If you want something more powerful and plan to use it all the time but don’t have a ton of space (and don’t want to make your fan a visual centerpiece in your room), a tower fan is a great choice. With a small footprint and plenty of cooling power, a tower fan is great for a living room or bedroom, where you want to keep the air moving without a lot of visual distraction. A. Box fans don’t typically use a great deal of energy, especially when compared to other cooling appliances like air conditioners. In addition, some Lasko models have a Save-Smart energy efficiency setting that makes them particularly energy efficient. Many Lasko box fans feature a specially designed weather-resistant motor with patented Weather-Shield isolation. This feature lets you place the fan in any window without worrying about wind or rain damaging the fan.
This makes the Vornado a fan that’s a bit more difficult to include in your room without it being in the way. You’ll usually pay between $20–$30 for basic models without any special features. High-end models with a higher CFM and features like a thermostat, weather-resistant motor or air purifier generally cost between $30–$50. When it comes to circulating cool air and getting rid of odors, few fans work as efficiently and effectively as a box fan. Lasko box fans are some of the best on the market, thanks to the company’s 100 years of experience.
Carry handles will make it easy to carry your fan from room to room without damaging the grilles. Since most fans within a given category work pretty well, budgeting more gives you more features and better aesthetics. You can find super-affordable basic units like the approximately $17 Black+Decker circulator, or scale up to the striking, feature-laden, multipurpose Dyson tower at just under $770. Once put together, the heavy base, secure connections and solidly built extension rod made it the most stable of the towers we checked out, even though it adjusted to a taller height than the Black+Decker, Lasko, and Honeywell models. The head unit was easy to adjust, with soft clicks indicating the four available angles. The other towers were all stiffer-feeling and more difficult to tweak to a desired position.
These box fans have a slot to install an air filter in the rear to capture airborne particles rather than just blow them around the room. Therefore, any of the fans we tested would be suitable for most spaces around your house, home office or dorm room. A floor fan is great if you need something that’s compact enough to fit on a table or desk, and it’s something you can move around to use as needed. Circulator fans — the design made familiar by Vornado and also found in units like the Black+Decker and Honeywell models we tested — are great examples of personal fans that don’t take up a lot of space. The Vornado’s directional settings were easy to select and secure in operation, and while it wasn’t quite as adjustable as the Lasko Wind Machine 3300, it gave us a good range of usable settings. We also preferred the Vornado’s silver speed dial, which let us adjust settings with one continuous, smooth, quiet motion, to the controls on the other circulators.
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The Ultra Performance grill design provides up to 20% more airflow with three energy-efficient speeds. This model also features the Weather-Shield motor for safe window use in inclement weather. They’re economical, technologically innovative and portable — they even come equipped with a carry handle, so you can take them wherever you need them. All lasko pedestal fanss are made in America and are guaranteed to be both long-lasting and energy-efficient.
Though powerful and well made, we think the other fans we tested would look better in a home or dorm environment, as the Vornado is kind of bulky and hard to miss visually. The wobbling action of the Lasko did not happen on its own during testing, but rather, after we gently pushed the tower from side to side; it rocked from side to side as a result. It was not sturdy and rigid like the other towers we tested, which gave us pause in recommending Lasko Box Fan it to anyone with pets or small children, for example. We did like the remote control of this fan, which let us turn it on and off, select its three speed settings, set it to oscillate and set the timer for one, two and four hours. This timer button was surprisingly missing from the remote control of the Honeywell Quietset Whole Room HYF290B tower fan, even though the Honeywell includes a timer on its control panel on top of the unit.
At this price point, you’re sure to find there’s no better box fan on the market! However, the best box fans will be designed with quality motors that keep that element under control, and fan blades that maximize air flow, while minimizing noise. With a wide, stable base you can place on the floor, it’s a style of fan that you can use in any room in the house, and, with its own carry handle, you can easily take wherever you need it. Available in a variety of colors to suit your decor, these classic square fans look great in any setting.
If a fan hasn’t been designed to cope with the air resistance that comes with physical filtration media, then it should not be subjected to that resistance. If you need filtration, buy a purifier, or a box fan with inbuilt filter media. Of course, all fans make noise, it’s a natural result of the act of the blades hitting the air. In addition to this, carry handles are also a great feature to look for.