Z Line 698-28 Deep Stainless Steel Range Hood Insert, 28-Inch

I purchased this product feeling I was taking a bit of a gamble since comparable performance in better known brands is about twice the price.When the unit arrived I quickly unpacked it and plugged it in to see how it worked since I didn't have a good idea of what Sones and CFM actually sounded and felt like. I can tell you that 1200CFM is a lot of air movement, it cooled my whole house down after running for a couple of minutes. The sound you hear is air too and not motor sound so the way I see that it is as quiet as can be. The only thing that could make it quieter might be engineering the airflow differently.Unfortunately on the lowest speed settings I could here the fan rubbing against something internally. I called the company and they noted the condition but asked me to poke around and see if there was something that was dented or came loose during shipping. I said that there were some dents and a loose screw rattling around in the enclosure. Most of the construction is riveted so not a lot can be taken apart and put back together. I think each fan comes out as a unit but cannot be disassembled itself most likely (I didn't want to try and end up damaging anything myself). They sent a fedex pickup to get the defective unit and shipped out a new one. The new one has no rattle and works fine after a quick test. the outside of the housing is still dented a bit in the same location but it is in an area that will be enclosed and not seen. I think this is a design/tolerance issue with the manufacturer. I was a little perturbed that I was asked to actually see if I could "fix" a defective product and wasn't offered a discount or anything, but it wasn't that big of a deal.The unit seems like it is built cheap, but also strong. The lady on the phone said that in all her years at the company they had only had one warrantied motor replacement and that it was probably the owners fault due to inadequate lightning protection or something. The part of the unit that will be seen is very nice. The lights are very bright as well. I'm not sure how easy they will be to replace though. I kinda wish there were different light settings since they are so bright. I am slightly concerned with the amount of electronics inside the unit. It's just more stuff that can potentially break, but only time will tell. The time delay feature seems like it could be nice since we often like to leave the range on immediately after cooking, but don't need it on during the entire meal.Hope my review was helpful. I thought I would be as thorough as possible since there are no reviews on this product. All in all, buy it!

Out of the gate, i will say that i had very few options since the prebuilt wooden hood that came with my cabinets is unusually sized inside. So, i had to find options that fit the size of the wooden hood - which significantly limited my options. This arrived packed great - no issues.What it is:GorgeousHeavyLoudWhat it is not:Inexpensive - it's the price of an appliance!Easy to install - you will definitely need 2 people due to the weight (likely true with any dual fan exhaust). But, if you have 2 people, it's pretty straight forward.Quiet - don't plan on talking to the person next to you when this is on - holy cow!I have used this now for a good 8 months. The exhaust knob fell off, but that's just a few rotations of a screwdriver. The one light bulb literally failed within the first month of use - kind of sucked, but whatever. But, overall, a really good product that i would recommend. It is the most powerful fan i could find to fit into the tight space limitations. Just know with power (2 fans) comes noise. And it's not quiet by any means.

Very powerful suction but come with a cost. Fan noise is pretty noisy. Overall great hood

698-28The actual blower is not too noisy without the grilles installed, but the grilles whistle. The steel is a little heavier guage than most, but could use some damping, which i did add.i would have given it five stars except for the grille noise. Even so, it's not as noisy as the cheap hood insert it replaced, but the whistle is annoying.i have the 698-24, so it's only 400 cfm, but it seems adequate, and keeps my smoke alarms from going off when i season my cast iron pans.Installation was a little tricky, since my oak vent hood did not allow clearance for the provided brackets. I used a stainless 6 inch duct instead of the provided plastic flex duct.

Buyer beware. Some parts and manufacturing/assembly process are sub standard. My fan arrived fairly well packaged however the dual blower assembly had pulled loose from the main shell and there were some minor bent sheet metal issues. There are 8 small metric screws that attach the blower assembly to the shell. All but 1 were stripped. The blower assembly was more or less hanging by 1 screw. I bought 8 new metric screws thinking it would be an easy fix, just bend the flange back to normal and put in new screws. Nope of course this was not the case. 6 of the 8 holes in the flange of the blower assembly were stripped out too. I had to replace the screws with a slightly larger machine screw and tap the 8 holes in the blower assembly accordingly.Also the blower assembly to shell mating surface does not have a gasket. This means some of the exhaust will escape back into the fan shell decreasing efficiency.The next thing I noticed was the output adapter flange that mounts on top of the exhaust port and allows an eight inch diameter pipe to be connected is welded together but you can see light through all the joints. Again an exhaust leak issue except this would leak back into the house. I thought the idea was to get the exhaust out of the house? After making the repairs I bench tested it and it seems to work ok. I will be applying silicone sealant to the joints of the output adapter flange when ever my kitchen renovation gets to that installation time frame .Also the top of the unit was scratched up possibly from the loose screws? But it will be hidden up inside the cabinet hood and not visible.To sum up my initial experience I would say the thin sheet metal is a low budget engineering design flaw. The blower assembly is somewhat heavy and the way it is attached leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully Z-line will read this review and make the appropriate design changes. For $550 I expect a lot more for my money.