It's a bit cumbersome. The tubing is stiff and too short, which makes affixing the inflow and outflow pipes within the tank more difficult than it should be. The filtration stages are in the wrong order--instead of flowing through the bio media last, water flows through it first and then through the mechanical media--it's an illogical set-up that will gunk up the bio media. I amended this by putting two aquaclear 20 sponges on top of the bio media. However, doing this makes all the filtration essentially occur in one chamber, rendering Oase's unique attachment for mechanical filtration in the second chamber underutilized for it's intended purpose. Cleaning the filter is an inconvenient affair, too. You have to remove the entire unit along with all of the tubing because there is just no easy way of disconnecting the tubes. And even if you do disconnect them, there are no shut off valves, so water will come pouring out like a siphon. It also doesn't come with the mounting bracket to make it into a hang-on canister, which is really needed since the tubing is so short. And even if you do manage to get the filter to sit on a surface, it won't stand straight--because the tubing is too stiff--it'll make this very lightweight filter lean towards one side. It is quiet. It makes noise initially as air is flushed out of the system for a few minutes, but afterwards it remains silent. I actually think the build quality is pretty good, too, and it looks good--it's cute. This one is tough to score, because once it's up and running, it's problem free. I don't recommend it for tanks over 10 gallons because it’s tiny but, serving it's primary purpose--filtering--it's pretty good. In fact, I choose it over any hang on the back filter—AquaClear (too much bypass), Tidal (skimmer not safe for shrimp or nano fish), etc., for tanks 10 gallons and under. This filter just comes up short in other areas-- short tubing, no quick easy way too disconnect the tubing, no shut off valves and no mounting bracket. The way the filtration stages are ordered, too, is a head scratch-er but it's fixable, I guess. I actually like this filter but Oase just cut too many corners with this one, making it too inconvenient to maintain.