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- Meaco Sefte 6in Portable Battery Air Circulator: What do you get for the money?
- What features and settings does it have?
- How I tested the Meaco Sefte 6in Portable Battery Air Circulator
- How well does it perform?
- Is there anything we didn’t like?
- Should you buy the Meaco Sefte Table 6in Portable Battery Air Circulator?
- Big airflow for a compact fan
- Whisper quiet at low speed settings
- Lightweight and cordless
- Touch controls can be over-eager
- USB-C charging would be nice
- Cheaper rivals exist
Meaco is on a roll with its Sefte range of air circulators – or fans, as we usually like to call them. The original 10in table fan and pedestal fan were powerful, quiet and efficient. The 8in desk fan was the same, but more compact, with a battery for cordless cooling. This year’s Sefte Pro models revamped the originals with a refined airflow and battery power. Now Meaco is extending the line, by going smaller rather than bigger. The new Sefte 6in is Meaco’s smallest, quietest desk fan yet.
What’s more, Meaco’s pint-sized star has the performance to punch well above its weight, making it more versatile than you might expect. It’s been my constant companion over five days of ridiculously hot weather, and I think it sets a new standard for compact desk fans.
Meaco Sefte 6in Portable Battery Air Circulator: What do you get for the money?
Meaco’s 6in Sefte desk fan comes in the brand’s established monochromatic style, with an energy-efficient DC motor and a rechargeable 2500mAh battery. It stands just over 32cm tall and 21cm wide, making it 6cm shorter and 5cm smaller, horizontally speaking, than the existing 8in fan. There’s no vertical oscillation, just 70 degrees on the horizontal axis, but you can manually point the fan head up or down by 70 degrees.
At a mere 1.7kg, it’s extremely portable, with a recessed handle at the rear of the head for ease of carrying. Meaco supplies it with a slimline round remote control that attaches magnetically to the central spot at the front of the fan, plus a battery and a cloth storage bag.
There are touch controls on the fan itself, plus a display which shows the current temperature, mode and fan speed. You can turn this off and mute any beeps by pressing the relevant keys on the remote control.
What features and settings does it have?
Like the rest of its Sefte brethren, the 6in model has three modes. In its standard manual mode, you can cycle through its 12 speed settings to find the right balance between noise and airflow. In Eco mode, the fan’s brains and built-in temperature sensor sets the right speed for the ambient temperature: this stays fairly low below 24°C and ramps up at 26°C and above. I used this as a set-and-forget mode on the worst days of the recent heatwave and it worked a treat. Finally, Night mode dims the display and indicators, mutes any beeps and slowly reduces the speed of the fan from its current setting until it hits the minimum.
You can turn oscillation on or off, but there’s no way to reduce or extend the angle. Finally, an on/off timer sets the fan to switch on from standby or off if active after a period of one to 12 hours. All in all, a decent set of features by desk fan standards, where you’re often lucky to get more than five speed settings and a power button.
How I tested the Meaco Sefte 6in Portable Battery Air Circulator
I carry out the same tests across all of the fans I review, measuring air flow, noise levels and power consumption. An anemometer is used to record air speeds (in m/s): with this positioned a metre away from the fan, I take readings for the fan’s lowest and highest settings, plus one or more medium settings in between. I then use a smartphone meter app to record sound levels (in A-weighted decibels, dBA) at the same settings, also from one metre away. Finally, I use a plug-in energy meter to measure power consumption.
How well does it perform?
Performance is surprisingly beefy for such a compact fan. Even on its lowest setting, I measured an airflow of 1.3m/sec, which reached 2.4m/sec on its middle setting (six). At setting eight, it can dish out 2.7m/sec, growing to 3.5m/sec by the time you hit maximum speed (12). That’s higher than the Shark FlexBreeze HydroGo and the Dreo TurboCool Misting Fan 516S, though the latter can boost to 4m/sec using its (rather noisy) Turbo mode. It’s also not far behind the 3.8m/sec airflow produced by the 8in Sefte table fan.
Too much of a good thing?
If anything, it’s a little too much for desk use, where the blast will disturb small objects, chill your hands and send your papers flying. On the other hand, it means you can also use the Sefte 6in at a 1m or 2m distance as a tiny floor fan to keep yourself cool while you’re lounging on the sofa. It’s the perfect fan for looking after number one.
Noise levels are really quiet at the lower speed settings. The 26.2 dBA output at its minimum speed is borderline inaudible, and I had to push it up to setting three or four before I could hear anything much over the ambient noise in my otherwise silent living room at night. At full blast, it gets noisier, hitting 47.5dBA. That’s still quieter than the Shark FlexBreeze HydroGo, but louder than the Dreo and the Dimplex Rechargeable Desk Fan.
It’s quite energy-efficient at medium to high settings, using 9.6W at speed setting six, 10.7W at setting eight and just 14.82W at max speed. That’s more than the Dreo and Shark fans, and slightly higher than the Sefte 8in, but still pretty frugal. It’s not so good on the lowest speed setting, though, using 7.1W where the Dreo consumes 3.14W, and the Shark uses just 1W.
This doesn’t seem to cause any problems for battery usage. Set running at the medium speed just after 11pm, it was still just about running over twelve hours later, though I found that after ten hours the airflow had dropped from the normal 2.4m/s to just 1.1m/s. All the same, that was enough to help keep me going as I kicked off work on another hot morning.
Is there anything we didn’t like?
It’s always hard for touch controls to find the right point between inert-until-prodded and ludicrously jumpy, but the Sefte’s touch controls err a little on the too eager side. You can always use the bundled remote instead, but the plastic build and membrane-style buttons do feel a little cheap.
My only major issues, though, concern the power supply. It would have been great to have USB-C for charging, and the 1.6m cable doesn’t give you much stretch from your mains socket if you’re using it plugged in.
Should you buy the Meaco Sefte Table 6in Portable Battery Air Circulator?
Yes. It’s another winner from the Sefte range, with enough power on tap to get air moving from a distance or to work quietly and efficiently at close range. Battery power gives you more flexibility about when and where you use it, and it’s great to have a fan so small and light that you can bring it with you as you move from room to room.
It’s reasonably pricey by small fan standards – the Dimplex Rechargeable Desk Fan can be bought for half the price – but the extra power makes the premium worth your while. Frankly, I was amazed by what Meaco’s smallest and cutest air circulator could pull off.
