I got it late 2018, used it until 2020 at 20% and used it again for 4 months until last week. It doesn't really make much noise, if was running in my bedroom tank
You'll need to buy the chip from echotech for like 23 and upgrade the software. I choose not to do this because if you buy the chip, you can connect to the wxm and connect to the apex. If you upgrade software, it no longer works with apex, at least with the wxm, heard you can't roll back the software upgrade