Mr Viral
The best tower fans can make a huge difference in a room. They can help you circulate the air or completely cool a room. Features like multiple speeds, oscillation, quiet blowing and, for smaller areas, a compact design make some fans stand out from the rest. We’ve tested many models to find which ones you should consider.
Why do we like tower fans so much? For one thing, a tower fan’s capacity to create strong airflow through cross-ventilation, effectively lowering indoor temperatures at night and keeping your space cooler for much longer, is so helpful. Tower fans take up less space than box fans or AC units, which means less chance of you or your pets tripping over them. Tower fans are also pretty light, so you can easily move them from room to room. Plus, their slim design makes it easy to tuck them away without blocking walkways or ruining any views.
The shape of a tower fan isn’t just for looks. It ensures that a well-positioned one can quickly create a comfy temperature across an entire room. The best tower fans typically oscillate from side to side, effectively cooling most of a room. This makes them ideal for living areas, allowing the whole family to benefit from the cooling effect. Additionally, tower fans come in various designs and often include features such as an eight-hour timer and safety enhancements to improve their performance. Some even have built-in air purifiers. Alongside these nifty features, brands like Lasko’s Smart Oscillating Tower Fan are incorporating phone controls and voice activation via Alexa or Google Assistant.
After testing multiple models, our team of CNET experts selected several top tower fans that are the best option for hot, humid days.
Tower fans are a little tricky to test, especially when you’re working from home without access to a lab environment. Unlike air conditioners, they don’t generate their own cold air. Instead, they take whatever air is nearby and recirculate air throughout the room. That breeze-like effect feels great on a hot, stuffy day, but it isn’t something you can easily track with a temperature probe.
Ry Crist/CNETWe’re working on getting our wind tunnel or some other means of effectively quantifying the amount of airflow each fan can move back up and running, for now, we started by focusing on each fan’s design and features. We also ran noise tests in the quietest part of my home to get a good sense of which fan runs the noisiest.
Most tower fans come with a remote control, and most of those remotes are cheap and bulky, but some tower fans do a better job than others in providing a way of docking those remotes when they aren’t in use. The wide variety of designs gave me lots to think about too. Tower fans are large and conspicuous enough that it’s worth it to look for one that isn’t too ugly or bulky.
On the feature front, we looked closely at how much control each fan offered over how it puts out air. Just about every tower fan offers a low, medium and high setting, but some go further with a greater number of fan speed settings in between those basics for more granular control over the force of the breeze. Others offer artificial wind modes that flutter the breeze for a more natural effect. Some include ambient temperature readings on the display or autopilot modes that only kick in when the temperature hits a certain threshold. Wherever we found features like that, we tested them and took them into account.
Lasko Wind Curve T42905 Oscillating Tower Fan Ry Crist/CNETI loved the sleek silhouette and wood grain accents of this Lasko tower fan. It was also the third-quietest fan that I tested, measuring just a few decibels noisier than the Honeywell. On top of that, it features Bluetooth, which lets you control the oscillating fan via an app on your phone.
The problem is that the app is all you get as far as remote controls are concerned. That isn’t ideal for a shared space, as the fan can only connect with one device at a time. In other words, if someone else pairs with the fan, your connection gets cut.
That might be forgivable if the app offered advanced features like voice controls or the ability to set a custom schedule, but it doesn’t. You can turn it on and off, turn the oscillation feature on and off, adjust among three speed settings or start the sleep timer; the same controls as you’ll find on the fan itself. It doesn’t ask for any permissions aside from Bluetooth access, the app doesn’t seem to offer a privacy policy at all. All of that makes this Lasko fan easy to skip at $80.
Vornado V-Flow Air Circulator Tower Fan Ry Crist/CNETThe Vornado V-Flow tower fan features a neat-looking build that twists the fan’s grille around the cylindrical base. It’s one of the best-looking tower fans I tested, but it doesn’t oscillate like a traditional tower fan. Instead, it relies on that twisty design to move a wider field of air throughout the room.
It worked well enough in my tests when I had it aimed at me, but coverage varied at those side angles, where the airstream is positioned lower or higher due to that diagonal grille. The bigger issue was that the Vornado V-Flow was the noisiest fan I tested, ringing in at 50 decibels at the highest of its three speeds from a distance of 30 inches. On top of that, my remote wouldn’t work, which echoes frustrations I’ve seen from user reviews at retailers where the V-Flow is sold. That, plus a lack of features beyond the usual sleep timer, has me saying no thanks to Vornado’s $70 price tag here (and I’d probably skip it during a sale too). That’s a shame, as Vornado’s five-year warranty was the best among all of the fans I looked at for this roundup, and more than twice as long as you get with the $550 Dyson TP04.
AmazonBasics Oscillating 3-Speed Tower Fan Ry Crist/CNETAmazon continues to sell a growing variety of products under its AmazonBasics brand and these days that includes a tower fan. As the name suggests, it isn’t anything too fancy. The remote batteries don’t come included, but you at least get a couple of natural wind settings on top of the typical low, medium and high speed settings.
Unfortunately, I had a disappointing experience with this fan. The remote stopped working shortly after I started testing, and the fan detached from its flimsy base after a few moves between rooms. Despite its 35-watt power draw being the lowest of all the fans I tested, the airflow was weak, even at the highest setting. At $60, this tower fan isn’t worth the price.
Unfortunately, most tower fans won’t work very well with smart plugs.
Chris Monroe/CNETA smart plug, such as the WeMo Mini, the Amazon Smart Plug or the TP-Link Kasa Smart Plug, can automate whatever you plug into it, and they work great with things like desk fans, space heaters and air conditioners to let you turn things on and off remotely from your phone or with a voice command. Some can even monitor energy use, which is a terrific feature for something like a fan.
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If you want to control your fan with a smart plug, then you’ll need to use something simpler, like this Lasko floor fan.
Ry Crist/CNETThings get trickier with tower fans, though. Why? Most of them include remotes, and fans with remotes typically don’t include physical dials that you can leave in the on position. Controls like those are a must if you want to use a smart plug because a smart plug won’t toggle between different settings or anything like that. They just turn the power on and off.
If you want to use a tower fan with a smart plug, then you’ll need one that’s capable of turning on to your desired setting as soon as you plug it in; in other words, a fan with a physical dial. There just aren’t very many tower fans like that on the market these days (here’s one I found at Walmart that gets mixed reviews).
Maybe that adds a small bit of extra appeal to a smart fan like the Dyson model listed above, or to fans with built-in smart controls like this SmartMi model or the Lasko model mentioned above, but the better takeaway is that smart plug aficionados will likely need to downgrade to something like a floor fan with a more basic design.
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