I tested a smart floor fan that cools an entire room without the noise

Most smart home appliances are bought for necessity rather than indulgence. But the SwitchBot Smart Pedestal Fan makes spending money on a fan, quite literally, cool.

Just in time for summer, the Smart Pedestal Fan offers a ton of features to make it versatile for almost any situation. It’s petite enough for most rooms, but powerful enough to circulate plenty of air fully. It’s height-adjustable so that it can be used on the floor or a tabletop. Plus, it has a built-in battery that makes it functional anywhere, not just next to an outlet.

I’ve been covering smart home gadgets for over a decade, and the great thing about the SwitchBoth Smart Pedestal Fan is that even without connecting it to your network, it proves extremely useful. When you add in the connectivity and mobile app control, it can do so much more.

I’ve been putting the fan through its paces since before its launch and can already see all the ways it’s going to make summer much cooler. It’s the smart home gadget I didn’t know I needed.

My favorite part is the silent operation

Most pedestal fans I’ve tried in the past have a limited range, in either height or width. The Smart Pedestal Fan is highly customizable in this regard. It has a 90-degree horizontal oscillation and a 90-degree vertical tilt. From the right placement, it should cover an entire room. The extreme tilt is also handy to circulate air higher and lower than most other products.

In the SwitchBot mobile app, you can adjust the horizontal and vertical angles to 30, 60, and 90 degrees. You can mix and match those presets as well. So, you can limit one direction to 30 degrees, while keeping the other at 90 degrees.

There are four modes available: Normal, Natural, Sleep, and Baby. In the Normal Mode, I could feel the air blowing from 10 to 12 feet away on levels two, three, four, and five, but I could barely hear it working. As you go to more powerful levels, the fan becomes more audible, but not significantly. Even on the highest setting, it isn’t overly disruptive. I really appreciate that it isn’t noisy.

In Baby Mode, which is the gentlest breeze, SwitchBot says the fan only reaches a volume level of 22 decibels. How quiet are the lowest settings? I’ve accidentally left the fan on downstairs overnight because I couldn’t hear it and forgot about it.

The few cons to consider

In short, the Smart Pedestal Fan is good. There’s nothing here that would stop me from buying it, or at least seriously considering it. There are just a few aspects I wish were different.

I like that the fan has three adjustable heights—39.37, 28.98, and 18.62 inches—but I wish that it didn’t involve unscrewing several stand poles to accomplish the height changes. It takes long enough that I haven’t done it much. Thankfully, the fan’s oscillation and tilt have alleviated a lot of my need to do it.

SwitchBot advertises 28 hours of runtime in Baby Mode and 12 hours in Natural Mode. I love that this unit can be moved around. Unfortunately, the battery on my unit stopped recharging, and I haven’t been able to fully test battery life yet. The problem seems like an isolated issue, but I’ll update this review if there’s more to report.

I like the idea of the light on the back of the fan, but I haven’t found a specific need for it. It can be set to bright, dim, or off. The curious thing is that the light is on the moving portion of the fan, so it almost looks like a spotlight, moving on the wall as the fan twists around. Maybe the idea is that the light would primarily be used when the fan is stationary. Again, it’s not bad, but worth noting.

There are plenty of ways to control the Smart Pedestal Fan. It can work with various Matter-compatible smart platforms, but you will need a SwitchBot hub to enable Matter. Then, the Matter remote control only enables it to be turned on and off.

The included IR remote is a nice touch, but it will need line of sight to work, as opposed to Bluetooth or using the mobile app.

Is the SwitchBot Smart Pedestal Fan worth buying?

The SwitchBot Smart Pedestal Fan is a solid product. Minus the hiccup with the battery on my unit, it’s worked great. Its small size and quiet operation make it disappear in the corner of the room. It has plenty of circulation power for most homes and an abundance of features.

The fan’s $130 retail price isn’t outrageous either. It’s relatively cheap for a smart home device. But it does cost more than most dumb pedestal fans. It’s a good fan, even if you don’t ever connect it to your smart home, it won’t be as good a value. If you do take advantage of its connected features, then this is a great purchase.