Wall mounts for a Plasma... can i cheap out?

[jacquescas]

Hey guys, its hard to find much info on mounts. i'm trying to put a 60" plasma (pioneer 6010FD) on a wall with some tilt to it.

I see mounts in the stores going for about $250 from names like omnimount, sanus, verge... then i see discount mounts online like e-mounts and Preminum mounts and other i guess more unknown brands.

so that being said is it ok to somewhat cheap out on a mount? like i can find some for 50 bucks online and dont understand why io should pay 250 for what appears to be almost the same thing..


can someone enlighten me

 

[ParadigmDawg]

I never tried one and have had good luck with omnimount and sanus. Order one and see if it seems sturdy enough as long as they will let you return it.

 

[hemiram]

This is about as big a scam as the cable "business" is. When I was getting ready to buy my LCD TV, I started getting parts and stuff I would need ahead of time, so I wouldn't have to buy it the day I got it, and possibly get ripped off.

I looked online, on Ebay and on several other sites, and noticed that several mounts appeared to be the same, with wildly varying prices. Some websites had the same pic for a cheap bracket, as another had for an expensive one.
So I went and looked at the local stores, and found the same thing, the same bracket was being sold under slightly different names, in sometimes the same colored box, sometimes the colors were reversed, but they were the same bracket. Prices ranged from about $90 to $299!

I ended up buying it on Ebay, for $45, including shipping. Same exact hunk of chinese steel, mine was silver powder coated, and the same bag of screws. As a friend found out recently, the lag screws that came with the name brand version ($149.95) of what appears to be the same bracket, are just as brittle as mine were. I snapped one off trying to screw it into one of my studs. I went to a local hardware store and bought 4 new ones for like a buck.

A friend of mine's dad recently bought a 46" Sharp LCD and had the store install it. They soaked him a lot of money to do it (His son and I offered to do it, but he never asked us), and used the same bracket I have, with the name changed slightly, and charged him $300! His son found the original lag screws in the box in the trash, so the brittle screws are a known problem.

Buy a cheap bracket, get some new screws and save some money for DVDs or something. Maybe a little bigger TV?

 

[jacquescas]

awesome, you have no idea how hard it was to find some info on the "bracket" racket they have going on.

Cheap bracket here i come.

 

[ParadigmDawg]

Good choice.

I remember when I went to Best Buy to get one. I asked the guy how much and he said it was free as long as they installed it ($500 for them to install)

awesome, you have no idea how hard it was to find some info on the "bracket" racket they have going on.

Cheap bracket here i come.

 

[gmichael]

Good choice.

I remember when I went to Best Buy to get one. I asked the guy how much and he said it was free as long as they installed it ($500 for them to install)

Great:

$0.00 for the mount. $500 for the installation.

or

$400 for the mount. $100 for the installation.

Take your pick. You get to bend over now, or bend over later.

 

[ParadigmDawg]

No kidding and it took all of 15 minutes to do it myself when I got home.

Great:

$0.00 for the mount. $500 for the installation.

or

$400 for the mount. $100 for the installation.

Take your pick. You get to bend over now, or bend over later.

 

[jacquescas]

well i went ahead, i found a sweet Cantilever mount for a 63 inch screen (i have 60 inch) for 130.00 with shipping. it looked stronger and heavier and my 60 inch will have tons of freedom to swing around the room like a tiny dancer

 

[dorokusai]

I found a great, modestly priced mount on Amazon.com instead of the brick and mortar stores in the area. It was a Sanus and has worked very well for the application. I don't think I could do pull-ups on it, but I sure as hell mounted like I was going to.

It's not cheap, it's cost effective

Mark
Polk Audio CS

 

[zildjian]

Monoprice has the best prices that I have seen on flat panel wall mounts (and of course HDMI cables...). They look like the ones I see in the big box stores for 4 times the price.

Link below
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=108&cp_id=10828

 

[hemiram]

My friend just bought the same bracket (in reverse colors and a name like the "Brack-tech" I have at a local "Big Lots" type of store, I can't remember the name of it now for the life of me, but it was $29.99. Not bad. Colors were the same as on my box, a lovely orange and purple.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I've used three different mounts on three different displays and would have to say that all three of them work fine. They range from the cheap eBay model to a mid-level Sanus to a decent Chief mount.

The Sanus is probably my favorite because the tilt feature locks the display in place nicely.

The cheapest one I had to tighten the tilt adjustment down or the display would constantly tilt forward all the way... But, once I set it, it does hold the dislay firmly at the angle I set it to - going on two years now.

My next plasma mount is likely to be fairly inexpensive after my varying experiences.

The biggest issue I had with the cheapest 42" mount was that it took about an hour to assemble the mount before I could actually put it on the wall. The other mounts basically came out of their box and went right up on the wall. But, when I'm sitting around listening to music, it was more of a relaxing hour than a stressful one.

 

[Frugal]

Costco

I've got a 130lb 55" Hitachi plasma hanging on $100 Costco wall bracket with no worries. Try to get a bracket that bolts to at least 3 studs for a TV that size.

 

[jacquescas]

so my cheap mount came wonderfully and it has been just as sturdy as i could hope.

let the proclomation ring out, cheap out on the mounts to you lcd's and plasma find them online for hundreds less

the same mount i paid 150 for on ebay costs 650 in stores.

 

[zildjian]

so my cheap mount came wonderfully and it has been just as sturdy as i could hope.

let the proclomation ring out, cheap out on the mounts to you lcd's and plasma find them online for hundreds less

the same mount i paid 150 for on ebay costs 650 in stores.

Wow $650 in stores. Got a pic of the install? If so we'd like to see how it looks.
Congrats on a good buy, & spread the word!

 

[drinke]

I mounted a 50 inch samsung - weighs about 100 lbs recently. I went with a Sanus VMSA 18. It has an arm that extends 19 inches and it also tilts and swivels. Another nice feature is that, assuming you didn't get the mount level, it allows you to adjust the level of the tv even after the tv is mounted.

The bracket itself is solid and heavy- the arm is half inch thick steel. I was worried about extending the arm, but its not a problem at all. You can fully extend and swivel the tv - the only limitation are the length of cables you use.

I got it on amazon for 240 delivered and it came in about 3 days from the order date using standard (in this case free) shipping.

Very happy and considering we're dropping 1500 to 2000 on tvs these days, worth the extra cash.

 

[Panjsheri]

Cheap wall mounts!!!

Hey man I recently got a cheap wall mount and the thing I noticed about the one I got vs the one i was going to get was the thickness of the metal and the heavier the TV (I gotta 52 inch Sharp) then the stronger the metal will be needed otherwise the weight can actually bend the metal and possibly cause it to break off. Now because u have a 60 in plasma which are even heavier then the LCD's then u shouldn't go cheap and spend the extra bucks on the better mount.

 

[hemiram]

Most of the time, at least every time I looked, both for myself and for friends, the same mounts are sold under different names, for wildly different prices. Right now, I am looking for a swivel mount for a 37" LCD, for my mom for Xmas. If I can buy the same thing for a lot less, what's the point of paying more?

You could have probably found the same mount for a lot less. Sure, there are some thinner/weaker mounts out there, but as long as it will hold the weight, anything more isn't needed. My bracket claims to hold up to 168 pounds, and I have no doubt it can, but all I need is about 50.