs to the theater alone.  After cutting away the straps and getting to the stand itself, the first impressive thing I noticed was the 3/4" hardwood construction, rather than the typical laminate over MDF. As someone who does a good bit of woodworking, I'm always amazed at just how much better real wood feels and looks than even the best laminate over MDF.  While the metal support rods and glass shelves add to the stand's contemporary feel, the deep mocha finish (and I'm sure Black or Cherry as well) on the real hardwood really warm up the feel of this piece and allows it to fit nicely into just about any decorating style.

Assembly and Build Quality

Assembly couldn't have been easier.  The carton contains everything you need for assembly including:  the front and back wooden pieces; 4 glass shelves plus the top glass shelf; 2 different sized graphite finished steel rods; 6 decorative end pieces; bolts, an assortment of washers, and the Allen wrench required for assembly.  The instructions consist of four pages of diagrams, with detail drawings identifying which pieces go where.  The whole assembly process took me about 30 minutes.

As I unpacked the stand, the real wood felt and looked great.  The back wooden piece of the unit is only about 6.5" wide and gives the unit a 3-leg look.  The back piece also contains eight holes (2 at the bottom of each of the 4 shelves) to feed wires into the wire management system included with this stand.  The glass shelves came in a separate box with plenty of padding and paper to protect them during shipping.  Each of the 4 shelves is made of 5mm smoked tempered glass and felt plenty solid enough for the components they were intended to hold.  The top shelf is 8mm thick smoked tempered glass with the rear corners cut at angles to allow placement in a corner if needed.

Assembly basically consists of connecting the wooden front and back pieces using the graphite finished steel rods with the associated decorative end pieces, bolts, and washers.  One person could assemble the stand alone, but I recruited my 12-year-old daughter to assist me, which made the job of lining up the rods with the holes and getting washers in place a bit easier.  Assembly is very straightforward; the only thing that might cause confusion is the two different size steel rods (the three for the bottom and three for the top are slightly shorter than the three under the middle shelves).

After the stand is assembled and your components are loaded, the included wire management system is a remarkably simple design.  It is a sheet of black, flexible plastic that is inserted into vertical grooves on either side of the back of the unit.  Once inserted into the grooves, it forms a U shaped channel behind the back of the stand to hide your wires and connectors.

Suggestions and Recommendations

The setup in my theater requires that my projector be located directly behind the seating area.  The construction of the room makes ceiling mounting my projector a difficult task, so I have settled on sitting my projector on a shelf.  The 45-inch height of this unit makes it very convenient for placement behind my seating area and leaves a nice clean (and completely dark) viewing area in the front of the room.

Having said all of this, the height of the stand also causes it to be a little less stable than I would prefer.  Even weighted down with my components, the three legged design of the unit allows some vibration through the carpet (though so far not enough to notice as far as picture movement on the screen).  I do not think this would be an issue if the stand was located on a hard flooring surface, but at this price point some type of floor spikes would be beneficial to help stabilize it.  Floor spikes could also give you an option for leveling the stand if you have uneven floors.

The wire management system included with the stand is a pretty simple concept and a welcome feature given the stand's open-air design.  In my case, I found that the wire management system would not hold all the wiring associated with my home theater setup.  For my configuration (stand behind and basically out of sight) this turned out not to be a deal breaker, but if the stand was in a more prominent location in the room, having the wiring visible could be a serious distraction from the stand's otherwise great looks.

Conclusions and Overall Perceptions

The Sanus NFA 245 is a component stand that is both highly functional and great looking. The high quality hardwood and finish and the steel and glass construction materials will easily mesh with other furniture-grade pieces in your room.  Also, the height of the stand makes using the top shelf ideal for anyone who needs to set up their projector behind their seating area.  This stand doesn't just look good; its deep shelves and open-air design also make it highly functional as well.  When you're ready to trade in that cinder block and plywood AV rack you've been using since college, the Sanus Foundations Natural Series is well worth consideration.

Sanus NFA245 Conclusions and Overall Perceptions

The Sanus NFA 245 is a component stand that is both highly functional and great looking. The high quality hardwood and finish and the steel and glass construction materials will easily mesh with other furniture-grade pieces in your room.  Also, the height of the stand makes using the top shelf ideal for anyone who needs to set up their projector behind their seating area.  This stand doesn't just look good; its deep shelves and open-air design also make it highly functional as well.  When you're ready to trade in that cinder block and plywood AV rack you've been using since college, the Sanus Foundations Natural Series is well worth consideration.

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
Performance
Stability
Build Quality
Ease of Setup/Programming/Integration
Features
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value