Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Purchased back in September of 2015 to keep our newly adopted pup from our furniture (we weren't sure at the time if she would tear up through our furniture if we left her alone). The gate did its job just fine. But then again, we have a 25-lb Chihuahua mix, so we didn't need a massively sturdy gate to keep her at bay. Now, we did take care of my friend's 40-lb Shepherd mix who had some major issues with thunder. He would get pretty panicky during a storm and constantly jumped and leaned on the gate. I'm happy to say that he never toppled the gate over. He did manage to jump over the gate some how. Don't know exactly how, me must have used some secret Parkour skills or something to get over it. So, as far as sturdiness goes, it passes by my standards. As it relates to durability, I see no issues. Of course, we don't have kids pull on the bars and bang on the gate, so I just may have not seen any of the issues just yet. If I do, I'll likely update this review. As far as operation goes, I like the old version better. The old version was probably a tid bit easier to open with one hand. Now I read a few complaints that this gate requires two hands to open. That's not true, just look at my video. It's possible to open with one hand and really isn't that hard. May take a bit to get used to, but not impossible like some reviews make it seem to be. The major downside I see in the operation of this gate is that it only opens in one direction. The old version of the gate opened both ways, which was really convenient. That said, make sure you have the gate opening in the direction you want. Don't want to second guess yourself in the middle of installation because its a pain to loosen everything up and flip it around. Setting up the gate wasn't hard, but it wasn't super easy either. You have got to screw those side bars out pretty far to close the gap between the gate latch and the post. And the farther it goes, the harder it is to turn, so get ready to put some elbow grease into it. Once you have the gap small enough so that the gate can lock in place and stay secure, its pretty much guaranteed to be rock solid. One recommendation: buy and use the "Wall Savers for Pressure Gates" if you can (the pressure mounts puts some massive point pressure on your walls). If you don't, you could damage your wall. In my case, my opening was too narrow to fit the wall savers, so I had the pressure mounts pushing directly against the wall. It didn't damage my wall, but it did peel off the paint. In an effort to prevent this from happening again, I cut piece off of a Kleenex box and put it between the pressure mount and wall. In conclusion, as my headline says, this gate does its job, at least for me. As I mentioned earlier, the real major negative on it is that it only opens in one direction. Now if you have 70lb and over dogs to keep at bay, not sure if it'll be able to handle. My take is that it should, it would just take some major tightening of the pressure mounts.