Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsMAKE SURE YOUR TREE HAS EVEN FULLNESS THE WHOLE WAY AROUND
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2020
I purchased this stand in the fall on 2019 and we used it that year for the first time. Size L, good for trees up to 8’. Our ceilings are not even 8’, so I knew as long as our tree fit in the house we should be fine. We had some difficulty getting our 2019 tree clamped in straight. Even though the mechanism on this stand is A LOT faster and easier than the ones where you have to manually screw in 4 screws, it doesn’t guarantee your tree will automatically be straight. You of course have to make sure you get a straight cut on your trunk to begin with, but then you also have to make sure it’s sitting very centered in the stand. That can be tricky with a heavy, full-sized tree. We absolutely needed two adults and it took numerous attempts until we were satisfied it was straight. Once we got it though, this stand held our 2019 tree just fine for over a month.
Unfortunately this stand did not work out so well with our 2020 tree, as you can see from the pictures. The first shows how the tree fell over—completely to the ground—and the second shows it leaning temporarily in the corner while we cleaned up (you can see the product in this shot). Even though the height of the tree and the width of the trunk did not exceed the product specifications, something gave way after 10 days and our (decorated, by this point) Fraiser Fir hit the floor early one morning while we were sleeping.
I think the reason is that our 2020 tree was fuller on one side than the other. When we picked it out this didn’t bother us because we knew one side would be up against the wall/window anyway. So we just put the best looking, full side facing into our living room, got the trunk centered and clamped in straight, and thought it would be okay. The tree felt very sturdy when we gently nudged it and didn’t seem like it was going anywhere. But, over time I think the stand just couldn’t handle the weight imbalance of the tree being fuller on the front side, and that is the direction it fell in. Maybe we just should have known this...? Is that common Christmas tree/stand knowledge? I had thought we were fairly tree-savvy people, and there is nothing in the user instructions for this stand that says to make sure your tree has even fullness the whole way around. They just say to make sure your trunk is cut evenly and that the stand is positioned on a “solid, level and even surface,” which it was. We thought it would hold.
Overall I don’t think this is a bad tree stand, And actually has some pros over the old-fashioned screw kind. But I do think you just have to make sure you get a tree that has even fullness the whole way around to prevent it from tipping over. The stand is not heavy or deep enough to correct for a weight imbalance in your tree.