Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood, but overpriced for the quality.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 22 July 2022
Iain Banks would describe these as cheap lifestyle accessories or overpriced plastic utensils. I paid 50, rrp was 70. They're worth about 35.
Firstly, none of this is steel as described. That's fine for the utensils (I've got kids and expensive Teflon pans), but for the money and description I expected a steel shaft up the centre of the tower with fully steel bearings. In fact, the rotation was so stiff that it simply spun on its rubber feet as if wasn't supposed to rotate. It rotated like a cheap plastic on plastic joint you'd get on a really cheap kids toy. I didn't believe that it was supposed to be like that (I've got other Joseph gear that whilst not good value, isn't such poor quality). So, I took it apart and had a look inside. There are steel ball bearings, but running between two plastic faces and inside a plastic carrier. The quality of the carrier was terrible. The balls were mostly forced in over moulding faults, so they were wedged solid. They may as well not have been in there. This explained why it felt like they weren't. There was a token amount of grease, but nowhere near enough, and no grease at all on the plastic lower securing plate, which should also have had a bearing since it's loaded and provides the counter force for the bearing, but was plastic to plastic.
I removed the balls, cut off the excess flashing, regreased and now it works as intended. The truth is that the quality of the production is not good enough for the design to work, and it's not reflective of the price. It is hard to build to cost, but if they want to charge this much, they need to at least use metal bearing cages at an extra couple of pence.
Other JJ gear I have is better quality. This is not good enough and feels like a no brand set you'd get from a market.
The design of the utensils is good, the resting pivot thing is a great idea and really useful, but the tower is cheaply made.
