I've had this fan up for over six years (from 2017), and it's still really awesome. I had a Hampton Bay fan up before this one, but the pull chain mechanism stopped working after two years (par for the course for Home Depot brands). Before I settled on this Hunter fan, I looked at 43 other models: 2 Craftmade, 8 Emerson, 2 Hardware House, 18 other Hunter, 6 Litex, 2 Minka-Aire, 3 Monte Carlo, and 2 Westinghouse; as well as a bunch of Hampton Bay and Harbor Breeze (Lowe's brand) fans. I compared the fans' diameters, heights from the ceiling, airflow/cubic feet per minute, number of blades, Amazon ratings, price, and light type and remote (if applicable). Admittedly, this fan is only a 44"-diameter fan and pushes 3,157 CFM--far less air than its rivals (which pushed an average of 4,692 CFM with an average 49" diameter blades). The only slower fans were the Hunter Low Profile III (#23866), Low Profile III Plus (#53075), and Low Profile IV (#51059). The highest CFM were the Emerson Midway (#CF955WW) at 6,085 CFM, the Emerson Sea Breeze (#CF654WW) at 6,492 CFM, and the Minka-Aire Ultra Max (#F588-SP-WH) which puts out an insane 7,077 CFM (and gets nothing but five stars on Amazon but doesn't have a light kit). HOWEVER, that said, THIS FAN still moves plenty of air in my ~130 sq. ft. bedroom. And when I need a slight breeze, it delivers. Sometimes I wish it could be even lower. This fan sits 12.4 inches from the ceiling to the bottom of the light. The tops of the blades are about 7" from the ceiling at their base (5.5" under my medallion) and 8" at their periphery. This is average for the other models I looked at: a generally-even spread from 7" from the ceiling. The Hunter Low Profile III (#23866) and the Emerson Snugger (#CF804WW / CF805WW) were the lowest-profile, and the Hunter Astoria (#53059) and Beacon Hill (#53081) were highest-profile. This fan won out over the others mostly because it has an included light kit with *dimmable LEDs* (on a standard Edison base, not a candelabra base) and a nice three-speed REMOTE—I didn't want to worry about compatible light kits/remotes after the fact. It's just so convenient to have the speeds I want at the push of a button (not a pullstring!), and to be able to dim the lights with the remote. However, with the LED lights I've installed, there's a slight high-pitched whining noise when the lights aren't at full brightness. (It's the only way I know they're at full brightness.) The fan is perfectly balanced too. Installation was easy enough—even with a ceiling medallion. I had to carve the backside of the medallion to fit around the top canopy and sandwich it around the fan as it was being assembled and hung. This required bending the 90° metal resting hooks down a little with pliers--the elbows still angled at a 90° but pointing 45° down toward the floor then curving backup toward the ceiling to make a V). Then I slid the fan+medallion onto the top canopy horizontally and secured the screws while a second man held up the fan. OK, so this fan is great … BUT it gets a star off because: *The instructions don't tell you to secure the fan directly to a fan-rated electrical box. This fan has a metal plate with rubber feet that rest on the ceiling, and the instructions imply you can secure the plate to the ceiling and the canopy to the plate alone. But I know better, and Hunter really should have specified how to use a fan box and/or a brace for first-timers. *The balancing kit included also has poor directions. There's not really a need for a balancing kit with 99.9% of installations, I reckon, since the fan has those rubber feet to avoid jiggle. But the instructions don't explain that there is a balancing kit or what it does. They don't tell you that the balancing kit is for light wobble, not blade wobble. And they don't explain thoroughly the many places to try the clip in the balancing kit or that the weighted stickers go above the blade (not its underside). A couple more sentences would go a long way for first-time D-I-Yers. *Some of the holes for the fan blade screws were poorly drilled--too much paint or too dull a bit at the factory or something. I nearly rounded out some screws securing the fan blades. Luckily they included an extra screw, which helped; and I used another screw I had (same width and threading but longer) to widen the pilot hole first. But that could be disastrous for other customers. *The included LED bulbs are 800 lumens and 3,000K color temperate, which is a very blue light. The bulbs aren't very bright, and while the blueish light is great, it made other room in the house looks like a red-orange hell by comparison. Different bulbs fixed the problem, but I didn't want to have to hunt for bulbs to fix something I just bought. *The fan includes a notice that Polywell Manufacturing (Zhongshan Co.) made the ceiling blades with medium-density fiberboard (MDF), which complies to phase 2 of § 93120 ATCM Emissions. Researching what this means, I found info that MDF uses a type of formaldehyde that's a known carcinogen for nasopharyngeal cancers, and there was an Airborne Toxic Control Measure (ATCM) to reduce it. MDF is common, but not ideal. I'm not a ceiling fan manufacturer, so I don't know what else could be used. *The Safe Exit feature dims the lights gradually over 30 seconds and turns them off, which would be really cool when getting into bed or turning out the light when I'm done reading, etc. Except both bulbs flash their full brightness off and on three times first, which wakes me up when I'm trying to get to sleep. Why not just have the remote LED flash? The remote LED is pretty bright too, incidentally. I have two dot stickers over it. *The switch to reverse the fan's direction is under the glass cover. I like to have the fan blow air down onto me sometimes and suck air up to distribute it throughout the room better at other times. But I don't want to get a stool or chair and remove the glass several times a day for this. So I just leave it blowing downward.
