Product Review: New Innovations in Markerboards
by Diana L. Martin
This is the time of year when I like to showcase new products. Our 2020 catalog has been out for a month or so and it’s full of great items!
Today I’d like to show you two items in the markerboard arena. Markerboards may not be the most exciting thing in your office, but they’re pretty much a necessity - even for home offices - and when something new comes along, we want to give you first look at it.
We’re carrying a new board line this year from U Brands. U Brands offers markerboards in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors, along with chalk boards, cork boards and board accessories. I picked their calendar board to show you today.
This is a tempered glass board, so it won’t ghost or stain - U Brands offers a lifetime quality guarantee against staining or ghosting. I only tested it for a few days, but I didn’t have any issues regardless of which color I used and you can see that I used some dark colors. It performed admirably. (The shadows you see in the picture are from my lighting, not from staining.)
Is their glass any different than any other glass board we sell? My initial impression is no. I’ve used other glass boards and had no issues with ghosting or staining. So what’s unique about it? Why am I including it? The style and the extras. As you can see in the picture, it has a different type of frame than a standard board. I think it has a sort of European flair to it. The felt strip along the bottom is unique as well. This makes a handy tackboard for smaller notes. It’s also magnetic, so you can display other memos and notes with magnets if you prefer.
Their line of cubicle boards and tile boards are inventive as well. Visit our website or ask your sales rep for a U Brands flyer - I think you’ll like what you see.
The other item I’d like to show you today is called Flex Write Surface and it’s from 3M.
Flex Write Surface is a roll of dry erase material that has a removable adhesive on the back. Simply peel the backer sheet off and apply to your wall for an instant markerboard. It comes off cleanly with no damaged to the wall if you want to remove it. (Yes, I tried and yes, it did. ) Now, you may be thinking that you’ve seen this before and you’d be right - sort of. 3M does already have a dry erase roll, but what makes this one different is that you can write on it with permanent marker and remove that permanent marker with a wet cloth.
As always, I had to test it.
Before:
And after wiping with wet paper towel:
You can clearly see that the permanent marker is gone. (Of course, you only have my word that I used a permanent marker, but you can trust me!) You may already know this, but you can remove permanent marker from a board simply by tracing over it with a dry erase marker and erasing it with the dry erase eraser. So why get this product then? Because wetting a piece of paper towel and wiping it away is a lot easier than retracing something - especially if it’s a LOT of something on the board - and I’m all for convenience!
Here’s my issue: the price is as much as a regular board that comes with a frame, a tray and a marker or two. If I take a standard board off the wall, I can lean it against the wall or put it in the storeroom until I need it somewhere else and then I can rehang it. This product has removable adhesive so it can be taken down easily, but if you take it down you either have to remount it somewhere else immediately or you have to put the backer sheet back on it to protect the adhesive. Let me see a show of hands - who’s going to save the backer sheet when you take it off to mount it the first time? Not me. That means once I take it off my wall, I’m probably throwing it away and I think a disposable item should cost less than a permanent one. The permanence of a standard board has value. Now, maybe it’s just me; other people may see the value of the portability - being able to take this with you to a client site or a conference and having an instant whiteboard - and the ease of application and removal. Bottom line: the product works well, does exactly what it says it will do and provides a solution to a common problem. You have to decide whether that’s worth the price.
