Use these two tiny mounts to hang your 100″ TV — by yourself.
Of the four TV’s in our home, only one is mounted to a wall. That’s in my garage man cave. I was somehow ambitious and capable enough to do the job during the pandemic, attaching the swiveling mount itself to the studs and then attaching the TV onto it. Not sure what got into me for motivation, but it was probably when I saw installers were going to charge about $150 to do the job. I remember the whole task took me about 90 minutes and a lot of measuring. Somehow it’s held up. But the thing is, I never actually swivel the TV – it’s aimed right where it always has since that day. The other three sets are all on the stands that came with the TV.
But a few weeks ago, I randomly did a Google search on how to mount a TV set without the studs – expecting to find no answer. To my surprise, there were several “no stud required” products out there. The one that caught my eye most was a clever product called Hang Smart. It had apparently been on the shopping channels on TV, so I watched a few of the presentations. I was impressed because it seemed so innocently easy to install: You just use the included color-coded guide to figure out where the two hooks screw in on the back of your TV, and then tack that same guide to your wall and hammer in the two mounts over the same color. The key is that the mounts have hole guides drilled in at 45-degree angles, and you just insert the nails into those holes and quickly pound them into your drywall at that angle. Physics, the presentation brought up, is what keeps it securely attached to your wall while TVs up to 100 inches or 150 pounds will stay right in place. And the entire process could take as little as three minutes.
My wife immediately doubted it, but I checked further into the physics. And it makes sense. After all, I have seen floating shelves with a similar installation process. I contacted Hang Smart to see if I could review a mounting kit. Wound up talking with the company owner Leeron Cohen, who seems like a very nice and smart guy. He alleviated my wife’s concerns with logic and assured me our TV would not fall off the wall.
Three days later, I used the product to install an older 35-inch Vizio TV on our bedroom wall. On my first attempt, I hit a wall stud. So I pulled the two nails I already had in the wall, patched the small holes, and shifted everything two inches to the right. And from there, it seriously took about three minutes (as promised on TV) to secure the mounts. Then I screwed the hooks to the back of the TV. That actually presented an issue because one of the two screw holes in the back of our TV was shallower than the other. So I used an included spacer in the Hang Smart package to fill the gap. To be honest, there was no detailed explanation I could find as to why those spacers were even in the box but this one worked perfectly.
My wife and I hung the TV carefully. Then I was able to move the bottom of the TV slightly away from the wall so I could attach the power cord and streaming stick. And the installation was complete. And no, it has not moved or sagged away from the wall after the first 10 days. Nor do I think it will. Before I hung the TV, I pulled hard down on the mounts to see if there was any give. And there wasn’t.
My wife and I hung this TV in just a few minutes.
The thing that’s super cool about this product is that there’s zero measuring involved whatsoever – that’s what the color-coded guide takes care of. And you easily attach the included level, to make sure the TV gets mounted properly. The only potential measuring you’d have to do is to see how high up on the wall you want the TV to hang. I just eyed about how far below the top of the TV I installed the hooks, and then planned accordingly.
Everything you need – except the hammer and screwdriver — are in the box (even the two tacks to hang the color-coded guide). There are several screw sizes, as well, to fit the rear holes in just about any TV model.
It instantly cleared up the top of my dresser for the first time in 19 years. Such a small thing, yet it makes an incredibly big difference in our room. I’m about to hang another TV using Hang Smart, and may well hang the fourth one, as well. I love when things work out of the box as billed. And Hang Smart is definitely in that class.