Others have mentioned stability and silence.  I am wondering about the shear forces on this.  I hand-tightened everything, then used the hex key, then the ratchet.  The bed still creaks, although after a month of use and some tweaking, it's not as bad as it was initially.  I can make the top move visibly and easily, however, just wrestling with the dog.  It looks nice enough, and was simple to assemble by myself, but I wouldn't call it sturdy, and I sleep by myself.  The non-slip strips definitely keep my mattress in place, but that's not so useful when you have a mattress that you flip (mine's custom-made extra-firm).   Getting the mattress in place in a small space by myself was very difficult, and if I didn't have strength, I'd still be working on it.  In spite of all this, I still think it was almost worth the money.