overall fine for use but must warn about touching front flap when open
I lent on it while placing glass shelf resulting in tipping table fowards

Some not-so-good self-assembly furniture is made from chipboard covered in sheets of plastic with ugly visible seams along the edges. The better stuff is made from lacquered MDF and has all the edges micro-bevelled with no visible seams. This Centurion Supports Hampshire Corner-friendly TV Cabinet is the better stuff and it's nicely finished and solidly made without being too heavy or cumbersome. All the main components appear to be MDF with the outer surfaces finished with glossy white lacquer and the inner surfaces in a slightly textured silvery-white paint. The front side panels are in matching lacquered MDF and the back side panels are silvery-white finished fibreboard. None of the main surfaces are left unfinished, even around the back, and most of the fixings and screwheads are either hidden or disguised with supplied sticky pads. MDF is much stronger than chipboard (and more expensive) and so the components can be thinner and still be strong and sturdy, meaning the unit's got a refined look and all the sturdiness it needs. The tubular chrome legs lift the unit off the floor and make it look less clumsy and overall it's a neater and better-looking unit in reality than it might seem in the photo's, especially with a larger TV on top which makes it look smaller.

It takes a little while to assemble (maybe a leisurely 40 mins) but it's not difficult and the instructions are clear and guide you with a few pages of step-by-step pictures. Each component and pack of screws, bolts or fixings has been labelled with a letter of the alphabet and you just match those to the ones shown in the diagrams. You get the required key and screwdriver supplied in the pack but they're a bit basic and having your own is helpful. Everything went together well for me and no force or persuasion was needed, the holes all lined up and the end result looks great. My only disappointment was that the back panel (the one with the two big holes for cables) is just screwed onto the back of the completed unit and you can see both its unfinished edges and the screwheads. Of course it's around the back and so in most situations will never be seen but it's not as neat a solution as the rest of the unit, but admittedly it's probably a minor quibble for most people. Note that the LED under-lighting is supplied by a completely separate self-adhesive LED lightstrip which you attach to the underside of the finished unit. The strip comes with a mains adaptor, mini IR remote control and full instructions detailing the suggested layout, there's a pattern to follow to make the best use of it, and it's easy enough to fit. It's also completely optional and the unit looks good with or without it.

It's an odd design on first sight but with a TV on top and placed into a corner of a room it does make a lot more sense, looks a lot neater than you expect and is really effective. The drop-down door on the front has a glass panel that's been printed with a black 'perforated' design that lets the beams from remote controls through. There's a 'click-clack' mechanism at the top of the door so you open/close it by pushing the top edge and there's a damping arm attached to the door that stops it dropping abruptly and lets it open slowly - it also makes it slow to close again. The thin angled top corners on the door seem a bit vulnerable to the lacquer getting chipped so it might be wise to take care with those.

The main internal compartment is a really good size - about 610mm/24" wide, 350mm/14" deep and each shelf is about 130mm/5" high and although there's only one set of holes to fix the shelf supports you could add more yourself if really necessary. The oddly shaped side compartments turn out to be more useful than you might expect and would take things like games controllers or headphones. There's also a small gap at the back of the divider between the side and main compartments that's just wide enough to get cables through, so you could have chargers or headphone base stations in there too. If the cables have non-removable mains plugs you might have to remove the back panel to get them into place at first.

The shape of the cabinet not only makes it neater in corners but also means that bigger TV's that overhang the sides don't look out-of-place, so the suggestion that's it's suitable for TV's up to 50" seems reasonable. We're using it with a 40" and there's room to push that toward the rear and have a 940mm wide soundbar in front without that overhanging the edges - admittedly the TV on its own might look prettier but it's fine. The black glass on the drop-down door, which looked a bit out-of-place at first, also looks better with the black screen of a sleeping TV sitting on top. Overall I'm quite impressed with it and it's better made and finished than I'd hoped and looks neater in situ than I expected.