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- Good for cooling large areas
- Easy to use
- Reasonably quiet, even at max speed
- Wobbles while oscillating
- Not as powerful as some rivals
Dimplex’s newest tower fan is an imposing effort in a mix of gloss and matt dark grey and black plastics, standing close to one metre high. With tower fans, size matters; they don’t put huge amounts of airflow through at any one level, but can dish it out across a larger vertical area, then spread it left and right through oscillation. It’s this that makes them so effective for cooling larger areas of a room. At 96cm tall, the DXACF Anthracite is one of the tallest tower fans around, but is it one of the best? I’ve been using it over an unusually hot week in May to find out.
What do you get for the money?
A tall 96cm/37.8in tower fan, primed to go up against existing favourites like the Levoit Classic Pro Smart Tower Fan and 36in Tower Fan and Dimplex’s own Ion Fresh. Keeping things simple, it doesn’t have the tilt or ionisation features of the latter but it’s significantly cheaper, coming in at a similar price to the 36in Levoit.
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The tower itself is built from a mix of gloss black and matt deep grey plastics – hence the Anthracite name – which feel a little tougher and more premium than the plastics on budget tower fans like the Igenix DF0030. Sadly, the same can’t be said of the two-part stand, which feels lighter and a little more flimsy. Still, it holds together well enough once screwed onto the base with the wingnuts provided. There are five touch-sensitive buttons on the top of the tower to turn it on, switch modes, toggle oscillation on and off, adjust the fan speed and set the timer. Meanwhile, a large and easy-to-read display gives you the current temperature, mode and fan speed.
What features and settings does it have?
While the display shows a total of six bars for speed, the fan actually only has three speed settings with each taking up two bars. Otherwise, you have the standard manual mode, a Natural mode that cycles up and down through the speed settings, a Sleep mode and an Easy mode. Sleep mode runs the fan at either high or medium speed for 30 minutes, then gradually drops down to low speed for the rest of the night. Easy mode runs the fan on a timer for three hours, also shifting down from high, through medium to low.
Like all tower fans I’ve reviewed, the DXACF oscillated left and right, but here it’s on a fairly narrow 65-degree angle; 70 to 90 degrees is the norm. Meanwhile, the timer can be set to turn the fan off after one to twelve hours, set in one hour increments.
How well does it perform?
Tower fans don’t generally put out as fast an airflow as the bigger table, floor or pedestal fans, but they do it over a larger vertical area. That holds true for the DXACF Anthracite. I measured air speeds of 2.6m/sec at a 1m distance on the maximum speed setting, dropping to 2.1m/sec at medium speed and 1.8m/sec at low. Even the maximum speed is lower than Dimplex’s quoted 3m/sec, and it’s also lower than I recorded with the Levoit 36-inch (3.2m/sec) and Classic Pro (3.3m/sec). However, there’s a little more welly here than with the Dimplex Ion Fresh, at 2.3m/sec.
The numbers don’t always tell the whole story, though, and I found the DXACF Anthracite provided a pleasant, cooling breeze that took the edge off the midday heat at a distance of 1 to 2m, with enough horizontal range to cover a sofa or a corner of the room. What’s more, it’s reasonably quiet about it. It’s never what you might call silent, putting out 37.7dBA even at its lowest speed, but the 44.9dBA you get at maximum speed isn’t bad at all. You can still talk over it or watch the TV, though you might want to up the volume by a notch.
I also found the Natural mode one of the best I’ve used recently, partly because it’s smooth and predictable, with none of the weird and sudden shifts of speed and noise you get with similar modes on some competitors.
Is there anything we didn’t like?
The tower wobbles slightly while it oscillates. This doesn’t really affect performance but it also doesn’t make a great impression. It also wobbles when you use the touch controls. More importantly, it’s not the most energy-efficient tower we’ve tested, using 35.2W on full power and 22.4W on low. The Levoit 36-inch uses slightly more on maximum settings (37.6W) but less on low (19.3W). The Classic Pro is even more frugal, with 22.4W and 2.8W usage respectively.
Should you buy the Dimplex DXACF Anthracite Tower Fan?
Possibly. It’s a step up from the budget tower fans and a decent alternative to the Levoit 36-inch. The Levoit has a slight edge both on noise levels and performance, but there’s really not much in it, and the DXACF Anthracite is effective and easy to use. It doesn’t have the features or the slick design of the Dimplex Ion Fresh, but it’s more powerful and a little quieter. If you have a bigger budget, the Levoit Classic Pro remains the tower fan to buy, but this is one of the best options for under £100.
