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Product: Cable-Safe Complete Cable Management Kit Introduction Within the past few years many new cable management solutions have hit the market. Each solution has its advantages and disadvantages. Today we will take a look at the Cable-Safe Complete Cable Management kit. Unlike other kits, Cable-Safe’s kit goes two steeps beyond normal cable management. It is designed to get the cables off the floor by being able to attach to the wall or desk and allows devices such as routers, transformers, etc. to be placed on top of two cable hooks. This kit looks promising but only after the cables are tamed can we make the final judgment. Contents of Kit
Installation The Complete Cable Management kit is designed to be clamped to the desk but can also be mounted to the wall. After 30 minutes of trying to decide how to mount the kit to my desk, I decided that wall mounting would be the best option. Installation was quite easy. All I had to do was screw the base plate to the wall and insert the cable hooks. The included mounting screws were long enough to go through the dry wall and into the studs. Unfortunately this kit wasn’t designed for wall installation, as I was only able to get one side of the plate screw into a stud because of the spacing between studs. However, the plate was still secure enough that it shouldn’t rip out of the drywall.
The Test Now for the fun part; managing the cables. Let’s start out with a few pictures of what this cable manager has to tame.
As you can see, this kit will be getting a good workout. I have tried organizing this mess before but nothing has worked too well. Everything I have tried was time consuming, short term, and failed to get everything off the floor. After I spent about an hour untangling all the cords, the rest of the cable management process went extremely quick. This was probably due to the cable straps that were included with the kit. I found them to be extremely effective and easy to use. Unlike zip ties, the cable straps made out of a material similar to Velcro so it is a lot easier to readjust the cables as need be. I found this extremely useful throughout the whole process of getting my cables organized especially after I moved my desk back into place. Some of the cables had to be shortened while others had to be lengthened, which the cable straps made a lot easier to do. One thing the kit fails to do well is serve as a shelf for extra devices. Perhaps I was expecting too much out of this particular feature of the Complete Cable Management kit but when I heard about the cable hooks also serving as a shelf, I was expecting to be able to put my KVM switch and router on the shelf. I soon realized that my plan wasn’t going to work out so well. The hooks weren’t even long enough to effectively support my linksys router. This, however, cannot really be held against Cable-Safe as Linksys routers are typically larger than most other routers on the market. A few days later, I ended up picking up a Netgear wireless router and that fit perfectly on the cable hooks.
Conclusion Overall, I was fairly impressed with the Complete Cable Management kit. It did an excellent job of organizing the cables and made it much easier to change cables and move devices. I added an extra two weeks to the testing period to see if I would continue to keep my cords organized and every time I changed a cable or moved something, I noticed that I would subconsciously reorganize the cables. That definitely says a lot about the ease at which someone can organize their cords with The Complete Cable Management kit.
Pros + Easy to use
Cons - Cable hooks are not long enough to work well as shelves |
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