The media could not be loaded. Observations noted in regards to other reviews: The clock display is in 12h time not 24h time. The blue protective plastic is there for a reason. Just take your time taking it off. Unfortunately, the instructions didn't say to disassemble the light section to remove the blue protective layer there. If you don't, removing the blue layer will be a nightmare and make the unit look cheap with small fragments everywhere. What's really sad is that some areas that need protection don't have any protection. One area that needed protection is the display. You'd think that would be the one area that would have it to prevent scratches. The LED light is on the whiter side, maybe closer to 5000K in color. The light could be a little brighter, but it's enough to see the entire cooktop. The fan always starts at fan speed 3. You'd think that it would start in fan speed 1 so as not to scare you, but nothing doing, there seems to be a lack of common sense here. Also, when using the touch controls, you must press and hold the power button for about 2 seconds to wake up the system, then pick what you want to happen. Be it the fan or light. When you press the power button to turn off the fan, its starts counting down for 1 minute, which is great. Press it on more time to turn it off immediately. It would make really good sense if you could just press fan or light to get to those functions directly, but you can't. You have to press the power button for 2 seconds again then press the function button you want. Slightly irritating logic there. INITIAL IMPRESSIONS: After receiving the vent, I opened it and took a quick look at it and tried it out. This is the video that was shot recording the different fan speeds and sound levels. The phone is very close so it is much louder than it really is installed. But take notice of the motor "hum". Looking at the vent I noticed that a motor mounting screw was installed incorrectly. So I reinstalled all of the screws and made sure everything was mounted correctly, but the humming didn't get any better. While pressing on parts of the housing, I noticed that the humming would be slightly diminished depending where I pressed. 1st red flag. The metal it was made out of also seemed thin and flexed quite a bit but was well protected. So I decided to go ahead with the install anyway. On install day, I took the vent out of all of the packing and what I found was interesting. A dimple on the front of the vent and a dented side panel towards the back of the vent. All of these sections were hidden under the Styrofoam packing which wasn't damaged one bit. The packing box was in excellent condition so I can only assume that the vent was damaged at the factory. So much for quality control. The metal was so thin that I could just push the panel from the inside and correct the dent. No special tools, just my fingers. The dimple was on the crease so there was no correcting it, but it didn't look that noticeable so I let it go. Red flag number 2. The installation was straight forward and by the included instructions, which by the, is not very detailed. After completing the installation, the hum was very noticeable and kind of irritating. I pressed on different sections and found a spot that made it slightly quieter and inserted a piece of foam between the cabinet and top of the vent. The hum is very noticeable on fan speed 1, so I'm thinking that the motor is of a lower quality. I also noticed this type of thing on cheap window AC's when running on low versus higher speeds. The vent housing essentially becomes a resonating chamber amplifying the sound even louder. A little sound dampening material would have gone a long way. The blower assembly itself creates some vibration as the fan is not well balanced, but this vibration doesn't seem to get transmitted to the surrounding areas. Other than the hum, the air flow and sound created is pretty quiet on low. On the second speed, the grease filters create a very slight whistling sound. The vent sounds great without the grease filters. My guess on this is that the way the air has to go through the vent is the cause. FINAL THOUGHTS: After using it for a while, is it worth the $200+ price, maybe. If the metal was a little thicker and the manufacturer paid closer attention to proper testing of operational noise, definitely! The touch panel programming could be improved. It's a nice looking unit and removes a great deal of air, so functionality is very good. Hopefully I was able to provide some useful information toward your purchase and maybe to the manufacturers.
