I debated whether or not to get the large one, and I'm happy that I purchased the smaller version in grey, because my eyes and bright white have issues. Says the person who works at a desk and looks at monitors for over 8 hours a day. But I digress.
Out of the package, the only thing you need to do is clip the white pen holder on to the top, and place your pen in. Done! It's ready to go. This dry erase board does have a little weight to it, by no means is it super heavy weighted, but it isn't so light either. Because it is a glass dry erase board there is a reflective aspect to it when light touches it. So keep this in mind if where you want it placed is a light directly overhead. You can see it in my pictures, but note I held my camera up over it. When I'm looking at it from my chair, the light is towards the very bottom, and doesn't distort my viewing at all.
The pen is what I actually have issues with. I previously bought this for home use, as I had a remote job, and didn't want to purchase tons of sticky notes. And it worked nicely. Now I'm back working in the office, and the same scenario goes. It has reduced my number of sticky notes, but not that much. I still grab them or a mini notebook to write down quick notes. This is because I end up writing reminders on this, or when someone needs something for me to send out. So the notebook's become the quick jotters, and this dry erase board is for reminders. Another reason why I prefer the notebook to jot down reminders is the size of this pen!! You can see from my writing it's not fine point at all, but rather large. So in order to write down a lot of small notes, I need a much smaller dry erase marker. Which I am going to get a fine tipped one, and I'll update to see how that works, and if I start using this more for small notes.
The pen does have an eraser on the cap, but let me say it all sucks! Because this pen is a chalk pen, it leaves a white powder residue everywhere! It's on my brown desk, my black desk converter to sit stand, on my dress pants...just everywhere. So now anytime I erase this, I have to bank the pen eraser portion over the trash can, and watch the snow fall. Also if you just write something, and want to erase, since it hasn't dried yet it'll smear and take more time to get off. Again, it's a CHALK pen.
It's been nice having this, but in all, hasn't really solved my sticky note problem. I will purchase some normal fine tipped dry erase markers, and see how well they work, and see if you can see them easily on the grey. I'll update when I do.
**UPDATE**
I tried the fine tipped pens, and in all honesty, I'm back to using my notebooks or sticky notes, and this has now become a paper weight. The biggest issue is erasing. It's not like you're going to have a large wipe off eraser on your desk, and because of the size, I would constantly have to wipe off and rewrite notes. I tried using paper towels and even a small rag, but that was both ugly and inconvenient as well. In all, this was a nice idea, and for a quick jot down of an invoice number or phone number it works. But for multiple quick notes...just get a notebook.
Kymberlee
Odessa