Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common. Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning.
Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead. Fans are more energy efficient than aircon.
A typical portable air conditioner uses 1,000W of electricity, which would cost about 26p an hour to run. The fans I tested used between 8W and 60W; my favourite, the AirCraft Lume, used 18W on its top setting. You could run it on max for 56 hours, and it would still use no more electricity (money, carbon) than a single aircon unit going for an hour.
I tested 20 fans of all shapes and sizes, so you can pick the best one for you. I tested them for size, noise, power use and, of course, how much they cool you down. I also tested a few “evaporative coolers”, which use water to cool the air blowing at you while using significantly less energy than aircon.
Following this summer’s fossil-fuel charged heatwaves, many of our favourite fans are out of stock. Our favourite misting fan, the Shark FlexBreeze Pro Mist, is still in stock in blush pink, however. Our best powerful tower fan, the Meaco Sefte Smart 36in, is also available.
It’s slim, quiet and one of the most powerful fans we tested. For smaller spaces, our best mini tower fan, the Meaco Sefte 19in, is compact and energy efficient, while still packing a decent cooling punch. I’m an award-winning consumer tech journalist with decades of experience testing gadgets.
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