Best fan 2024: top cooling gadgets for summertime and all-year-round relief

The best fan keeps you cool, even when the weather is scorching hot outside. When the summer sun is at full bore, the need for a fan is very much a prime consideration. Since you’d rather not be caught out during a heatwave, now’s a good time to buy the best fan at the best price.

There's nothing worse than having to endure hot sticky summer days, and sleepless nights, without a fan to keep you cool. If temperatures are really high, you’re be better off with something from our best portable air conditioner guide. If not, our pick of the best fans come in many shapes and sizes and won't let you down. 

While we’re at it, we might as well tell you a few other ways to combat poor air quality in your home. For example, the best air purifiers to keep the air you breathe nice and clean. Or if it's moisture that's the problem, the best dehumidifiers can help tackle that issue. And if you have the exact opposite problem there’s the best humidifiers to consider. Lots of air treatment gadgets and gizmos, in other words.

Now, without further ado, here are the best fans you can buy today, in our order of preference.

WRITTEN BY

WRITTEN BY

Bethan Girdler-Maslen

Beth is Home Editor for T3, covering style, living and wellness. Throughout the spring and summertime, you'll find Beth working through a rotation of fans to see which one is the most cooling, stylish and affordable for T3 readers. Need a new fan? Ask Beth!

The top three

Best fans 2024

The best fan overall

UK-based Meaco has taken the design ethos behind its hugely successful 1056 Air Circulator and greatly improved on it with this new model. The Sefte can be positioned at three different heights – desktop, waist height and tall standing – simply by adding or removing one of its columns. This makes it a perfect fan for any environment, whether it’s wafting circulated air across the living room, keeping you cool at a desk or feeling a gentle breeze while sleeping. And the very best thing about the Sefte is the silence. Where a Dyson emits an annoying high-pitched frequency at anything above speed 5, this one is eerily quiet at almost any speed. 

The Sefte has 12 fan speeds that can be assigned via either the onboard interface or the cheap-feeling magnetic remote. It also features three angles of independent horizontal and vertical oscillation (20˚, 30˚ and 65˚) that can be combined so the fan head moves in a circular motion, bouncing the breeze it produces off the walls and ceiling to provide more even room cooling.

In terms of wind speed effectiveness, this model is hugely impressive. Like a jet engine, the Sefte’s ‘air beam’ is funnelled, focusing it into a tight column that you can really feel on your face from a good distance away. And when you whack it to 12, the gust is akin to  driving a convertible. Top buy.

• Back to the top ⤴

The best fan runner up

This Dyson Pure Cool Purifying Fan is simply one of the best fans you can buy. A typically elegant floor-standing fan from Dyson, it has an additional trick up its sleeve, as it's also an effective air purifier.

You might think this is too attractive to effectively clean your air (most such devices are squat rectangles with buttons on top), but Dyson's designed it to remove 99.95% of ultra-fine particles, including those of 0.1 microns. In fact, we found it a vaguely terrifying device to use at first, as opening the front door or cooking immediately causes its on-body display to warn of pollution in the air, while the very handy iOS and Android app screen turns red and issues dire warnings about VERY POOR air quality. Of course, it then sets about returning your room (up to 27 sq metres) to a non-poisonous state, so that's nice.

It's a very handy fan, mustering up a decent breeze, but remaining quiet up to about the 60 percent power setting. At higher speeds, there is a bit of a whoosh, as you'd imagine which can interrupt the sound frequencies of a TV so you may need to raise the volume. Turning up the speed also increases air purifying power, but there's also an Auto mode that reacts to potent guffs of micro particles and gases.

As the app and remote also add scheduling, and a quiet and energy-saving night mode, and show you all manner of graphs about the air quality and temperature, we feel that the Pure Cool does justify its price. There's even adjustable oscillation, via the app.

Read more in our Dyson Pure Cool review. If, however, you want something even fancier, why not upgrade to the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool? As the name suggests, this does what the Dyson Pure Cool does but with the added bonus of safe and sanitised humidification.

Make sure you check our Dyson discount codes to see if you can lower the cost. 

• Back to the top ⤴

The best budget fan

Meaco’s stocky floor and desktop fan, the 1056 Air Circulator is still one of the most powerful and best-value fans you can buy. The 1056 comes with 12 fan speeds, an on/off timer and both vertical and horizontal oscillation. In fact you can select the type of oscillation required, but we found it works best with both systems on, since it effectively bounces the air stream against all the walls, creating a more effective and less in-your-face cooling experience. 

When set to top speed, this baby moves 1,056 cubic metres of air per hour, but all you need to know is that it feels substantially windy from several feet away. It comes with a remote control which is handy if you can’t be bothered to get off the sofa. The remote also lets you adjust the fan’s trajectory so it faces you all the time; simply wait till the air stream moves towards your direction, and switch the oscillation off.

Most fans make quite a din on their highest settings, but this one is as quiet as church mice, even at full tilt, which makes it the perfect bedroom or lounge buddy. Perhaps it’s the DC motor or the structural design (or both), but it produces a much lower frequency when spinning, and that makes a massive difference to a room’s ambience.

The bods at Meaco are clearly on a roll at the moment because this is by no means the only great fan in its armoury – we look at three more of their fans below.

Peruse our Meaco MeacoFan 1056 review (also covers the 1056P) or see how it compares with the Dyson, in Meaco vs Dyson – the clash of the fans. 

• Back to the top ⤴

The best desktop fan

This new personal air shifter is a bit of a Holy Grail in the pantheon of cooling tools. At just 26cm tall and 16cm wide, the 260c is a perfect size for close quarters desktop use, but what really makes this little fan stand out from the crowd is the fact that it can be run on battery power alone – and for up to 14 hours at a time. It also features a soft night light for bedside use.

The four-speed 260c runs off any USB outlet. Simply plug it into a computer to run it and charge it. The fact that it’s so portable means you could feasibly take it on holiday with you or use it in the garden. And being of Meaco origin, it’s highest speed generates a really impressive breeze without making a racket in the process. Right now, this writer is using it to keep a Mac desktop computer cool during the current warm spell and it’s doing a grand job of keeping the CPU temperatures down.

If you’re after a smallish portable battery-powered fan that works efficiently and is cheap to buy, then bung this one on the shopping list.

• Back to the top ⤴

The best tower fan

This affordable 42-inch tower fan is available at Amazon, is good value for money and blows up a storm when required. It's also got a good sleep mode, which gradually reduces the power setting as you recline into slumber. 

While the Dreo is not going to win any design awards, it looks perfectly okay and does what it is designed to do, ie: blow air around without making an absolute racket. The Dreo Tower Fan is a great choice if you're looking for a powerful room fan without breaking the bank. But we would like it even more if there was control via your phone as well as the standard issue small remote. Other than that, there's nothing to complain about here and plenty to like. 

Find out more in our Dreo Tower 42-inch Fan review

• Back to the top ⤴

The best budget friendly fan

This one looks quite a lot like a Meaco fan, and has similar vertical and horizontal oscillation, but it is a bit more affordable, not that Meaco's fans are at all overpriced. The three available speeds range from a gentle vesper to a decent blast that you can feel from 'up to seven metres away'. Like Meaco's air multiplier fans, power consumption is unusually low and noise levels are not bad at all, especially on the two lower settings.

Long story short: it's a slightly more affordable Meaco fan. We'd rather have a Meaco, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with this cut-price rival. 

Find out all about it in our Duux Globe Table Fan review

• Back to the top ⤴

The best premium personal fan

"Inspired by the aerodynamic properties in the Harrier Jump Jet", this futuristic personal desktop fan from the House of Dyson is ostensibly designed for cooling the face and torso from just a few feet away. The Pure Cool Me’s footprint is much larger than the titchy Meaco 260c above (25cm vs 14cm) and it’s almost ten times the price. However, this cylindrical aluminium-clad fan doesn’t just blow air in your face, it purifies it first, sucking in dust, mites, pollen and small battle squadrons of bacteria from every direction and ramming 99.95% of the little rascals into an unforgiving HEPA filter before expelling a cool draft of cleansed oxygen, nitrogen and other useful gasses right up your proboscis.

The Pure Cool Me also features 70º oscillation, a very cool roller-action dome for controlling the angle of vertical flow and ten fan speeds, from an almost imperceptible flutter (perfect for bedside use) to a full-blown micro gale. Since the air flow here is more directional than others, fan noise could be an issue for some users. It’s fine up to speed five but once you ramp it up to between eight and ten, the noise of the turbine creates a high-pitched whine that is quite irritating when just a few feet away.

Aside from an on/off button at the back, this fan is operated entirely using a small remote control that attaches magnetically to the main aluminium housing. Unfortunately, the magnet isn’t very strong so make sure you don’t lose it or you won’t be able to access any of the controls. 

Given that this fan is of the ‘personal’ variety, don’t bank on it cooling a whole room – even a small one – and certainly don’t bank on it purifying anything other than the air immediately around you. But if you’re after a personal high-end fan-cum-purifier that performs well and looks the part, then this one is a worthy, albeit pricy, contender.

Read more about it in Dyson Pure Cool vs Dyson Pure Cool Me.

• Back to the top ⤴

The best cheap fan

The Honeywell TurboForce is one of the best fans you can buy within this budget price point. It’s well-built, relatively quiet, with three speeds and excellent performance, delivering a powerful airflow. The adjustable fan head can also tilt, pivot and reach a 90 degree angle. 

We like that it’s super portable, and works perfectly well on your desk or the floor – or mounted to the wall. You don’t get a remote or any of the extra features from the best fans elsewhere in this list – but if you’re looking for a decent cooling fan below £30, the Honeywell TurboForce is well worth a look.

• Back to the top ⤴

The best mid-sized fan

If you feel that the big 1056 model reviewed above is too large for your room and the 360 (also reviewed above) is too small, why not meet half way and consider plonking this excellent midsize model on your desktop or floor.

The 650 is essentially a petite version of the 1056 and it shares many of that model’s features, including 12 fan speeds, DC technology for low noise levels (from 20dB) and inexpensive running costs. We would have loved to have seen full vertical oscillation as featured on the 1056, but beggars can’t be choosers and, besides, the horizontal oscillation it provides is perfectly adequate for a fan of this size.

And speaking of size, the 650 is only 34cm tall and 26cm wide, so it’s perfect for desktop and kitchen worktop use, while the included remote control also makes it a practical fan for bedrooms. If you’re after a fan that kicks out larger volumes of air than the norm and doesn’t cost a packet, then this one’s worth a whirl.

• Back to the top ⤴

The best compact fan

This personal evaporative air cooler is just 16.5cm square and perfect for sitting on a computer desktop or table where the user is more likely to feel the benefits of its air-cooling technology. It’s also a great option for bedtime since it’s really quiet and comes with a built-in night light. 

Unlike most of the models on this page that simply re-circulate the air in a room, this one is equipped with a water-absorbing filter and evaporator that uses water from a small 600ml reservoir to create a gentle close quarters breeze, with the emphasis on gentle.

• Back to the top ⤴

The best bedside fan

At just 30cm tall and 20cm wide, this DC fan produces a much larger volume of breeze than its diminutive size would suggest, and with very little electricity consumption in the process (from just 2.5 watts). Like its bigger brethren above, it has 12 fan speeds and is really, really quiet; in fact, at its lowest setting its noise level is just 15dB. It also features sideways oscillation and a 12-step timer that runs to a maximum of six hours. The head of the fan can also be manually tilted up and down in four substantial steps.

This fan is neither as powerful nor as well specced as the 1056 models but it’s an excellent choice for smaller rooms and personal desktop use.

In our opinion, Meaco’s current range of fans are more efficient than any others on the market, the Dysons perhaps notwithstanding. They’re incredibly quiet, keenly priced, exceedingly competent and very energy efficient.

• Back to the top ⤴

The best cheap tower fan

If the Dyson is a financial step too far and the last thing you want is a big ugly pedestal fan, then how about this Dubai skyscraper-style tower option? The Bionaire is 71cm tall and 22cm wide, so chances are you’ll easily find a range of suitable places to site it.

Decked out in a black and charcoal colour scheme, the BT19 has three speed settings, an oscillating function, a Breeze mode for silent nights, an eight-hour timer and a remote control for added convenience.

• Back to the top ⤴

How to choose the best fan

To choose the right fan, first consider the size of the area you want to cool. A desktop fan may be fine for smaller rooms, whereas a standing or floor fan will be more effective for larger spaces. Tower fans (vertical and rectangular) are more compact, discreet and stylish than pedestal fans (stands with big blades at the top), but the latter is usually a lot more powerful.  

Also consider settings – higher speed settings can create a cooler temperature – and features. Do you want an oscillating head and tilt action for more flexibility? Do you need a timer? Or remote control? Or even wi-fi? Finally, bladeless fans are a good call if you’ve got kids and can be easier to clean.

For our money, though, nothing cools the body quite like a water-based air cooler. These appliances are cheaper than portable air-con systems and are a lot more energy efficient. 

That said, you can easily replicate the effect of an air-cooler or even a portable air conditioner by dousing yourself in water and sitting in front of any bog-standard fan. This method is so efficient that, after just five minutes, you'll be rushing back out into the sun to warm up again.

How we test the best fans

When it comes to testing the best fans, it's quite simple: we call in the latest fans from the top brands, like Dyson, Meaco, Duux and more, and we try them out for several weeks.

As we test the best fans, we look for simple things like how well they cool the different rooms, the types of speeds and settings they have and how much noise they make. We judge the design, how easy it is to use, how much space it takes up in a room, and if they come with accompanying apps, we'll test those out as well to see how user-friendly they are to use.

All of this and more is what we test to determine the best fans you can buy today. For more details, see how we test at T3.