On the good side -- the light when assembled is solid, easy to hang and level, no sag, the lighting is even between segments throughout the dimming range, and the dimming range is decent (it would be nice to go a bit lower, but it is a really goodly range). It uses a 0-10v dimmer which would have been trivial to set up if I had not bought a defective one. I thought the LED drivers were unusual in some way, but my dinner was just broken. Ordered a new one, all fixed.
Aside -- the unit comes with a plastic box and manual knob-based dimmer. All the lights in my house are computer controlled so I wanted a different one. Anyway...
In doing all this I dug deeper into the drivers than one normally would, and I think they use good quality, relatively expensive stuff. That's another reason the lighting stays even throughout the diming range around the fixture.
The mounts (you can see in the first shot) are thin plastic coated metal wire that go through a small gripping "nipple" at the top. You can pull the wire through, or push in on the nipple and pull it back to adjust, then when settled cut the wires. These were fairly easy to adjust though it takes a lot of back and forth to get the tension equal (the fixture is not flexible so all that happens is some wires are taught, some slack). I purposely put them in a bit so that it would be self-stabalizing and would not swing (and recommend that -- if you mount them directly above the fixed it will be easy to swing a bit.
So... I'm fairly pleased. But it's only fair to talk about the mediocre part.
Putting this together is straightforward but incredibly tedious. Each of the 8 joints have 4 flat strips held by 4 screws each -- so 128 tiny set screws. That's not the bad part -- the bad part is they are INSIDE the tube, difficult to reach with an Allen wrench (and for the top side require peeling back the plastic cover). Nothing difficult here -- but VERY tedious and takes hours and hours to do carefully.
And you need to be careful, and keep everything square, so you minimize light leaks. And repeat after me "I only need to do this once... I only need to do this once...".
Also in the mediocre part is the power cord -- it's a pretty heavy black cord. Wish it had been something smaller and less obvious. In mine I covered it with white braid to try to blend to the ceiling (which is fairly effective, you can see above, it's approximately dead center above).
And the bad part:
This is well made, very precisely cut, absolutely no issues with the machine shop work, but the design needs work. The joints are butted flat against each other, and it is nearly impossible to get both sides sealed enough to prevent light leaks. Here is an example. The joints need some kind of overlapping tongue-in-grove or similar setup.
In the worst cases I went inside and put black electrical tape over the joint inside to keep the light from coming out; in daylight with the light off though there's some shiny aluminum you can see from the edges. These are painted (powder coat I think), not anodized -- if they were anodized after machining instead, that aspect would go away, but the light leak would remain.
I asked about it, and the vendor was nice enough to send a 3D printed seal to go over the joints -- but it sticks out, to me it ruined the simple and clean look of the light. So I'm living with some light leaks. You don't notice them playing, only when you look closely at the light.
But...
I actually find this more annoying than the aluminum fit - -the plastic covers depend on snapping into a ridged area and fitting exactly. And they don't always especially where you have to open it up to put in the set screws and then put it back. I don't know plastics, so this may be difficult to really fix. But it is annoying, and is a bit more visible if you glance up at the light.
Again -- overall I'm pleased. It is definitely better looking than I could have done with 2x4 panels, especially if I tried to hang them. The light is even and can be plenty bright (and controllably bright). Unless your attention is called to the light directly you do not notice these little issues. And if your ceilings are high (mine are very low) you can raise it a bit and make it less visible as well.
Also -- having not seen the Perimeter light I have no idea if this build quality is better, worse of the same. In my case color temperature was the deciding factor.
Incidentally -- the support for questions and concerns was excellent - fast replies, seemingly any time of day, and a clear inclination to do all they could to solve any problems. Could not be more happy in that regard.
. Back in the real world, the skirt seems like an idea that can work.
