Cheetah Mounts Plasma LCD Flat Screen TV Articulating Full Motion Dual Arm Wall Mount Bracket For 32-65" Displays Up To 165LBS Black With 10' High Speed HDMI Cable With Ethernet Fits Up To 24" Studs
by Cheetah Mounts LLC
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cheetah Mounts Plasma LCD Flat Screen TV Articulating Full Motion Dual Arm Wall Mount Bracket For 32-65" Displays Up To 165LBS Black With 10' High Speed HDMI Cable With Ethernet Fits Up To 24" Studs
Customer Review: Decent mount, dangerous instructions
Summary: 3 Stars
The hardware itself isn't bad. Solidly built, functional.
Unfortunately, the critical part of this sort of mount is not the properly crafted steel, which isn't really all that hard to design and manufacture. The critical part is to devise an assembly process that Joe Couchpotato can perform and provide instructions for that process that he can follow successfully. Cheetah's instructions have a critical flaw of containing basic factual errors. The first one that everyone will see is obvious and trivial: a redirection to "Section 2" for masonry walls, when there is no such thing (the sections are "A" and "B") More insidiously, the drilling instructions are wrong. They call for a 10mm bit for drilling pilot holes, and parenthetically state that a 3/16" bit would be the English equivalent. Well, THAT'S NOT RIGHT! 10mm is in fact slightly over 3/8". But do not take the fact that they recommend metric first to be a sign that 10mm is right, LOOK AT THE SCREWS! The ones they sent with my mount appear to be 1/4" x 2" lag screws, for which a 3/16" pilot would be good. Thankfully, the 10mm hole I drilled before looking at the screws demonstrated to me that I had misestimated my stud centers with the stud finder, so it served a purpose and will be hidden by the mount anyway... In the same spirit, the masonry wall mounting instructions say exactly the same thing about bit sizes, even though they are supposed to be describing the use of the included S12x60 masonry anchors, which demand a 12mm hole. It is also a bit disturbing that while the instructions urge the use of all of the screws for either stud-wall or masonry installation, they state that there are 4 lags and anchors when in fact there are 6 in the package. One would be hard pressed to find a wall so thick with studs to allow the use of all 6 lags, but maybe for masonry they want you to use all 6 anchors.
Making the "huh?" factor even better is the divergence between the instruction booklet and the hardware pack that comes with the mount. The pack has 10 sections labeled a-j, containing various collections of bolts, washers, spacers, the aforementioned lag screws and anchors, and an allen wrench of unstated size. The booklet has a bill of materials table of 16 items labeled A-P, and while it seems that most of the 14 types of small bits in that list are in the hardware pack, the counts are not all right and the washers and screws aren't segregated so if you don't know what you need for your TV, well, good luck. Topping off the confusion: the package also contains a mysterious pair of toggle bolts, unlisted in the instructions at all and unsuited for a mount of this heft in any case. What are they for? Who could possibly know...
However, I do need to give the instructions points for comedy in their stud-finding instructions. They mention that studs are usually 16" apart, and that the wall plate can be used with studs up to 17" apart. The punch line is excellently dry, in a note that some houses have 24" between studs. How one might be able to deal with this is left as an exercise for the mounter (seems like bad news...) As for finding the center of a stud, their instructions would leave your wall looking like it had been attacked by a woodpecker. I suppose you could make sure those holes are all behind the wall plate...
Bottom line: if you haven't mounted a TV on a wall before, if you don't know what a stud finder does, or if you can't look at a lag screw and guesstimate its size and the size of the pilot hole it needs, this is not the wall mount for you.
Customer Review: Great Price! Well made!
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased this mount for my new 52" Sharp Aquos tv. I read many of the reviews that are here on Amazon but was convinced that there were more positive reviews than negative. Item was received within 3 days from Amazon, so +1 already! Well packaged, its actually double boxed and is poly strapped too. This mount is quite heavy and is of solid construction. Once I determined the location for the mount I simply used a 3 ft level to insure I was level and used a stud finder to find the center of the studs. I marked my holes with a sharpie then I used a small piece of tape on my 3/16" drill bit to drill my hole to a depth of 2" as the instruction said to do and gathered some help to hold the mount while I prepared to lag bolt it to the wall. Here's some advice, use a bar of soap and gently rub the threads of the lag bolts across the bar of soap and this will help ease the bolts into the wood and use a washer under the head of the lag bolt and you will have none of the issues some people have had with twisting off the heads of the lag screws. Simply don't over tighten the lag screws. Choke up on your wrench or socket wrench and tighten until its up against the metal mount and the lag screws are "wrist tight" Here's the solution to all the reviews I read that said the mount is not assembled square from the factory....READ THE INSTRUCTIONS! The instructions tell you how to adjust the mount if your tv is not square when you get it onto the mount. This is a very simply thing to do. Simply break loose the 4 allen screws on the front of the mount holding the rear nut with a 13mm wrench and then slightly loosen the center allen and use a level and adjust the tv mount as needed. It is designed to be adjusted! People who say its weleded crooked simply have not read the instructions! Be sure to check all other screws, bolts and nuts to be sure they are snug before you hang your tv from the mount. FYI: The allen head bolts that are on the front of the mount were only finger tight. The reviews that mention the mount is stiff and hard to move is fairly accurate, however, I would rather be a little on the stiff side than sloppy and loose the first time. I think the paint on the mount is whats making it tough to move. It will move and already mine has eased up some so its fine. Be sure to snug up the lower clamp screws to make certain the tv is not pulled off the mount when you move it around on the mount. By the way, the tv will slide a few inches left or right on the mount so if your a little off center this is an easy adjustment. All in all, this is a well engineered piece of equipment, it comes with just about everything you need to mount most all makes of TV's and its more than fairly priced considering it usually ships for free and the mount in the shipping box weighs over 30 pounds. My only disappointment was the fact the Amazon is always adjusting the prices of their items up and down. I ordered my mount at 5am in the morning, I went back to the site to double check my order and check on accessories and noticed they had lowered the price $10! Kinda frustrating, but Amazon does not have a price matching policy.Customer Review: Actually a 4.5 out of 5...
Summary: 4 Stars
I recently purchased a new 42" plasma TV for my living room: the Panasonic TC-P42X1. I bought the TV with the intention of hanging it above my fire place, but was shocked to find out that an articulating mount at Best Buy was $300! So I did what any sane, sensible American would do; I told Best Buy where to stick it and went to browse on Amazon.
After some consideration and reading all of the reviews for various mounts, I decided to go with this Cheetah two-arm articulating mount. Not only was the price less than half of the Best Buy mount, but I also liked the idea of two arms holding my brand new TV.
So I got the mount and found that it was really easy to install. I don't see what all the fuss is about with the directions being "difficult". I think it helps if you have a technical mind (I'm an electrical engineer) because I had no problems with the directions at all. There are no assembly pictures in the directions, so if you are a visual learner, that might be why it's difficult.
Now, on to the mount. It's of very, very, very solid construction. It is made completely out of a steel frame and steel hardware. I had no trouble hanging the mount on my wall studs (and yes this mount is made specifically for 16" spacing, but can go up to about 18"). I would recommend picking up some new lag bolt hardware to hang the mount on the wall, though. I got some 1/4" lag bolts with lock washers from Lowe's pretty cheap. I would also suggest getting a second pair of hands to help you mount this beast. It is quite heavy.
I would also recommend tightening all of the hardware that comes pre-assembled on the mount BEFORE YOU HANG THE MOUNT. I say this because I did not do this and I noticed that one of the bolts that holds the arm was on its way to falling off after I had the mount on the wall and the TV hung. And it's rather difficult to get on those bolts and give them a good torque-ing.
But the action of the mount is fairly smooth. It is a little difficult to move the TV where you want it, but once it's there, I have no worries about it falling down. And the range of motion is superb for my use. I'm able to swing the TV screen approx. 60-70 degrees in either direction.
Now my one complaint about the mount (and the reason behind the 4.5 of 5 stars) is the way the TV sits on the mount. The mount comes with two brackets that attach to your TV and then the TV hangs on the mount via these brackets. The only thing that holds the brackets to the mount is the weight of the TV and a metal bar that runs along the bottom of the brackets to keep the TV from tilting off. This would be okay if I wasn't moving the TV constantly, but I find that with this setup, whenever I push my TV back flat against the wall it always moves a little bit on the mount. It's a little unnerving and a little annoying too since I like the TV to be in the center of the fireplace.
Other than that, the mount is very solid and I would certainly buy one again if I needed to get an articulating mount.
Customer Review: Love This Big-Time Bracket for a 55" Mac Daddy HD Set!
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the best things I did before ordering this, as I do with everything I buy is research as much as possible. This site is a great tool and islike when you go to a restaurant you haven't been to and you ask the people who work there what's good to eat, you can come here and read who bought what and what their experience is also. So much good feedback on this bracket and I could not figure out why on earth the price differential was so vast between this and the one at Best Buy made by Sanus - over $500 difference! I even had the guy at Best Buy, one of the Geek Squad dudes give me his opinion on this and he couldn't find any reason not to use it. I showed him the pictures in here one of you great people had of the bracket mounted with a guy doing pullups off of it, and all the other pics as well! I may post mine, but they look similar to what's in here already. I did get the Sanus 2-shelf glass set to put the components on and the Geek Squad dude put it up underneath the TV so that it looks like the TV is part of it! It's really slick and attractive, and you could hang your truck on either of the brackets, the TV one or the Sanus one for God's sake. My TV's only 70 lbs, and the installer went about 210 hanging on it! He hid the wires and cables for me, and it cost me $260 to let a pro do all of it. It was so worth it. (I was trying to watch the USC/OREGON game while he was doing it and he hooked it up as soon as he could and continued working while I watched the game!) So thank you to everyone who led me to this decision. He got it up and actually did a few pullups himself on the bracket! Cheetah made some of the hard drive cases for our removable drives we used to cut music for shows on so I know they made heavy-duty stuff. This bracket is as advertised, and yes, it is a tad rigid to keep pulling out and turning and putting back. My wife probably couldn't do it, but I do and it's fine. I don't do it often, just on workout days when I'm outside and I need to angle the awesome new Vizio LCD/LED 55-incher I got from Costco toward the living room window so I can see the ballgame from the garage, and man it's sweet. It's even mounted slightly off center of the bracket, but you can't tell because it's covered by the TV! And it IS slidable so you can pretty much move it wherever you want to left or right, up or down, angled left or right, or pulled out if you want. I like the way it sets against the wall completely retracted, it doesn't stick out too much at all, it's totally flush enough for jazz. From the viewer's standpoint, the TV appears like it should: a picture frame hanging on the wall, and that's what the TV looks like mounted on this bracket. Yeah, here's why Best Buy and other manu's are charging $600 for these things. Because they can. Use the tools in here. You can obtain quality services and goods at minimal prices and help somebody out who may not have known about this. Thank you to all of you for helping me.Customer Review: good overall but some poor workmanship
Summary: 3 Stars
Bought for a 40" Samsung LCD. More than adequate to the task. Supplied bolts worked fine with my TV. I wanted the dual arm type as they should be better than a single arm type to avoid twisting and racking on larger TVs. Instructions were adequate but not much in the way of diagrams. Get two people to hang this on the wall as it's heavy. Also you need to unfold the arms to get access to the screw heads to mount it on the wall. Otherwise the front plate blocks access. A better design would have been to have a single plate to screw to the wall and then the heavier dual arm mount could hang and bolt to that plate. This would have been a little more expensive but one person could probably handle hanging it.
I had only one real problem in mounting, perhaps specific to my mount. In the last step, there is a flat metal bar that must be slid into a slot directly below the hanging slot for the TV mount. This basically locks the TV tight to the mount so that when tilting down or otherwise moving the TV it won't fall off. In my particular mount the bar could not be slid into place as it was much too tight of a fit. This was due to a poorly made angle bend in the mount that was actually at about 100-110 degrees instead of the apparently intended 90 degrees. This resulted in insufficient space for the bar to slide into place. Even when lightly hammered with a rawhide mallet it would not go in.
At this point I did not want to ship this thing back which is what I should have done. I have a fairly good work shop so I converted the single bar into two shorter versions of the same bar which I could put in separately. This required cutting the two shorter bars to length and then grinding enough metal from the edges of each bar using a stationary belt sander until I could slide them in place. They still needed to be tapped in with a small mallet. This tripled the time needed for installation which would otherwise not have taken that long. This problem can be checked for before mounting by hanging the TV brackets on the mounting plate and then trying to slide the bar into place. If it doesn't go in easily send the unit back.
Since I have not seen anyone else with this problem it might have been specific to mine. Had I not had this problem I would give it 4 stars. I also agree with others on the tilt being difficult to fully lock from moving. Even when tightened as much as I dared it could still be moved if pressure is applied to the TV, however it seems to hold the angle so far on my little Samsung.
I would probably buy it again even with the problem as the price was good and I know how to fix the problem. This being said I would also try looking further for a better two arm style unit at a similar price.