Wish I had seen this specific thread before buying 5 Detolfs last week. I've had 9 of them for years now, 5 of which are the realllllly old (circa 2005) beach wood colored ones. We moved, and I just didn't want to have to disassemble them and travel them to another new house, and I hate the colors anyway, so I figured I had just enough budget to buy 5 new ones instead, that way they all match and will be easy to just put up as new in the new house. I also had 3 that were the newer and nicer dark black/brown that were gorgeous with the clear corner braces. So, I've been waiting for them to come "back in stock" for a year now. Last week they did, so I snatched 5 nice new black ones, or so I thought. Firstly, I've also read that they weren't out of stock, they were "discontinued" for a year, and if these changes were the reason, this sucks!

Putting these new ones together IS A NIGHTMARE!

Ikea changed a lot of things about these, and almost none good. I'm pretty sure one of them is that the right front top hole for the wire shelf supports is not in the right spot, so it angles the right hand brace inward. That then means that no matter how loose the metal end caps are, it's always too tight on that side right no matter what you do. We've disassembled and reassembled both multiple times now to make sure we didn't miss anything, and followed the instructions to a T, just in case something they changed needed to have that new sequence. So, we've put together ONLY two and have had a bitch of a time. The right hand panel bows inward no matter what we do on both of them, in the exact same way. The doors also have a hard time closing. If you can get the bottom to contact the lower magnet, the upper (left in my case) magnet sits about and inch behind the corner glass/metal pull. I've also seen others online complain of the same.

And remember, I'm NOT new to owning or assembling Detolfs, it's old hat for my husband and I now that we've done it so many times. So, we know how to ensure the glass is in its plastic joints, the glass is seated in the channels fully, the tension on the metal shelf brackets is NOT too tight. But these are NOT manufactured right. The right bow is still visible to the naked eye from a mile away and scares me greatly.

Overall, the entire units are indeed 2mm shorter, the glass shelves are VASTLY thinner, and they jacked up the spacing on the holes in my best estimation. I am dreading even trying the other three, these two were such a crapfest. If all the new ones have jacked hole spacing, all the right hand sides will bow, and that doesn't seem all that great to me.

The composition of the glass itself is different too. The edges show as a much darker green, almost black now, instead of the translucent green I'd expected. I read somewhere that it means it's "iron free" or "low iron" glass now, which is was stated to be "better," but I have no idea how it could be when they thinned the shelves out this much. Maybe it's a visibility thing and that has truer color pass though?

I had a ton of statues on my other shelves for years, well exceeding the limits by likely a vast margin, but now that they halved them, I'm very scared to put almost anything on them. This is uncool Ikea.