ACCO Brands Quartet Magnetic Dry Erase Board
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Quartet Magnetic Dry Erase Board
Dry erase boards usually are not really that exciting, they dont jump out as being unique office supplies, but when I saw this silver-colored magnetic dry erase board it really grabbed my attention. I actually did need a new dry erase board, but this one just looked really cool because of its silver surface, so before I even really looked at any of the others that Staples had, my mind was pretty much made up. Read on though, because this is another example of why making impulsive purchases is not a good idea.
The Quartet Dry Erase Board in use
This particular dry erase board is from ACCO, and is part of their Quartet Brand. It measures 11″ x 14″ and comes with both sticky foam pads and magnets for two different methods of mounting it wherever you prefer. It also comes with two round magnets, and a thin tipped black dry erase marker with a magnetic cap. The marker writes ok, but it is pretty light in color, even for a dry erase marker. Pretty basic stuff, but again, I was just impressed with the silver finish that I thought made this stand out as a pretty unique office supply.
Close up of the back side of the two magnets provided with the white board
So now we get to the interesting part about this dry erase board review. You might wonder why I decided to put up a picture of the back side of two magnets that came with this dry erase board, and you would be right in thinking it seems a bit odd, so let me explain. If you look closely at the picture, you can see that the center of each magnet has a blurry smudge in it. This blurry looking smudge is actually a small strip of double sided tape. When I took these off the dry erase board after opening it, I was surprised because I figured that magnets shouldn’t need tape to hold them to a magnetic board, right? Let me answer that for you…”Right!” So after I saw this I was kind of annoyed because I realized that it left some residue on the board’s surface itself, but I decided to move on. Next I peeled off the cardboard label that was under the shrink-wrap, and to my surprise, what did I find? I found more double sided tape to hold the cardboard to the board…the cardboard that was shrink wrapped to the board. Seems pretty unnecessary, not to mention that it left even more sticky residue on the surface of the board. It took about 20 minutes of rubbing with warm soapy water to remove all of the residue from the double sided tape that ACCO decided that they needed to use on the cardboard and the magnets.
You're kidding me, right ACCO?
Now the beauty of this whole thing is that the sticky residue REALLY ticked me off even before I noticed whats above because all I wanted to do was open this thing up and hang it. This should have taken all of 5 minutes, but no all of the extra cleaning of the sticky tape residue added 20 minutes to what should have been a simple task. So if you look at the care instructions in the sheet provided by ACCO with the dry erase board, you find the following:
“5. Do not use adhesive tape of any kind on the board surface.”
Hmm, well isnt that odd? You found it appropriate to put not one, not two, but THREE pieces of “adhesive tape” directly on the board’s surface, and now you tell me I shouldn’t do this? Seriously? Well at least I see why you shouldn’t do it now, it’s because it makes it an absolute nightmare to clean, and Im guessing that it has the potential to ruin the board itself.
Bottom line with this white board is that yeah, it looks cool, and it seems to function fairly well, but at the end of the day, Id probably never buy another ACCO brand product just because of the absolute carelessness that they displayed here. None of this is particularly life threatening since we are just talking about office supplies here, but the frustration really isnt worth it for a $12 white board.
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did you know you can make your own dry erase surfaces? I haven’t tried it yet but it is on my list of things to do (we desperately need one in the kitchen).
Thanks for sharing your experience with this Quartet Magnetic Dry Erase Board. Got a similar one myself to use for drawing class demonstrations, and the surface is already showing several scratches after some light use for a week. At least I got it on clearance for a couple of bucks, I would have been more disappointed had I paid the original retail price. Like many office supplies these days, they are not made to last. So much for any “Green” claims in the label.
Aren’t nearly all dry erase boards (at least, the ones that aren’t cardboard with a layer of lacquer on top) magnetic? Every real dry erase board I’ve ever had has been magnetic, I don’t see why ACCO is making such a big deal out of this one (unless the whole thing is actually magnetized so that things like paper clips and such will stick to it. But if it means that it’s metal, so magnets will stick to it, then I gotta say, unimpressive.
As for the pen with the magnetic cap: I’ve got similar ones (made by SRX), and I notice a huge difference in the intensity of the color depending on whether they’re stored pointing up or pointing down. So if you want a nice dark black line, attach it to the board pointing down so all the liquid goes towards the tip.
I have a silver expo one that’s half black board/cork board/crisscrossed elastic, and the other half is dry-erase board.
Expo FTW. it’s served me well for three years of college now.
@sara – I have seen that, they have dry erase AND blackboard paint that you can just apply to any flat surface…pretty cool. Ive never tried it, but it is tempting.
@Alberto – Couldnt agree more about the green statement. Its actually very anti-green when you have to rebuy a product due to poor quality.
@Mark Kawakami – I think you might be right about the magnetic property of many dry erase boards. I know of some good size and high quality ones though that are not magnetic.
As for the tip on the storage of the markers, thank you. Sounds like that should be helpful, although I assume they would probably run out quicker that way.
@JonelB – That one sounds pretty nice, and I know that since Expo is part of Sanford (they probably make some good dry erase products.