Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this base to go with their cantilevered umbrella and was nervous about the purchase due to the wide range of reviews on them and I'd like to add in my experience in case it helps anyone decide. First off, I filled each of the 4 base sections with gritty sand (think the type that you'd put in between pavers on a patio) until they were approximately 90-95% full, and then I filled the remaining space with water, pausing every few seconds to "shake" the water down into the sand and get it all wet and mixed up. I feel like this gives you the heaviest option possible. IF YOU ARE ONLY FILLING THESE WITH WATER YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A BAD TIME. There's just no way that it will be heavy enough with water only in my opinion. Unlike some of the reviews I've seen, the only issue I had with water "leaking" from the base is because I put one of the caps back on at an angle, and that was a quick and easy fix. That being said - filling these bases was incredibly difficult and tedious. The hole in each one of these is in a place that requires you to stand it up on the rounded edge, the hole is not very large and getting sand into them took me multiple hours by myself. Unfortunately, short of making the hole slightly bigger, from a design perspective this is just how it has to be. Thankfully you should only be filling these up once and then forget about them. Now to the part that seems to be the most controversial: the metal clips that hook onto the bases. I think there is some confusion about the purpose that these serve and why they are the way they are. First off: Yes, they are very difficult and annoying to get on correctly, but that is the point! the bases by themselves just sitting on the edge of the metal base that comes with the umbrella is basically worthless as they can wiggle away. The point of having these metal brackets to attach them to one another is to force all 4 bases to be pushing up against the metal umbrella base with constant pressure to keep it grounded at all times. I found the easiest way to get them connected was to essentially pick up the corners of the two base pieces you are trying to connect and angle them in at each other, while pushing the bases toward each other as best you can (this is much easier done with two people). It takes some trial and error, but you will eventually get them into the holes. The people that are saying they aren't long enough are wrong - they are JUST long enough, but if they were easy to put in, they wouldn't have the resistance needed to keep the bases in place. For sure some of the negative reviews of this item come from people that couldn't just easily put the clips in and immediately gave up. Do not be one of those people, you've come too far to give up now! I have only had the base assembled with the umbrella for about a week, and we have only had winds of ~10mph so far, but with this fully assembled and nearly 150 pounds of sand and water in the bases, I feel as if it would take an awful lot for this to fail (ex: irresponsibly having the umbrella opened in strong wind gusts that it has no business being open in to begin with). I am not giving this a full 5-stars due to the difficulty of filling the bases up, but I will say that I am happy I chose to take a chance on the base.