Office Depot Side-Load Stacking Desk Trays (6-pack) Review

Needing to get more organized in my office, I went to Office Depot to purchase a few stacking trays in order to keep my paperwork more available and controlled.  The main goal was to have something that could serve as an in-box, out-box, and additional storage for other files I was working on, or had just been finished.  What I ended up purchasing was the product depicted in the photograph, a set of 6 side-load stacking trays meant to stack on your desk.

All of the trays were packed into one box, and additionally easy to set up right after being opened.  Each one is black, and has space to hold about 500 sheets of paper snuggly.  The trays connect to each other using slots grooved into the right, left, and back sides of the tray.  Paper is placed in the tray either through the front, or if it is a tray on top of the stack, you can just set it right in there.  It seems like the easiest product in the world to use, and I didn't think I would come across any problems.  I was wrong.

When I began placing paper in the trays, I immediately noticed that there was going to be a problem.  The center of the trays started to sag under the weight of the paper, and made it so that each tray below could fit even less into that space.  If there was already paper of folders in one of the lower trays, the sagging tray would pin everything in there, making it so that you couldn't pull anything out of the tray.  The pulling of the center mass also weakens the ability for the trays to stand up together, and just about pulls the stack apart.  You have to be extremely careful when working with them, otherwise you could end up toppling over the entire stack.

The end result of my use with these trays, is using them as singular entities, or sometimes stacking them two trays high.  They cannot go past that without becoming extremely flimsy, and even with two, that top tray will still sink down into the bottom tray.  This is really just unacceptable for an office product that cost about $8.00 for purchase, and it isn't just about the unreliable construction of the trays.  The secondary problem is that they are out there for everyone to see, and the sagging just makes the trays seem very cheap and sub-standard.  With the frustrating experience of this purchase, my final recommendation is that this Office Depot product is indeed cheap and sub-standard, and should not be purchased.