Keystone Fabrics E60.48.61 Diamond Plus Exterior Solar Shade, Granite, 4-Feet by 8-Feet

Every 2 years we would buy another cheapo vinyl blind to block the morning sun from blasting us on our back porch. This blind is a major upgrade. We hired a handyman to mount this for us on our 11 foot high porch, and he had no problem with the install. The darker fabric effectively blocks the blinding sun, with some opacity to it. The fabric is substantial, with a nice weight. I hope the plastic pull chain holds up in the years to come, because right now it functions so smoothly, and might be a pain to replace. The bungee cord to secure the blind when it's breezy works very well. We purchased the 10 ft. wide blind, but really could have used an 11ft. width, but that would have required something custom made at a much higher price. This was costly, but the overall quality has us hopeful that it will last a long time.

The quality of the shade seems to be very good. I mounted it to a 1 x 4 which work out very well. It comes with a little kit containing the screws, mounting brackets, template, installation sheet and video. Unfortunately, I didn't have any installation sheet or video in my box. I called Amazon, who got right back to me and emailed me an instruction sheet site ( [...]). This site is very user friendly. I used a 1x4 to mount on. That worked great. After mounting I pulled the cord and the left side fell out of the housing. The 4 screws holding the bracket plug were all loose. They arevery small screws for the weight they carry. I replaced 2 of them with slightly thicker thread but the same length. That cinched things up tight. Make sure you pull the end valance cover off and inspect the screws. The shade is heavy and no fun to repair after it drops out. Other than that, I like the looks and quality of the shade. We'll see how the plastic mechanisms work over time.

We have a west-facing concrete deck. It's a wonderful space that is about 2/3 covered with a roof, but it's almost unusable on hot summer evenings. Last year we bought a couple of discount plastic roll-up shades from a big box store, and I built a wooden valence to house them (rather than try to secure them directly to the aluminum soffit). The shades helped a lot, but were bulky and awkward to operate and maintain ... and after one year they were already starting to show their age. So we recently purchased two of these six footers to replaced them, and overall we're very pleased.We like the look. Our railings and posts are black, and the soffit and valence are white, so these look great in that location.Very simple to operate, and stay where you put them.The cloth catches the breeze a bit more than I expected, but they're pretty stable nonetheless.They create a wonderful shade, while still allowing some light to pass through. We've already spent a few evenings out there that would have been unbearable before (even with the plastic shades, which seemed to radiate heat off the back side when they were getting blasted by the late afternoon sun).Packaging was excellent. Each unit came in its standard clear plastic packaging, and inside a very heavy-duty cardboard tube ... I'm talking 6" ID tubes with 3/16" wall, strong enough to stand on (if you have good balance).The installation method is very easy, even though I had to shim out one of the brackets on each unit to allow the shade to a bolt securing my wooden valence to the deck columns.However, I dinged them one star for a couple of quality issues: (1) the clutch and plug bracket screws were apparently installed with power drivers because they were severely over-tightened, and a couple of them had stripped heads, which made it very difficult when I needed to switch the cord to the other side on one of the units (I ended up using a locking pliers to grab the screw and get it out); and (2) one of the units was missing the cord safety device (this latter is a very minor issue, as I expect them to send me one, but it was worth mentioning).One tip when evaluating the installation site: The width dimension is the fabric ... the bottom tube and main housing are both wider than that ... for example, for our 6' units, the bottom tube is about 73" and the main housing is about 74". I was lucky that the space between columns was slightly over 12', so my wooden valence structure had just enough space for the units.

Was delivered by 3rd party shipper, they called ahead of time to set up delivery time. Very easy, it came in long cardboard tube that was very durable. I had to use a skill saw to cut it up into 1 ft pieces for recycle trash can. The shade was packaged well, it is all housed in one unit, pull cord is already attached. There was no assembling whatsoever, which was great. It came with a 10 ft section of paper that had guide marks on it. I taped the paper to the beam on our patio. There are 3 fasteners, made of strong metal with 2 screws per fastener, screws were about 1 1/2 -2 inch length. I lined them up, one on each end and one in the middle against the guide paper. Screwed them in, done. Took a razor and cut the remaining paper guide off beam. Then my wife and I propped the shade unit onto the beam with the fasteners and "click" 3 times, set. It was beyond simple. The quality is superb. It also comes with bungee ties that can be anchored to the bottom. The roller clamp also has an anchor point to give it some tightness while lowering and raising shade. I'm very happy with it. The only con I would mention is the lack of instructions, would have been nice to see a picture diagram or something, but it is so simple I can't see anyone not being able to figure out how to install it.One more thing, it can be mounted on top of the shade or behind it. Hope that makes sense, there are 2 ways that these can click into the fasteners, depending on how your patio is set up. I went with the behind shade set up since I was mounting against a wooden beam.

We were very excited to get some solar shads for our sunporch. The first one went up easy but the next one fell apart as we opened the box. The quality control for these shades is non existent as screws were over tightened and stripped so the brackets that hold the bearing the rods ride in were of no use. We had to order new ones from the manufacturer. I am surprised Amazon would sell this item.