Overall product is great. Would have been 5 star if prices hadn't shot up since the pandemic, and all the stories about difficult installation due to unclear instructions are unfortunately true. My tips: 3x check that the (subtly!) Grooved surface on the top "mechanical guts" holding housing is facing you & the inside of the room and snap at least one bracket onto the shades before you screw anything in. Hold it up to the window frame to make sure its not in backwards. For outside mount, this will be "wide flat metal lip on top, flexible tab piece on the bottom". Pros: * Build quality is good, especially for the metal and fabric parts. Plastic looks "cheap" when you take everything out of the box, but it feels durable and looks good for something that's not a crazy expensive major brand. * Diffuse light is great, making the room look brighter overall, but there's also no blinding light peaking through right into my face like I was getting with my old miniblinds. * Easy to install once you've done it a couple times. * Summer and winter insulation is legit based on these and one other "cellular style" shade we've had in the bathroom for years (not sure what brand). We noticed a consistent 20-30% reduction in temp variation. You can no longer sense a temp difference in July/August or Ja/Feb in New Hampshire unless you're paying attention/"fault finding", to give a subjective performance report. Haven't tested scientifically except to say that we've been finding ways to reduce energy use and its working based on the 13 Month rolling KwH reports we get on our monthly utility bills.. I installed these new ones recently in an above garage office thats "theoretically" well insulated but actually roasts in summer and freezes in winter in part due to skylights. I need to address the skylights for a "total solution" but summer heat has been reduced quite a bit just be doing the normal windows. Too soon to know yet, but I expect to see heating/cooling costs go down 5 to 10% based on previous experience which aligns with most industry claims. Performance should be similar if not better to that bathroom since we're now shading and insulating a room with 4 windows that are full sun most of the year, and the room is often unused. A 20% to 30% improvement here would be a substantial dollars and cents savings, allowing us to run heat/cooling fewer days/year, and with fewer BTUs when we do. Cons: * Diagram in the directions needs to make bracket orientation much more clear, at least for outside mount, which I did. Getting it backwards is not only wasted time, but you also scratch the plastic (not may, but WILL in my experience). I was able to mostly hide scratches by wearing the worst of it off with a fingernail but you shouldn't need to do that at $68 a unit!. * You have less lightb and privacy control vs mini blinds, which is a drag considering i live on a busy street. Privacy is technically better when shades are all the way down, but you can't just open them part way to let more light in while keeping them mostly closed like with miniblinds. However, school drapes have the same limitation, and to me the insulation and improved lighting overall outweigh the performance hit you take in this one narrow area that's truly a "1st world problem". * Price and availability. Both weren't great compared to the pre covid status quo, based on the reviews prior to Mar 2020. That said, my items arrived early, so the seller and/or Amazon has been good about under promising and over delivering. I've made 2 separate purchases of this product over the last 1.5 mos. Both times they said "4-6 weeks" but they came in 10-14 days. Order well in advance just to be safe, but you may be pleasantly surprised and I'm sure speedy shipping will return in the coming months, God willing. Not so much a review but question... The temp insulation claims are accurate but have any other customers seen the claimed noise reduction benefits? I'm assuming its something of a gimmick, but I haven't had them installed on the noisy road side of my house to know.
