Home > Categories > Hardware > Accessories > Economy Whiteboards review
A complete range of dry wipe boards available to suit the cheaper budgets.
Economy Boards are available with a clean pine frame, free from unsightly knots or other timber blemishes, and are based on a corrugated card backer with a wipe-down laminate on the front.
They are supplied complete with mounting fixtures and a black whiteboard pen.
Size options:
• 300x450mm
• 450x600mm
• 600x600mm
• 600x900mm
Website: www.noticeboardproducts.co.nz
Product reviews...
This white board is a decent size (900x600mm) for any kind of use, whether it be business or home use. I use my one as a shopping list/teaching tool.
The teaching tool use is to help my nearly four year old daughter spell her name on it, and to do drawings. It is a very effective use of the board as she can try, try and try again.
I have however gone and bought more whiteboard markers as i felt the one supplied wasn't very comfortable to use and was quite thin.
For my shopping list, as the list stays on the board for a week, i found it difficult to remove with a dry cloth as suggested, so have moved to using a wet wipe. This works extremely well, and following that i wipe the board down with a paper towel also.
The frame is a nice standard pine frame, nothing too flashy. I did wonder however that the board came with two hooks to attach the board, but with no string or wire to hold it up with. I thought this was odd, but what i have done is attached them to the frame and then put two picture hook nails in the wall and it holds perfectly well.
I haven't used a whiteboard in years, so I was real pleased to try this one out.
I immediately hung it up using 2 picture hooks, it is nice and light so this was ample to hold it with.
I found that the marker that came with it wrote very well but didn't come off very easily whether still wet or dry.
I used a tissue to try and wipe it off but this wasn't very successful, I then found an old white board eraser, this worked better but still left a black film.
All in all it has come in very handy and even though it is a cheap white board I would quite possibly purchase another in the future.
I found this board to be pretty much what I expected from a lightweight, cardboard-backed, budget whiteboard. I wasn't expecting super-high quality, and I didn't get it. What I did get was a cheap board that the kids could play on, draw all over, and wipe mostly clean, then pack away for future fun on wet days when trapped indoors.
It came with a small black marker, but when you have 4 kids wanting to play that simply isn't enough. A pack of cheap markers from the supermarket seemed to give the same results as the high-quality education-grade markers I use in the office (which had me wondering more about the extra cost of the 'good' ones than the quality of the 'cheap' ones). These cheap markers seemed to erase pretty well and can be bought in a wide range of colours.
The board itself is very light, meaning the supplied hooks were plenty strong enough to support it, as long as the kids didn't try to grab and pull it down. For safety sake, since I planned to wall-mount the board I screwed a couple of angle-brackets into the wall first and sat the board on them before securing the top of the frame. Safe as houses, as they say.
With the biggest of these boards priced as low as $29.99, they are very affordable, and even if they last a mere 6 months, they have earned their keep. The better-quality board I use in my office cost me around 3x as much and is only half the size of this one.
All in all I would say that these are great whiteboards for casual/fun use. Wiping them down can leave subtle colouring behind that will eventually build up to 'unsightly' but let's face it, at these sorts of prices, it's affordable to recycle the boards when they get too bad and buy another one.
When it comes to whiteboard, there is a huge array of choices out there, ranging from your "dollar shop" versions to the high-end industrial-grade workhorses that seem to have diamond-coated teflon faces. This unit sit fair-square in the 'budget' range.
Keeping in mind it's admitted niche, it's quite a good board for what you pay. While you could look at a board of this size costing you in the multi-hundreds of dollars if it's one of the higher-spec models, this unit is well suited for home use, particularly for the kids rooms, where it's affordability more than makes up for it's reduced effectiveness and lifespan.
A white-board laminate over a corrugated cardboard sheet, this model is not going to do well in an environment where moisture is a factor, nor heavy-use a likelihood. Classrooms won't do well with this, but for putting up on the wall or attaching to an easel for the kids to go mad on... perfect market position!
I tested one of the bigger 600x900mm boards and found that it was quite effective if used correctly. If I tried to wipe the market off before it was properly dry, it simply smeared around and made a 'stain' which took a bit of extra effort to remove later. If I left the marker alone for more than an hour, it was also quite resistant to removal. However, between those extremes, the marker wiped away very easily if I used a soft, clean, dry cloth or even a trusty McDonalds paper napkin in one test case.
I did notice that if the cleaning cloth/device was slightly damp, or dirty, there was a noticeable reduction in removal of the marker ink - there were ghost impressions of the writing left behind and darker smudges that remained visible, and were very difficult to remove. You have to do it once, and do it right.
I was very pleased to see that the board is supplied with a small marker and a pair of screw-in eyelets for mounting. Testing of various options allowed for the hooks to be screwed in the top and then used to screw the board to the wall, or they could be placed in the back edge of the frame and hung over picture-hooks or even plain nails bent upward slightly. For mounting flush against the underside of shelves, the hooks could be screwed in the outer edges of the top corners, allowing the top of the board frame to remain clear and press right up against the underside of the shelf. This was particularly good for keeping the board within kiddie reach.
Overall, the board looked very 'clean' when unpacked, and the unblemished wood used for the frame made it look very nice. Being untreated, it was easy enough to stain to match any interior-decorating preferences, and in fact we were able to enjoy the fun of helping the 'test kids' stain the frame a range of colours. Personally, I think the plain wood looks plenty good enough, but the rainbow effect was the most popular with the younger set. No surprises there. An excellent product, with prices ranged up to a mere $35.00 for the biggest boards.
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