Q Connect Tower Fan & Igenix DF0030 review – when two become one

Why am I reviewing two tower fans from rival companies in the same review? Is this a mistake? If it is, it goes higher than me: upon unpacking both the review samples from Q Connect and Igenix, I discovered these fans are exactly the same. Generic white plastic towers with different company badges on them. They’re externally identical, right down to the mechanical click-in buttons and screw-cap base assembly.

As such, neither are likely to win any design awards, targeting the overheated office environment rather than the smart home of the future: they’re generic looking blocks of white plastic. There’s no remote control, so should you find the cooling insufficient, you’ll have to peel yourself off the chair and press the buttons to switch between the three speeds. There’s no night mode, maybe because these are more intended for office use, and you’re not supposed to be sleeping there, even if you are.

Performance

I saw some very small differences during my testing, but in practice they were essentially identical. Both produced a strong 4.5m/s wind speed measured next to the fan – not quite up there with the Dyson Pure Cool, and a way behind the Honeywell HI-5500RE, but solid enough. Moving a metre away dropped the power to around 1.7m/s, which dropped to 1m/s a further metre away.

Volume wise, they weren’t too bad either, with both scoring around 74db – just a tad higher than the Honeywell Quietset HY254E1, which as the name suggests is intended to make as little noise as possible. There’s no night mode, as mentioned previously, but dropping them to the lowest setting reduces the volume to around 70db for both – a little louder than those with dedicated night modes, but not obnoxiously so. Sadly, the angle of cooling is a little slimmer than some of the fans I’ve seen before, and although you can set it to rotate up to 120 degrees using the twistable dial on top of it, the breeze only spreads around 60 degrees from the air vent.

Conclusion

Amazon is selling both for under £30, the Q Connect is usually a few quid cheaper but Igenix has a UK office and offers a two-year warranty with its fan so I’d go with that model personally. These are basic, but quite reasonable tower fans with neither bells nor whistles – but decent cooling power nonetheless. Check out our Best tower fans 2016 if you’re looking something for something a little more impressive. Buy Now from Amazon