We have a gas fireplace…and we love it. Its not any different than having a ventless gas stove…and all of the gas stoves are ventless. Think about that.
How often do you think you would want to run this thing for more than three hours at a time? Not often, I’ll bet. We use ours on holidays, and even then, we seldom have it running continuously for more than 3 hours.
I think you will love it.
Plus, ventless, you will actually get some heat from it into your rooms…and not mostly up the chimney!
We do get ours checked annually.
ETA…we have the ventless downstairs in our house…and gas logs only (vented) in our family room…so we have experience with both.