In general, I am pleased with my purchase. I live in Charleston, SC where it MAY get into freezing weather for a few weeks a year. We have a wood burning fireplace that we love to use when it gets cold enough, but that rarely happens. Sometimes the hassle of cleanup and too much heat overrides the option to build a wood fire on cooler days.I bought this as an easy option to give us the ambiance of a fireplace without the hassle. Since our living room is usually the coldest room in the house on cold (for us, anyway, sorry Northerners) days, the added heater function was a big bonus. I really like the ambiance feature. If you're not too critical it really does look nice, with the logs clowing and the flames projected on the back wall of the fireplace. If you are a Type A personality that demands perfection, the red digital lights on the front of the unit will irritate you. Also, the logs, especially with the lights moving behind them, are obviously plastic. And you can definitely hear the fan running in heater mode. But I still very much enjoy it and I'm glad I bought it. I also like the remote, very effective as long as the steel spark arrestor curtain is not drawn over the sensor. I also wish to point out that the back of my fireplace was not 23 inches, but this was not a problem. The unit is not square shaped. The front is 23 inches but it narrows at the back, so I could push it flat against the back wall of the fireplace if I wanted to. But the unit seems to need 2 to 3 inches of space behind it to plroject flames onto the back wall effectively, so it was not a big deal for two reasons. My one major disappointment with the unit is the heater. I read the reviews and really did not expect much in this department, but even so I was less than impressed. As I said, we live in the South where it just doesn't get that cold, and all I expected from the heater was to take the edge off a room that was colder than the rest of the house. It is inadequate for this even in a small living room. The fan has four or five heat settings, but even on the highest setting you can only barely feel the heat if you are standing right up next to the fireplace with the flume closed. It feels like 90 degree air pushed by a fan like the one inside your desktop computer (it isn't, but that's what it feels like). The fan is noticeably loud. As I said, I'm still pleased with the purchase. It's real enough for me and I like the ambiance of the fake fire in the living room next to the Christmas tree and decorated mantle. But if you expect any real heat from this look elsewhere.The Disneyland theatrical effects of this prop-style fireplace help me relax and feel happy after a day's toil. To boot, those who mocked my purchase for it's cheesiness now frequently use it and express their satisfaction in it to me. THIS IS GREAT for what it is -- a "campy" (not to be punny;) eco-friendly way to create ambiance ... even makes me want to learn and pronounce French words correctly so I can tell people about it. And it's especially a significant bargain at Christmas-time, when everyone wants a fire. The HEAT it produces IS MINIMAL. You have to be right up on it to feel it, but it's as good as any other LITTLE space heater. Still, you can place your hands over it after coming in from a snowball fight and get a good warming that way as most of the heat seems to be projected upward (probably due to the fact that it's in the drafty fireplace). The heat's about as good as the embers of a couple of Duraflame logs, which it semi-realistically emulates. As Duraflames are about 25 bucks for a box of 9 at Costco, and this satisfies the emotional needs of my family in winter, it will pay for itself in a week or two of operation -- AND I CAN STILL BURN WOOD IN MY FIREPLACE WHEN I WANT TO. And I didn't have to install it. I just took it out of the box, set it in the fireplace, plugged it in, and used the remote control to power it up. NOTE: It doesn't look the same as the picture here. Really, you can only see the lower glowing logs in the dark space of the fireplace, and frankly, they aren't as well rendered as they could be. But they're certainly good enough. What's more is that it produces exceptional flame light effects only visible in darkness: A glass panel diffuses and refracts dancing flickering flame light all along the back bricks of the firebox, which reflects to the side walls of the fireplace VERY realistically. However, unless you have an outlet in your firebox, be prepared to either find a clever way to conceal the cord stretched out along your hearth over to the nearest outlet or get used to the sight of the black cord dangling out in front of you. In the dark it won't make a difference, but it might annoy your senses or trip you up during well lit hours. The icing on the cake is the remote control. I can turn it on and off and adjust the heat and flame light levels from the couch, so I never have to walk over and bend down to the unit to get it going. In short, it's not a replacement for the kinds of bonfires I like to get going to actually heat the den in the absence of the furnace, but it's a great mood and conversation piece with the added bonus of local personal heat if you're close to it.Use the fireplace every night for atmosphere. Nice to know that it has a heater as well, but don't really use that feature.It makes noise and when you put it on higher heat it will make loud noise which at night it kind of bother you while you try to sleepNot like the pictureSuper pour le prixExcelente producto cumple con las especificaciones, da una apariencia de chimenea real y funciona muy bien. Estoy muy complacido con la compra