By Tab Olsen
MaxSteel sounds like the name of a superhero, doesn’t it? Well, MaxSteel sure helped save us from a big problem – the dilemma of DVD storage! After our existing shelves became full, DVDs were haphazardly getting stacked up on top higher and higher, in danger of falling.
Even though we’ve been streaming more movies on Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu these days, we still end up buying the best classics and our favorite recent releases on DVD. Call me old-fashioned, but if it’s a movie I really like, I want to be able to get it in a box and add it to my collection, not just watch it online. Plus we have lots of educational programs on DVD.
So anyway, I was looking all over for a DVD rack that was big enough to store all our DVDs, with room for more. It would be placed in a multipurpose room that’s used for watching TV, working/playing on the computer, storing school supplies, and even as a guest bedroom, so it also had to be the perfect shape, size, and style to fit into a tight space while looking good. I finally found the perfect one on Amazon!
The Atlantic MaxSteel media rack is built with 12 adjustable shelves that provide a vast amount of storage space. This is the tallest one I could find of any kind! The 12-tier media rack is specially designed to store CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Rays. It has the capacity to hold 864 CDs or 450 DVDs. It will also hold videos if you still have some of them. You could even use it as a paperback bookcase. Depending on what else you collect, it can hold baseball hats, shoes, dolls, LEGO sets, or any other lightweight objects.
50 regular-sized DVD cases will fit on each shelf, and you can put 50 more DVDs on the top rack (wire bookends are included but not shown here), for a total storage capacity of 500 DVDs. With all of our boxed sets we don’t have quite that much capacity, but we still have room for adding more DVDs on the top and bottom shelf!
If you grew up building things like LEGO and other snap-together construction kits, you will love the MaxSteel media rack. It’s like putting together a giant Erector set! It comes with 8 tubes, which when snapped together make up the four corner posts. Adding the shelves is also a simple matter of snapping them into place. We were able to get the whole unit put together in just 30 minutes!
A great thing about the Max Steel media rack is that the shelves are infinitely adjustable to whatever height you need. There are no notches or holes that they have to sit in. We used a DVD case as a spacer as we snapped the shelves into place. But when we put the completed media rack in its spot, one of the shelves was in the way of a light switch on the wall. No problem, it was a simple matter of unsnapping the shelves one at a time and moving each one up a bit to leave a larger opening for that one shelf. Since there’s no back on the unit, we can reach through to flip the switch. It worked out fine, too, as a shelf for putting the boxed sets which are taller than normal DVD cases.
Incidentally, the four bottom feet are independently adjustable. You can level them to make the unit stand sturdily on uneven floors. You can also twist the two front feet up a little higher so the rack will tip backwards slightly to lean against the wall for extra stability. If there are mischievous little kids in your house, you can use the included safety mounting straps for securing the rack to the wall to keep it from being pulled over.
The MaxSteel media rack is a truly brilliant, flexible design. Since the posts and shelves all snap together in a modular manner, you can purchase two units and physically connect them by positioning the posts and staggering the shelf placement to make a triple-wide unit. Or make a double-wide unit with one set of posts in the center, and use the remaining two posts to make a separate short shelf unit with the leftover shelves. Or maybe even make an extra tall one! The engineer in your family could have a blast working out the different possibilities.
The MaxSteel 12-tier media rack has a silver finish for added elegance. It would blend in with any décor in a living room, media room, game room, bedroom, school room, or home office. I’d love to have a whole wall of these! It might even be used as a room divider if you put small houseplants on it or something. It would also be easy to set up and take down for dorm or apartment dwellers. No tools needed!
It’s great to finally find some nice-looking, good quality, reasonably priced, ready-to-assemble shelving that’s actually fun to put together. Here are the specs:
- Stores CD/DVD media
- Holds 864 CDs or 450 DVDs (or a combination of both)
- Made of steel tubing and wire shelving, with 12 adjustable shelves (if you only store DVDs, which are taller than CDs, you will end up with two shelves left over)
- Includes movable wire bookend-type dividers
- Ready to assemble
- Silver finish
- Includes safety mounting straps for securing rack to wall to help prevent tipping
- 76 3/4″H x 33 1/2″W x 8 1/4″D
- Weight: 46 lbs.
- Includes 1 year mfr. limited warranty
Atlantic makes another version of MaxSteel wire shelving in black, but it’s quite a bit shorter, with 8 shelves instead of 12, and which are of a slightly different design:
One Amazon reviewer purchased two of the black 8-shelf sets and interlocked them to make a triple-wide DVD unit (this enables you to use every shelf, with none left over):
Send us your MaxSteel shelving photos and/or leave a comment saying what you use them for and how you arranged them!
Max Steel really IS a superhero! Look here: https://amzn.to/2xEngKH
Ha, I didn’t know that! Now I’ll have to watch that movie!