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Be prepared for when temperatures rise, with these home heroes
The ideal time to buy a fan is before you need one. Summers are getting warmer and wetter, with recent heatwaves resulting in record-breaking temperatures across the UK. If you leave it too late to buy one of the best fans in our list, you’re in for a few sticky days and nights while you wait for it to arrive. It’s also not uncommon for some models to sell out completely, leaving you with fewer options in terms of price, intensity and portability.
Fans are, on the whole, a lot cheaper to buy and operate than air conditioners, with basic fan models starting at £20. However, the lower-priced options are often noisy and have limited functionality, so, you might need to spend a little more to find a quieter fan with a remote control, timer and perhaps even smart home functionality and voice-operated controls.
If you don’t think you can justify buying a fan you’ll only use for a few days every year, there are fans that can also operate as heaters, offering year-round usability.
From small desktop and wearable neck fans to larger tower fans and fan/heater hybrids, we put a variety through their paces, to find out which offered the most relief from high temperatures.
We tested each fan at home, in rooms of different sizes, to assess the cooling capabilities of each device. From a small home office to a large open-plan living space, we placed the fan in the centre of the room and judged whether or not we could feel its effects at the side of the room. For the smaller portable fans, we measured performance by working out how close we had to be to the unit to feel the benefits. We pushed all the buttons, playing with timers, remote controls and noise levels, to thoroughly understand what would be the most useful when the warmer weather arrives.
Before buying your fan, we’d recommend thinking about where you’d like it to go and its purpose in your home. Desk fans are much more compact than tower fans and are designed to sit on your work table. This also means they tend to blow air only in a small space, which can be perfect for cooling you down while you work.
Meanwhile, tower fans are better equipped to cool down a whole room, but they take up more space and need to be kept on the floor.
Put simply, both will keep you cool, but they work quite differently. While electric fans tend to be much more budget-friendly than air conditioners, they aren’t always as powerful.
Electric fans work by moving air around the room, making you feel cooler. Air conditioners, on the other hand, actually cool the temperature of the room, making them a more powerful alternative to the humble electric fan.
Of course, that means the price of an air conditioner will likely be higher than that of a fan. On average, you can expect to pay between £250 and £500 for a portable air conditioner, while a fan could set you back much less – often around £100. You’ll also need to regularly clean dust filters if you opt for aircon.
There is the environmental aspect to consider, too. Air conditioners can be hefty machines that often take up more space and energy in your home. With energy consumption contributing towards climate change, it can be viewed as counterproductive to use more energy to try and keep us cooler.
Most fans don’t blow cold air. They simply move air particles around your room faster, making you feel cooler without actually pumping out a cool breeze. If cooler air is what you’re after, a portable air conditioner may be your best option.
The million-dollar question. Finding the perfect position for your fan should make at least some difference. We put the question to Duux’s brand manager, Chloe King. She recommends: “When the outside temperature is cooler than the inside temperature, try putting the fan in front of an open window, to blow cool air from outside into the room.”
Similarly, when choosing a particular model, King noted: “Air circulation is key, so, consider a fan that oscillates both horizontally and vertically.” Finally, she recommends opting for a fan that is adaptable and portable, so it “can be effortlessly changed from full to table height, allowing for greater flexibility between rooms and positions”.
It may not do the job as well as an air conditioner, but putting ice in front of a fan can really blow cooler air around your room. It works by chilling the air that your fan blows out, which will circulate a cooler breeze.
According to research by the price comparison website Uswitch, “a 120W electric fan costs approximately 2p an hour to run”, so keeping it on for 12 hours a day will cost you 24p, which works out at £1.68 per week.
At 44p per hour, portable air conditioning units are more expensive. Uswitch found that, on average, people have their units on for four hours 18 minutes during the day, and four hours 48 minutes at night. This means it could “drive up electricity bills by £28 per week” during the warmer months. As such, a fan is a far cheaper option.
Finding out how much electricity a fan uses depends on the model you have, but you can actually calculate it by dividing the wattage by 1,000 to give the amount of energy it uses per hour. For a 120W fan, for example, divide by 1,000 and you’ll get 0.129. If you’ll be using it for 12 hours a day, multiply 0.129 by 12 and you’ll get 1.548kW, which is how much electricity the fan uses.
For a fan that can do it all, you can’t go wrong with the Vortex Air cleanse. As it’s an air purifier, heater and fan in one, it’s excellent value for money. The Duux whisper smart fan was also able to cool a room quickly for a similar price and we were impressed by how quiet it was. If you don’t want to spend that much money on a fan, the Beurer personal air cooler will keep you comfortable while working from home in a heatwave.
Keep extra cool this summer, with our guide to the best portable air conditioners for your home