My amazing girlfriend was not fond of the BP idea until she interacted with one at a petstore awhile back. I've only had mine 3 days now and getting everything setup and the temps and humidity perfect can be tricky and alot of work but I've got a few things down now and everything is doing great. As far as smell we haven't noticed any using the aspen and making sure it's not getting wet unless it's being misted a few times a day. Don't know if this helped any but this is my $0.02 worth