NewAge garage cabinets: Bold, Bold XL or Pro?

NewAge Products sells three lines of welded steel garage cabinets, and the names do not tell you much about how they differ. Bold is the line most people end up looking at: 24-gauge steel, 18 inches deep, and sold as single cabinets or in sets. Bold XL is the same idea rebuilt deeper, with heavier shelves. Pro is the step up in steel thickness, height and door hardware.

The good news is that NewAge publishes the numbers needed to choose between them — total capacity per module, capacity per shelf, gauge and depth. Most cabinet sets in this category publish one or two of those. The rest of the category is in the cabinets hub.

The three lines on one table

Two rows decide most purchases. Depth decides whether your bins fit. Per-shelf capacity decides where the heavy things go. Gauge matters, but less than the marketing around it suggests, and it is worth understanding before you pay for it.

Gauge: what 24, 20 and 18 actually mean

Steel gauge runs backwards: the higher the number, the thinner the sheet. On the standard mild-steel gauge chart, the three figures NewAge uses convert like this.

The honest read of that table: Pro steel is twice as thick as Bold steel, which you would expect to show up as doors and side panels that dent less when a bike pedal or a car door finds them. What it does not tell you is how much you can load a shelf. That is what the capacity figures are for, and NewAge publishes those separately. Load to the published rating, not to a feeling about how thick the steel is.

Bold XL is the interesting case. NewAge kept the 24-gauge frame and moved the heavier 20-gauge steel into the shelves, which is exactly where load sits. The per-shelf ratings go up to match: 200 lb a locker shelf against 150 lb, and 250 lb in the base cabinet against 200 lb.

Depth decides it, again

A standard 27-gallon tote is about 19.6 inches wide on its published exterior dimensions. A standard Bold locker is 18 inches deep. Turn the tote whichever way you like: the doors will not close on it.

This is the same limit we flag on every 18 inch cabinet, including the one we recommend most often, and it is set out in our Seville Classics UltraHD review. It is not a flaw in the Bold line. It is a choice NewAge made for garages where the cabinets run beside a parked car, and in those garages the six inches it saves is the whole point.

Bold XL makes the other choice. The locker is 24 inches deep, the base and rolling tool cabinets are 22 inches, and the wall cabinets are 14 inches. On exterior figures a 19.6 inch tote clears a 24 inch locker with room for the doors. NewAge does not publish interior depth, so measure one before you commit a whole shelf plan to it.

Before you choose, measure the walkway. Stand where the cabinets would go, open the car door fully, and note how much room is left. If taking six more inches out of that space leaves you walking sideways, Bold is the right line and the bins go on open shelving instead. The depth arithmetic for a whole garage is in how deep garage shelves should be.

Reading the capacity numbers properly

The locker: most of the rating is on the floor

A Bold 30 inch locker publishes 800 lb total and includes three adjustable shelves at 150 lb each. Three shelves at 150 lb is 450 lb. The difference between that and the headline figure has to live on the locker floor, which is where the heavy things belong anyway: bagged salt, a battery charger, the tile saw.

The Bold XL locker does the same sum with bigger numbers. Three shelves at 200 lb is 600 lb of a 900 lb total, and the shelves adjust in 8 inch steps, so plan the heights around your tallest item before you load anything.

The wall cabinet: 100 lb, regardless of width

This is the figure to read twice. A 24 inch Bold wall cabinet publishes 100 lb total. The 60 inch wall cabinet in the 4-piece set also publishes 100 lb total. Spread across the width, that is about 50 lb per foot in the narrow cabinet and about 20 lb per foot in the wide one.

Wall cabinets are for light things in any brand — spray cans, gloves, boxed fasteners, car-care bottles. Paint in gallon cans belongs in a base cabinet or a locker. Pro doubles the wall-cabinet figure to 200 lb, which is the most practical difference between the lines for anyone planning a full upper row.

The base and tool cabinets

The Bold 2-door base cabinet publishes 600 lb total and 200 lb per shelf. NewAge's Bold tool cabinets publish 600 lb total and 100 lb per drawer, which is plenty for hand tools and not something to fill with loose steel stock. The Bold XL base cabinet raises the figures to 700 lb total and 250 lb on its single adjustable shelf.

The three sets worth looking at

NewAge sells dozens of set configurations, many differing only in color and worktop. These three cover the real decisions, and all three had a live Amazon listing with a Buy Box offer when we checked.

Bold XL 6-piece: if bins are going inside

One 24 inch locker, a 22 inch base cabinet, a rolling tool cabinet, two 14 inch wall cabinets and a 48 inch worktop, in 78 inches of wall. It is our top pick of the three because it is the only one where a standard tote goes behind a closed door, and because the per-shelf figures are the highest in the Amazon-listed range. The trade is one locker instead of two, and a footprint that asks more of the room.

Bold 7-piece: the complete wall at 18 inches

Two lockers, a base cabinet, a rolling tool cabinet, two wall cabinets and a 48 inch worktop across 108 inches. This is the set most people picture when they think of a NewAge garage, and for a garage where the cabinets share a wall with a parked car it is the better fit. Plan on bins living elsewhere.

Bold 4-piece all-in-one: the way in

One locker, a 60 inch wall cabinet and a 60 inch workbench with a 500 lb rating, 13.5 inch deep drawers on full-extension slides and a fixed bottom shelf. It is the smallest set that still gives you a lockable cabinet and a real surface to work at, and it adds on to the rest of the Bold range later. The workbench is ready-to-assemble rather than welded, so expect this one to be more of a build.

Welded, mostly: what you actually put together

NewAge's phrase for the welded Bold cabinets is that they require minimal assembly. The practical meaning is that the cabinet bodies arrive as cabinets rather than as flat panels. What is left is the part that decides whether the run looks right:

1. Level the floor units first. The legs adjust from 75.25 to 76.75 inches of overall height — a 1.5 inch range. Garage floors are rarely flat, so put a level across the whole run before you unpack everything and check that the fall fits inside that range.
2. Fit the worktop across level cabinets. A worktop sitting on two floor units that are not at the same height rocks, and no shim fixes that as well as the legs do.
3. Hang wall cabinets into studs. The Bold XL wall cabinet has a perforated back panel for mounting. Whatever the fixing, a steel cabinet carrying its rated load belongs on framing, not in drywall alone.
4. Build the workbench if your set has one. The 4-piece set's bench is ready-to-assemble, so it is the longest job in that box.

For laying out a longer run — where the tall units go, where the bench sits and how much wall to leave clear — see how to plan a cabinet wall.

Against the cabinet we already recommend

The obvious cross-shop is the Seville Classics UltraHD, our steel cabinet pick. At 30 inches wide by 18 deep, a Bold locker and the 30 inch UltraHD occupy the same floor.

On paper they match shelf for shelf, and the NewAge locker publishes 200 lb more in total plus a gauge figure Seville does not publish. What the Seville does not ask you to do is buy into a system. If you want one lockable cabinet, that matters. If you want a matched wall that grows, NewAge is built for that and the UltraHD is not. The broader comparison, including open shelving, is in our garage cabinet roundup, and the system-versus-single-purchase argument runs the same way as it does in our Gladiator review.

Where to buy it: check both prices

NewAge sells direct as well as through Amazon, and on the day we checked the two did not agree — in both directions. One set was cheaper at NewAge's own store, another was cheaper on Amazon, and a third matched. It is worth two minutes to compare before you order a set this size.

The buttons on this page go to the gray versions with a bamboo worktop. Other frame and door colors and a stainless steel worktop are separate listings. Prices on this site come only from the dated retailer data layer, and where none is available the button reads "Check price" — we do not type a number into the copy.

We did not find a Pro Series set in the Amazon catalog when we checked, so Pro has no buy button here. On NewAge's own store the 3-piece Pro set was listed at the same price as the 6-piece Bold XL set: fewer, taller cabinets in twice-as-thick steel, against more cabinets in thinner steel with deeper shelves. Which is better value depends on whether you need doors on more things or tougher doors on fewer.

The honest cons

• Standard Bold is too shallow for totes. 18 inches against a 19.6 inch tote is not close.
• Wall cabinets are light-duty. 100 lb total on Bold and Bold XL, whether the cabinet is 24 or 60 inches wide.
• 24-gauge is the thin end of the range. Half the thickness of Pro, and the Bold XL frame stays at 24-gauge too.
• Steel sweats in an unheated garage. The powder-coated finish is there to resist rust and stains, but condensation still forms inside a closed steel cabinet when the temperature swings. Leave airflow behind the run and keep paper and cardboard off the panels.
• Per cubic foot, cabinets are expensive storage. A matched cabinet wall costs several times what the same capacity costs in open shelving. The argument in full is in cabinets against shelves.

What we could not verify

• Interior depths. NewAge publishes exterior dimensions. The tote-fit reading for Bold XL is exterior arithmetic, not a measurement.
• Warranty on Bold XL and Pro. NewAge's Bold Series page states a limited lifetime warranty. The Bold XL and Pro listings we read do not state a warranty term, so we are not quoting one for them.
• Pro per-shelf ratings. The Pro set listing publishes totals — 1,000 lb for the locker and base cabinet, 200 lb for the wall cabinet — but not a figure per shelf.
• Assembly time. We have not built one and will not estimate it.
• Long-term finish durability. How the powder coat holds up after years in a damp garage is not something a specification can tell you, and we are not going to guess.

Who should buy which, and who should buy none of it

Buy Bold XL if totes are going behind the doors and the garage has the depth to give up. It is the NewAge line built around the bin problem, with the strongest shelves in the Amazon-listed range.

Buy standard Bold if the cabinets share a wall with a parked car and every inch of walkway counts. The 7-piece set is the complete wall; the 4-piece set is the start of one, with a workbench.

Look at Pro if the upper row will carry real weight, or the cabinets will take knocks from bikes, mowers and car doors. Twice the wall cabinet rating and twice the steel thickness are the reasons to pay for it.

Buy none of it if what you actually need is storage rather than doors. For the same money, open welded steel shelving holds far more. One lockable cabinet for chemicals and sharp things, plus shelving for everything else, is the layout that works in most garages.