Review on 🌀 Axis 52in Matte White Smart Flush Mount Ceiling Fan with LED Light Kit, Remote Control - Indoor & Outdoor, 3-Blade Design by Cheska Perry

As the first person to review this fan I will do it in great detail. First a little background: I'm very tech-savvy. Our house has a Revain Echo in every room, most of our light switches are automated by Wemo, app or voice controlled, and at any point in time we have about 50 devices connected to our WiFi. I've also worked as an electrician for a living, so I have a good knowledge of tools. 1) First Impressions The first thing that struck me about the box when it arrived was how incredibly light it was. It weighed about half what I would expect from a ceiling fan. When I opened the box I understood why. The body is made of very thin aluminum and the blades are made of plastic. I have never seen a fan made of such light materials. It arrived about three weeks ago and I'm still wondering if it's problematic or not. On the one hand, ceiling fans usually do not disturb traffic. With normal use, nothing is likely to hit or break it. On the other hand, fans are subjected to extraordinary loads: the blades are in constant motion for hours or even days and the motor generates vibrations. So far I haven't seen any signs of a wear issue, but it's only been three weeks. At the very least, be VERY careful during installation as the slightest bump can leave a dent. or worse 2) Installation. Nightmare. First, the directions were terrible. The steps were missing and the fan parts were named differently in the BOM than in the main guide. Second, this is clearly not a smart fan built from the ground up. This is a standard fan upgraded with a snazzy, high-tech receiver. The proof of this is that there is no easy way to mount a receiver in a case. It is huge and rectangular while the body is small and round. If they had designed the fan with the receiver in mind, they could easily place a niche for the receiver that would fit snugly. However, the wires kept sticking out when I tried to get the fan to snap onto the mounting plate. Even without such a niche, the whole process would be much easier if the space inside the case was about an inch deeper. Instead, it was a real test. 3) Function The fan works normally. It's a bit slower at top speed than the fan it replaced, but otherwise it's smooth and quiet. 4) Wall panel The wall panel is fine. It's also clearly an upgrade. I know this for a fact because I found an identical wall panel for sale at Home Depot yesterday. I wish the backlight would make it easier to press the key you want in the dark, but other than that, no complaints. 5) AppOK, this is where it gets ugly. Almost three weeks later I still can't get it to work. First, the app crashed immediately upon launch on my Samsung Galaxy 8+. A few days later the app was updated and stopped crashing, but I couldn't successfully register my fan in the app. The technical support is very friendly and actively tries to help, but without success. I am currently awaiting a new wall plate and receiver from the company. The problem, of course, is that I have to reinstall the fan, which is no fun at all. I'll update as soon as I try that. I now have a Smart fan who isn't smart at all. UPDATE: After getting a new receiver and wall plate from the company, the fan finally worked with my app. Like, something like. During setup the app crashed again, but when I reloaded the app I found that the fan had indeed been added. However, I had to send my wife an invite to make it work on her phone and the invite didn't work properly. Then, two days later, the app stopped working on my phone. He insisted I mistyped the password. I wasn't, and besides, why on earth would I need a password for an app that just controls my ceiling fan? I reset my password and then it worked for a day. Then the same thing happened: he insisted that the password was wrong (believe me: it's not). I reset my password a second time but it didn't work this time. Right now my fan is still not controlled by my phone or my wife's phone. We wanted a smart fan for a very silly but understandable reason: our master bedroom has two inputs and only one switch. It was inconvenient to run electricity to another entrance so we often had to walk across the room in the dark to turn on the light. We bought this particular fan because it was significantly cheaper than other smart fans. Obviously we got what we paid for. I suspect that in a year or two there will be a number of mainstream Smart fans that will come in below the price we paid here. As early adopters, we have been doubly cursed to pay way more than we should and end up with a product with too many bugs to iron out. We hope that some of you will learn from our experience that you will end up with better options than this one. UPDATE #2: A few days after the update was written, the app was updated again and all issues were gone. It works on my Android phone, works on my wife's iPhone. We also managed to hook up a fan to our Echos. It's a little unnerving: you can't just ask Alexa to turn on the fan. After enabling the Modern Forms skill, say "Alexa, open Modern Forms." Then she will ask what you want and you will tell her something like "turn off the bedroom light" and she will do it. Important Tip: You refer to your fan by the name you gave them in the Modern Forms app. DON'T CALL YOUR FAN A "FAN" LIKE WE DO. Alexa doesn't recognize the word "fan" as the name of a fan, but rather as a term for a fan's function (as opposed to a light). It took a month but everything is working now and we are very happy with it. My only gripes are that the fan spins a little slowly and Alexa's modern form abilities aren't as robust as they could be. Customer support was friendly, proactive, and responsive. Every time I've encountered a problem, they've specifically asked the software developers to fix it. This is no small thing: the original proposal was very flawed, but they clearly wanted it to get better. It was also evident that the updates they made to the app were a direct response to my feedback. It took a day or two each time, but they didn't just put my complaints in a circular folder. All other things being equal, this probably deserves 4 stars, but the installation and ongoing issues will cost the fan one star. It just shouldn't have taken a month to resolve all the issues. One day the memory of last month will be erased and I will be very happy with my purchase. UPDATE #3: It is now January. Bought this fan in November. As I mentioned earlier, they were responsive to feedback. Things have changed. You no longer have to say "Open Modern Forms" to Alexa before commanding the fan to turn on or off. Works like all my other devices. I just say "Alexa, turn on the bedroom light" or (Alexa, turn on the bedroom light by 30%) and it works. The app still had a password, but I can bypass it with my fingerprint, which helps. , due to Alexa's fluid functionality I really don't use the app very often. My concerns about durability seem to have been overdone. I haven't seen any issues with the fan's hardware, despite being primarily made of lightweight aluminum and plastic. Since something is changing drastically, this will be my final update on the fan. Summarizing my current view after a few months, I'm still distraught over the install and the early glitches, but now they're back. The fan works, it now coordinates well with voice commands via Alexa and is very easy to get the job done. The customer support team is excellent and responsive. and also answering my criticism in this Revain review. Impressed that someone at the company put two and two together and found that the guy who consulted with support for weeks was the same person who left the Revain review. I hope this review helps you decide if this is the right fan for you. LAST UPDATE A little over a year after purchase we gave up. Remove the fan and install a new one. Two problems led to this. First, every time I get a new phone, the app stops working. It's not about a clean install, it's about the app needing a fresh update to work with a new phone (I usually pre-order the latest Samsung phone). This often takes several weeks. During this time the app won't let me sign in and the Alexa feature will stop. The last time this happened was with my new Galaxy Note 10. The update took even longer than usual so I stupidly checked to see if anything else was wrong. I factory reset the fan by pressing a series of buttons on the wall plate. Factory reset caused the receiver to freeze. To fix this I had to open the fan case, access the receiver and press a button to restart it. That was the last straw. I didn't want to go through the agony of opening the hull again. I already mentioned that the case is extremely difficult to complete and I just didn't want to go through it again. Overall, I just can't recommend this fan.