| PHOTO FROM IKEA.COM |

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IKEA (ALMOST) NEVER FAILS ME, and the BYÅS TV Bench/TV unit is no exception.

This Black Friday, I upgraded to a 4K TV, so of course I needed something to put it on. As usual, when I need a piece of furniture, I head straight to IKEA’s website and peruse their catalog. Why? Because IKEA usually has something that appeals aesthetically to me, and I find if I pick one of their pieces that fits somewhere in the middle-to-upper end of their price range, I get something surprisingly solid as a result.

I usually get black furniture, and the BYÅS only comes in a glossy white color/finish. However, I recently found myself with an emergency seating deficit when I had company coming over, and wound up with white chairs as a result. So, now I’m trying black and white together, and it’s working out well. Still, the BYÅS was taking a bit of chance.

The BYÅS wasn’t the cheapest option for an IKEA TV bench, but, according to IKEA, it would comfortably house a TV of up to 60″, which fit my needs. It also features drawers, so items like PS4 controllers and games wouldn’t have to be awkwardly on display at all times.

The BYÅS, broken down to what I consider important in a piece of furniture:

Assembly difficulty: Easy. There are no difficult aspects to this assembly.
Assembly time: Medium. Anything that has drawers has extra steps, but there are only two drawers, so it wasn’t anything extreme
Quality of materials: Good. The finish is far more glossy than the IKEA product photos show. All the pieces of this unit feel like solid wood except the top part, which feels much lighter. Once it’s put together, you can’t tell the difference at all, though. It’s quite heavy, weighing in at 90-ish pounds.
Drawer quality/feel: Medium. The assembly resulted in straight, correctly closing, solid drawers. Nothing special in terms of the tracks the drawers run on, but they’re good. Plastic stick-on bumpers are included for the drawer corners to lessen damage and noise when closing the drawers, which is nice.
Finished product aesthetic: Great. The BYÅS is very attractive. Better, in fact, than IKEA’s product photos show. The glossy white isn’t flashy or tacky, and nicely contrasts the black monolith of a medium-to-large TV screen. Your mileage may vary, but to me it looks like a quality piece of furniture..

VERDICT: Good product, good price ($129.99 at the time of writing this), good buy. I recommend it, especially if white fits your decor.

IKEA includes zero assembly tools with this unit, so I’d recommend the following items to ease assembly: