Product Review: Chamberlain Premium Whisper Drive Plus Garage Door Opener
Ease of Use, Performance: 23/25
Look & Feel: 25/25
Features 23/25
How much I enjoy 23/25
Total: 94/100
Chamberlain has been manufacturing garage door openers, access control systems, intercoms and gate openers for 40 years and has a couple lines of garage door openers. I recently received one for reviewing and not only got to check it check out but also got to install it in a relatives new home and it was simple.
I know many would not want to try this but you would be very surprised at how easily the garage door opener is to install, especially in a newly built garage. This is one of those projects that could easily be done by the home owner and save you that installation charge from a professional.
But of course if you are unsure and want a professional you can always call them in and have one of the Liftmaster series of professionally installed garage door openers for your home. But if you want to save yourself the cost and want to tackle a project that I really think many could do on their own this is a perfect job and one that can be done in less than a day.
The Chamberlain Whisper Drive Garage Door Opener model WD962KLD that I received for reviewing comes in a large box with really well packed and cushioned parts and you do get everything you need to install it except some braces for your door. You may also need some wood 2×4’s or other metal brackets to hang the garage door opener if your ceiling does not have a wood beam nearby where the opener will be.
There are two particular parts of this kind of project that may be a bit of a difficulty; one is where the opener will hang and the other is your garage door itself. The Chamberlain garage door opener will hang from a rafter or other secure wood frame part of your garage ceiling.
You should make sure you have a place about a foot or so from the fully opened edge of the garage door when it is up for the opener to hang. This means a 2×4 beam somewhere near that you can attach the opener or some wood or metal braces that will attach to the braces that come with the opener.
You will also have to take into account the type of garage door and how the opener pulls the door open, the opener attaches to your garage door by one bracket that has four mounting holes on it. This bracket attaches to the top of the door along the very top or inside top edge of the door so it has to go on a part of the door strong enough to pull open the door.
This may require a brace or other bracket that will be able to be screwed or somehow mounted to the door or you can also purchase angle bracket material available at many home improvement stores for this exact installation. You can also purchase a kit available from garage door parts companies as well as the manufacturer of your garage door for this installation if you know the manufacturer.
What you need is a bracket or other type of brace to help not damage the garage door when opening and pulling on the garage door for lightweight doors. If your door is wood or a solid and sturdy door you may not have a problem but you can easily install a bracket that costs about $15 that will replace the uppermost center hinge.
This type of bracket or brace will screw to the door to support the door and top section of a sectional garage door during opening. The instructions give examples of this but if your installing this on a new garage door the door may also show this on a sticker right where the bracket goes.
On the new garage door I installed this opener on it showed what they meant and gave examples so it was pretty easy but the instructions also show a bracket that can be made from a piece of angle iron. Simply cut two pieces of angle iron long enough to fit from the top of the door to the hinge below the top in the center of the door. Another piece of angle iron will go horizontally across the top of the door for about four feet to help pull the door and not bend the door section for lightweight doors.
The horizontal piece of angle iron will help support the door as well as the two pieces that will go from the bracket down the door in the center. You can also install the opener off center if there is no bracing or overhead support in the center of the garage door as long as you install it within 4 feet of either side of the door.
Installation may seem hard or difficult when I explain it but the instructions really do cover all this and you can also look up DIY websites to get additional tips and hints. You can also ask the Chamberlain support website questions about the installation as well as get hints and tips from their site.
The Chamberlain Whisper Drive Model WD926KLD comes with the rail system and garage door opener along with two remote controls to carry in your cars, one wall mounted control panel and a keyless entry panel you can mount outdoors. You also have the two light bulb sockets as well as the battery backup for operation when the power is not on.
Once you have your installation figured out and where you can place the garage door opener it is really easy to install with a few tools required. The rail goes together simply by pushing the pieces together and the whisper drive belt simply goes around a pulley on the end of the rail by the top of the door.
The other end of the belt goes around the gear drive on the opener that is hanging by the opened end of the door on the ceiling of your garage. The opener has the rail with the one bracket that attaches to the block of wood above the garage door and the wood beams or framing in your garage ceiling.
Once you have attached and installed the opener and rail with belt drive you install the brackets and support or brace to the door and attach the bracket to the door itself. This just takes common sense to understand that the entire weight of the door minus the spring help from the garage door springs and pulleys that were already installed will be pulling on the one bracket.
Just make sure the bracket that attaches to the garage door has plenty of bracing to not pull out whatever screws or bolts holding it on the door section. The Chamberlain Garage Door Opener can be used on either a sectional or one piece door that opens with a rail or track.
Once the bracket and bracing is attached to the door you install the sensors for safety and the opener control panel on the wall near your entry door or wherever you would like it to be. The control panel includes a motion sensor that sense when you come into the garage and turns the lights on for safets when you enter your garage.
If it is light in your garage from daylight coming through windows it will not come on using the light sensor in the control panel so you don’t waste electricity. You can disable the motion sensor feature as well as lock out the handheld remote controls for safety or to use the lights on the opener as work lights in your garage.
You also have the added feature of the keyless entry on a mountable outdoor pad so you can have someone without a remote enter your home or garage through the garage using the number and letter key pad. Mount the keyless entry pad in a convenient outdoor location and install a 9 volt battery for entry to the garage by a four digit password using the control panel.
I installed the garage door opener in the stall of my relatives new home in about three hours without any problems except one; I was missing a page of the instructions. The manual had been put together with a missing page but this was easy to solve by just going online and getting the missing page from the website at Chamberlain.
I am sure if you are missing a piece of hardware that Chamberlain will be happy to ship it to you but if you are missing some of the instructions or just lost them you can simply download them to your computer. Overall the installation went very smoothly and to program the garage door opener was even easier, once I had the first step of the instruction for that.
You simply hold a button and move the door to the highest position you want it to be and press the remote door button to set the open position. Then you hold another button to move the door to the closed position and again hit a button on the remote or the control panel.
The buttons to move the door up and down during this step of installation and programming is on the side of the opener under the light cover. Once you have the travel limits set, the fully open and fully closed position, you set the force for the close which simply measures the force to open and close the door.
You should also check out the safety and reverse features to make sure if there is something under the door the garage door will not close on it and the safety for having things left under it. The two sensors that you install will make sure if you or someone else has left anything in the doorway that the door will not close on it.
The opener works well and is very easy to install but how about noise, it is so quite you could not hear it open or close when standing inside their home. They have a log cabin but the walls between the garage and the living room that is right next to the garage is simply wood paneling and insulation.
They did not know we had the door up and operating till they poked their heads out the door and saw us using it. My wife and son as well as sister in law where sitting in the living room and in the garage right next door and they could not hear the door opening and closing. I had my son open and close the door while I stepped inside and could barely hear it operating while standing on the other side of the door.
That is quiet and you really have to enjoy the peace and quiet of the belt drive system on the Whisper Drive Garage Door Opener to believe how quiet it can be. My relative was equally as surprised at how silent the opener is, she remarked on that first when seeing and hearing it opening.
I was very surprised at how easily the Chamberlain Garage Door Opener was to install and get set up; I thought I was going to have more problems for some reason. But it only took us under four hours from start to finish and without having read the instructions other than to make sure I had all the tools I would need.
If I had read the full instructions I would have noticed the missing page and made sure I had it from the start, as it was we had to drive home and print off the couple of missing pages. But that was no problem and did get a good laugh, the Chamberlain company really does have a great product and a few missing pages from a manual is no big deal, just print from the manual you can download from their website.
As I mentioned earlier and want to mention again the two concerns you will have is where to put the brace for the garage door itself and where you’re putting the opener in your garage. The garage door needs to have enough support to pull the weight of the door up and the opener needs a 2×4 or other framing above the door for the opener.
For wood doors you can simply drill holes through the door and use a piece of angle iron to ensure enough support but for lightweight metal or fiberglass door you may need to install a large bracket for support of the opener bracket. You can purchase these angle iron pieces and even premade brackets with a hinge from home improvement stores as well as the Chamberlain Garage door opener itself.
The Chamberlain Whisper Drive opener model WD962KLD comes with the battery backup so you can operate your garage door when power is out, the two remote openers and the keyless entry pad. The WD962KLD is very easy to install but you may need some extra hardware depending on your garage and garage door so check out the website at Chamberlain to find out more.
I highly recommend the Whisper Drive Garage Door Opener from Chamberlain for a quiet and smooth operating garage door opener for a do it yourself project. You can find them at home improvement stores or the Chamberlain website; you can also have similar models of Whisper Drive Garage Door Openers installed from professional installers certified from Chamberlain called Liftmaster.
