About a month or so ago, I went to Lowe’s to replace a fan in my master bedroom. The one that I had hung to low for the way I had the room oriented and with the light kit that was attached to it, I was in danger of hitting my head on it were I not careful. I am not sure if it was the acrylic translucent blades ala the minkaAire Artemis Translucent Fan that I had recently posted, a trip to the local Cheeburger Cheeburger, my generally…odd taste in home decor or the big red “clearance” tag ($100 vs. the standard $150) that drew me to the Harbor Breeze 52″ Neon Light Ceiling Fan but its the fan I ultimately purchased.

Packaging: The fan came packed much as one would expect for a fan/light kit combination to be boxed. The local Lowe’s only had two fans left in stock, and both of them had open, somewhat damaged boxes. Given the 33% price reduction, this was not terribly unexpected. So I grabbed the box that looked to be in the best way and after being assured that I could return/exchange the fan for another one of there was a problem, took it home.

Installation: Truth be told, my father performed the initial installation of the fan (thanks dad!), but it was rather standard. I have both a switch to control the light and a knob to control the fan speed on the wall and both of those seemed to hook up seemlessly. After some minor acrobatic maneuvers by my father to get his large hands into some tiny spaces, everything was hooked up. The knob functioned as expected, but the switch failed to turn on the neon light fixture. After some jiggling, the fixture came on once briefly but then nothing. A volt meter confirmed that power was being supplied to the fixture, so it was time for an exchange. Lowe’s was as good as their word, I merely had to drop off the old light and control box and they gave me the same pieces from the lone remaining fan. I managed to hook them up with little effort and viola! it worked.

Conclusions: I have had this fan now for over a month and its been working as intended. Since my room is normally illuminated by lamps having any light fixture on the fan was superfluous anyway. At least the neon fixture only adds 2″-3″ to the fan at large compared to the 6″ that the light fixture on the previous fan measured. I could probably count on both hands the number of times the neon light has been turned on and after testing and pictures for this review (here is the fan in the dark) were complete its only on to amuse houseguests. The fan itself is very quiet at all speeds which was a marked improvement on the fan that was there before. You can still see the blades while the fan is in operation at high speed, but it amuses me to be able to see the ceiling behind the fan relatively just barely distorted behind the moving blades. All in all, this fan was definitely worth the $100 spent.