MantelMount puts your TV where you want it

Novel swing down design saves your neck

When we got out 65-inch Vizio 4K TV we were proud, and delighted. It took two tries to get it mounted, resulting in having to rip out the wall and put in 2x4 studs, re-plaster and paint the wall. And then we watched House of Cards the only 4K show available at the time. We bought a few 4K-ready Blu Ray DVDs and tried to see if we could tell the difference between the Sony or the Vizio upscaler, but couldn’t, which I thought said something very positive about Vizio’s scalers. Life was good, for a while. The problem was the screen was high on the wall.

The HD TV in the family room is at eye height, and I found I watched it more than the beautiful 4K, it was just more comfortable. Also, the 4K was flat up against the wall.

Then I got a press release from MantelMount, about a swing out and down bracket. We have a swing out and back and forth bracket for the bedroom TV, but out and down? This sounded like a dream come true, a clever, albeit difficult to engineer, concept.

I contacted the company and arranged to get a unit. When it came I was a little intimidated, it was big, and heavy, formidable. But then it has to be. The Vizio weighs 61 pounds. When you cantilever 65-pounds of expensive glass out in space, you better be formidable. 

First step was to take down TV, and remove the wall mount and the brackets on the back of the TV. Not a big job, but also not a job for someone who doesn’t do installations and lift heavy things, so I recommend having a TV installation crew do it for you. Me, I do installations, and I have strong friends, so down came the TV, out came the DeWalt 20vMAx drill, and zip zip, the TV and wall was naked.

Next step was to mount the MantelMount, and I wish I had taken pictures of it in its kit form. It came with a lot of parts, a big baggie of screws, and a nicely illustrated how to install manual. 

I’m almost embarrassed to confess I got a little over confident, and was in too much of a hurry and ended up drilling four holes and mounting the unit upside down. Argg. It would have worked like that, it’s that well designed, but who wants a TV to go up? The DeWalt got a workout that day, drilling holes driving in, and then out screws. This left four new holes in the wall, in addition to the four old ones, so some patching and painting is in the agenda.

Once the unit is on the wall, it’s really simple to finish the job. You mount the hanging bracket on the back of the TV, pull down the bracket and put a pin in it to keep it down (necessary because there’s no weight on it), get your strong friend to help you lift the TV, and you hang on the brace. Re-connect the cables, cinch them up so it looks tidy and try it.

What I didn’t know, and felt was a bonus, was I didn’t have to be quite so meticulous with my handy dandy laser alignment tool (a lovely xmas gift from a wife who knows her husband), although I do love using it. The bracket has forward-backward tilt, left-right turn (up to 110-degrees), plus up to 40-degrees rotation, and of course the up and down movement. In the above picture, that’s not perspective distortion, that’s the TV turned. 

The heart of the bracket is a set of powerful gas-filled pistons, which can be adjusted for tension weight. I didn’t have to make any adjustment; it was set perfectly for my needs; the bracket can accommodate up to a 115-pound TV.

There are two panels that can be put over the wall mount, which ironically are close in color to our wall. I’ll put them on after I patch and paint. 

I was originally worried about the Samsung sound bar. It is mounted on the wall under the TV. I thought I would have rig up some mounting for it so it came out with the TV. But it’s just fine where it is. The sound bar, with its companion sub-woofer do the job they were designed to, and the IR receiver in it is good enough that it can see the remote’s blast for volume adjustment even though it’s behind the TV. 

The whole installation (not counting the mistake) took about an hour. The biggest pain was getting the hand smudges off the screen.

I’m probably not covering all the features of the MantelMounbt, you can learn more here: MantleMount, and you can get one for $399, which include shipping within the US. 
Highly recommended if you have a big screen TV too high up on the wall.

See original article at: Jon Peddie Research