Like most of London, we’ve been positively melting in this ongoing heatwave, and with our Poundland USB fan struggling to keep the mercury down, we’ve been looking at more powerful USB fans – and think we’ve found a winner!
We bagged the Bestllin fan above for just £8.99 off Amazon, but – as with most cheapo products – the identical product can be bought under a host of other brand names, with prices varying accordingly.
For that limited outlay we got ourselves a surprisingly powerful and portable three speed fan, which also packs its own built in battery – handy to keep the breeze coming when you head off to the kitchen for a snack or to the loo for some extended ‘research.’
Build quality
Naturally, when it comes to the construction, we’re looking at a symphony in plastic here, but the build quality is pretty solid and it looks like it could take the occasional knock.
The fan is housed in a stand which lets you rotate it around to the desired position, and the assembly is stiff enough to ensure it stays where you put it.
How it works
Around the back can be found a single button that cycles between on, three speeds and off.
This can prove a bit annoying if you’re using it at its lowest setting because it forces to cycle through the higher – and noisier – speeds just to turn the thing off.
It’s also entirely flat with the housing so not easy to find in the dark and if you have a USB plug attached, it can get a bit fiddly.
What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
And that brings us to the noise. The advertising blurb says that the noise level is 25db at its lowest setting, rising to 45db at top speed.
We’ve absolutely no idea what that means (does anyone?) but in reality, it is pretty quiet at the lowest setting and not too distracting unless you like to work in Zen-like complete silence.
Unless you’ve got a fair bit of background noise going on, you’re definitely going to notice the noise at the second setting, and at top whack you’ll want to be blasting out some Motorhead to cover up the jet engine whine.
Going mobile
Like Paul Simon, the fan also has a tendency to start slip slidin’ away when it’s a full pelt, but we managed to wedge it between our monitor stand to stop is rambling around the desktop.
Battery life
Given that we found the built in battery a bit of an unexpected bonus at the price, it did a decent enough job, and kept going for around 6 hours at its lowest setting,
We frankly can’t be bothered to run a test for every setting but suffice to say: it works fine for a couple of hours at all settings and you can always use a USB powerbank to charge it up if you can’t use a mains USB plug.
Verdict
It’s cheap, it’s cheerful and does a surprisingly good job of swishing around enough air to cool you down at all speeds.
At it’s lowest setting, it’s just about quiet enough to let you use it to cool down as you nod off at night, and at its highest setting it’ll provide that 80s flapping Bon Jovi hair look for anyone within close enough range.
For a penny shy of £9, it’s nothing short of an absolute bargain, so we thoroughly recommend it.
Specs
- Size:13.5*13.5*5CM
- 3 Adjustable Speeds
- 360 ° Vertical Rotation
- 2000mAh Battery
- Dual Power Supply (USB & battery)
- Strongest windspeed: 5.9m/s
Where to buy it
We bought the Bestllin USB Fan from here
If it’s marked as out of stock, identical, rebranded fans can be bought under the names RenFox USB Fan, Joylink USB Fan, and Ratel USB Fan.
