Product review (3 stars): Louder than I was expecting for a 4 speed fan.
I replaced a 17 year old hood that was pretty quiet with this one, as i am updating appliances to stainless steel.  Even though the outside box was in good shape, when I unboxed the unit, I found the plastic box covering the electronic board had a broken mounting ear, causing it to flop around.  I contacted Ancona, and they are sending me a new plastic cover.  Good points for their service department.

Instructions are in English and French.  The English part describes the 3 speed fan without the time delay shutoff (only has 5 buttons instead of 6).  Had to figure out how the time delay shutoff works, found a guy at work that understood French, and he helped translate.  Found out that the 3 minute time delay (yes it's 3 minutes, not the 10 advertised in the description) only works for the upper 3 fan speeds, not for the lowest "quiet" setting.  Invoking the time delay on the quiet speed causes the indicator lights to flash for 3 minutes, and then nothing changes.  On the upper 3 speeds after the three minutes of flashing indicators, the fan shuts off as expected.  I questioned Ancona about this, and they confirmed the delay doesn't work on the quiet speed.  This limitations wasn't described in the French translation either.  They need to update the documentation before everyone returns the unit for this "defect".

As to the noise, yes this unit is noisier then my previous 17 year old Venmar unit.  The Venmar had a squirrel cage fan, the quietest fan type you can have.  Since this was a 4 speed fan, I really expected the "quiet" speed to be comparable to the low speed on my old one.  You can carry on a conversation next to it on "quiet" but it isn't pleasant.  I ended up buying a Japan to USA power converter (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004S2COIC?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00), which changes the incoming 120 volts to 105 volts.  I fed this 105 volts to the hood, and everything works ok.  The "quiet" speed is now better (of course the air flow is reduced also, but there are 3 more speeds to select from if you need to move some more air).  Still louder then my old Venmar, but acceptable.  The maximum speed didn't seem to be reduced with the step down transformer installed.

I replaced the lights with LED units (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015673OFO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00) that work from 10 to 20 volts, and they don't seem to mind the reduced 105 volts I am feeding the hood with now.

There is a loud "beep" for every button push, louder than your typical microwave button beep.  I find this a bit obnoxious also, you really don't need that loud of feedback on pressing buttons.  My dog would look over each time a button was pushed!  Since the plastic box cover for the circuit board was broken (and removed for the moment), I took a small stick-on felt circle (the kind you put on the back of pictures/mirrors so they don't scrape the wall they are hanging on) and stuck it over the small black beeper on the circuit board (around 1/2 inch diameter black cylinder with a hole on the top).  This reduced its sound by half, and made the beep noise acceptable.

The unit looks good, and for the price it is OK, just wished it was quieter (both fan and beep noise).