KidCo Angle-Mount Safeway Gate Review
This is a very good gate for the right circumstances. It's almost a great gate.
PROs:
- It can be installed in situations where the latch isn't directly across from the hinges. It's one of the few (maybe the only?) gate that works in that situation. We used it in a circumstance where a doorway prevented the use a normal gate that requires a 90 degree mounting.
- As it's screwed to the wall, you don't have a bar running across the floor that you have to step (or trip) over.
- Once installed, it's pretty easy to use with one hand. My 6 year old has no trouble using it. But it's too complicated for our toddler to figure out (which is good!).
- Overall, it seems quite durable. I have some concerns about the long-term durability of the latch mechanism, but after a month of heavy use it's holding up quite well.
CONs:
- Believe all of the other reviews stating that it's more complicated to put together than it needs to be. A little more design work could have simplified things.
- To open the gate you slide back a spring-loaded plastic piece with your thumb while lifting the whole gate up an inch or so. It's actually easy to do with one hand, as I state above. But sometimes the plastic piece is a bit too slippery to easily pull back with your thumb. A little better design would have created a piece that was easier to grab with a thumb, even when slippery.
- It doesn't self close or self latch, both of which could have been designed in easily enough. To latch it you have to lift the whole gate up while pulling it closed and then it drops down into a sort of latch on top and socket on bottom.
- Sometimes the bottom will actually pull past the socket on the bottom and not drop into it. That's not really a problem. However, it is also possible for the top to sometimes go past the latch and end up on the wrong side. That's a much bigger problem since to get it back on the correct side you have to dismantle the latch. (This has happened to us maybe 2-3 times in a month of use.) Making the latch components out of metal, which doesn't have as much "give" as the plastic, probably would have prevented this.
- As another reviewer noted, if you order the black gate all of the hardware is silver. This is unfortunate since it ruins anotherwise nice appearance. I haven't tried, but I'm sure it would be pretty difficult to find these pieces in black at any hardware store. (When was the last time you saw a black binder screw? Heck, I best a lot of folks just Googled "binder screw" to find out what one is! :) They're that unusual.)
- Of course, screwing to the wall (the only installation option) means you'll leave holes there when your child grows up and you remove it.
Overall, it's the best and perhaps only gate that will work in some situations. I'm hoping KidCo will take some of these comments to heart and improve the next version. A few changes could make this a really great child/pet gate.
KidCo Angle-Mount Safeway Gate Feature
- Hardware mounted metal gate
- Recommended for use at the top of stairs
- Easy to open with one hand
- Swings either direction
- Simple assembly is required
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Customer Reviews
Challenging setup, but works great after - Jacob Sorensen - Hillsboro, OR USA
This gate is very flexible in terms of situations where you can set it up (like our landing where it needs to be diagonal when closed), but that means there are more parts to configure when you're setting it up. The directions are pretty good, but leave out a couple of key pieces of information. I had to put them aside for a bit, look at the pieces and ask myself "how do these things look like they should fit together?"
I did get it put together and installed, and after some adjusting it works great! Even our four year old can open and close it without trouble, and it does a good job keeping the one year old from tumbling down the stairs. It is easy to take off the mounts for the evenings when you don't want to worry about it and the one year old is asleep. The lower hinge did start squeaking after several weeks, but some petroleum jelly cleared that up easily enough. So, while this product isn't perfect, it's a very solid product we're glad we purchased.
Jul 08, 2010 16:46:04
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