Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a really nice hood. It looks great and has good functionality, including 6 fan speeds, LED lights, clock and delay timer (so you can set the fan to turn off automatically). It is relatively quiet on the lower speed settings; the top 3 settings are louder, but also move a lot of air. This replaced a 42 year old GE hood that finally stopped working recently. I am glad I decided to go with this unit. As recommended, I plugged it in and checked that all the controls were working before installing. Installation took several hours. The instruction manual is pretty minimalistic, but if you know what you are doing you can install it yourself. I had to pick up a few items for the installation (a section of 3-¼ x 10 aluminum duct to connect the vertical outlet to my existing ductwork, aluminum duct tape, some hex head 2” #12 screws and a 6” driver extension for my drill). The rectangular vertical duct adapter supplied with the unit is too short in my opinion (the duct only extends about 1” above the top of the hood – so it does not stick out above the bottom of the upper cabinet when installed; the mounting screws are also about ¼” too short). I cut the power cord, removed the strain relief, and opened up the auxilliary electrical connection hole on the back of the unit to enable a direct connection to the existing wiring in my wall. I used a car jack with several blocks of wood to raise the hood into place with a ~4” duct extension pre-attached (see photo). It was tricky to get the new duct extension to slide over the end of the existing duct. I trimmed the edges of the aluminum “flapper” on the rectangular duct adapter so they wouldn’t catch on the old duct ends after installation. I needed help from my wife to get the wood blocks and jack in place once I hoisted the unit into position. I’m afraid some bad words were said after I struggled several times to reach up under the hood with an electric screwdriver to drive the retaining screws in place. I ended up nixing the back two screws in favor of putting one through the back of the unit into a wall stud, which was much easier and totally solid. Once installed, it worked like a dream. A dimmer on the control panel would have been nice, as would dual brightness levels on the lights. The little ding they unit makes every time you touch a button on the control panel gets old pretty quickly. Also, the control panel surface is plastic, not glass (which would have been better).