Hey gang, today I thought I’d share a review with you of some furniture I purchased off Amazon! It’s something that I think many people have considered, but they are normally quite expensive and no one wants to take the risk on buying something cheap in case it doesn’t pay off. Well, I took the risk, and it payed off! So I’m sharing the info with you…
I purchased a pair of media room sofas from Amazon. They are currently listed as Flash Furniture 4-Seat Black Leather Home Theater Recliner with Storage Consoles, and they sell for just under $1,100 each. They include a center loveseat, and two individual chairs on either side. We wanted the love seat in the middle, because you know… you can snuggle or whatever.
They also offer it in just a three individual seat configuration, or even a two seater.
The Competition
Before we purchased this online, we went to ALL of the local furniture stores. At a bare minimum, it was going to be $3,000 each for a media sofa with multiple recliners. $4,000 if we opted for the motorized reclining seats. So we were looking at $7-8,000 for a couple rows of sofas for our media room – and it’s not even a room we’ll use all that often!
So we started searching online to see if there were any reasonable alternatives, and after a GREAT deal of searching for weeks I found this unit at multiple websites, and also on Amazon. And it turns out that it was cheapest on Amazon when the free shipping and everything was taken into consideration, not to mention the fact that you know Amazon is going to make it right if something goes wrong. So we decided to take the calculated risk after seeing several positive reviews on it.
The Delivery
When the sofas arrived they were delivered by carrier and rolled off the truck on pallets right up to our house. At this point, the responsibility is yours. So call a couple of strong buddies and have the pizza and beer delivered.
When you break open the boxes you’ll see that each piece comes in two sections: the bottom seating section, and the back. This makes it easy to carry things inside the house, even if you have small doorways and stairs to traverse.
After bringing in the pieces it’s a very simple matter to kind of just “snap” the back onto the seating surface, and then snap to two seats on the outside of the center loveseat.
Comfort and Durability
I’m not going to tell you that these are the most comfortable chairs you’ve ever sat in. Or that you’ll sink down into their plushness and fall right asleep. In fact, quite the opposite. The seating surfaces have a firm feel to them and not a ton of cushioning. Having said that, they are plenty comfortable for a few hours of movie watching, though not the equal of their $3-4,000 store bought counterparts.
Although the manufacturer claims in the title of the sofas that they are “leather”, they are actually Bonded Leather. This is made from leather remnants which are ground down and blended with fabric material. So it’s technically got leather in it. And it looks leather-like, and kinda feels leather-like. But it ain’t leather.
One of the best things about leather, other than durability, is that leather feels good against the skin and breathes well. So on a hot day if you sit on a leather surface you might be a little sweaty, but it doesn’t stick the way say plastic would. The surface of these sofas is kinda halfway between leather and vinyl in that regard.
These seats are also somewhat narrow, and I would say are kind of like taking a store bought sofa and shrinking it like 10%. So if you’re a “large” person, you’re going to be cramped and probably don’t want to go this route. But I’m over 6′ tall, and around 175 pounds and they work just fine for me. Even if you were kinda big, you could alway use the center loveseat section and have plenty of room – but if you are extremely overweight I would not recommend this furniture as I don’t know how well it would hold up.
Build Quality and Features
They seem to be reasonably well constructed, given that they are not made from top quality materials. So under light usage I would expect them to last a long time, but I wouldn’t expose them to heavy use unless you don’t mind replacing them after a few years.
Each of the seats has it’s own cup holder which is basically big enough for a 12 ounce can, but definitely not bigger.
And there are two consoles for storing stuff in each sofa.
These are manual opening recliners, so there are little plastic handles that you pull out to make the seat recline. The springs are pretty powerful, so these things tend to come whipping up! Often surprising the person in the seat. When you want to get up, you just push them back in with your feet. Small people will have a little difficulty getting them in.
Once the foot section is up, you can also lean the back of the chair back into a nearly flat position! So you could easily take a nap if you so desired.
One other thing. The backs of these sofas are pretty clean and tidy. So if you have to put them in a room where they’re going to be approached or seen from behind, they should work fine.
The Bottom Line
Since we were looking to accommodate a lot of people in one room, and we don’t anticipate using the room all that much, these sofas worked out perfectly for us!
If you are looking to put them in a room as daily use sofas you just need to consider the durability factor. If you are a fairly gentle household they should work out well and I could see them lasting 5 or more years under regular use. But if you have rambunctious kids that are going to be jumping on them, and 100+ pound dogs that are going to be laying on them, I’d probably spend the extra money on a heavier duty unit that you’ll have to pony up at least $3,000 for.
You can check them out on Amazon here. And if you get one, let me know!
Question? Just drop them in the comments, or tweet them at me @johnpoz.
