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- Works as a pedestal or floor fan
- Quiet yet powerful
- Great value
- Not as elegant as its Duux rivals
- Smart speaker compatibility is hit and miss
Looking for a fan that can double as a pedestal or floor fan? Don’t have the budget for Duux’s excellent, super-quiet Whisper Flex 2? ProBreeze might have exactly what you’re looking for. Like the Whisper Flex 2, the AirFlo 43in has a three-part design, with an optional stem section that you can fit when you want a pedestal fan and forget when you want something shorter. What’s more, it’s still quiet and energy-efficient, with some solid smart features and oscillation on both the horizontal and vertical axes. True, the design’s not quite as elegant, but the ProBreeze looks like a real contender at a temptingly affordable price.
But is this a serious alternative to the Duux, or will you regret the purchase once you get it home? I’ve been testing it over a surprisingly warm week in June to find out.
What do you get for the money?
£130 gets you a 43in/1.08m tall pedestal fan with a three part design. Used as a pedestal fan, the top section with the fan, controls and motor screws into a hollow powder-coated metal pole section which itself screws into a hole in the round plastic base. However, you can also ditch the pole section and screw the top section straight into the base, leaving you with what’s effectively a 23.7in/60cm floor fan.
The design differs from the Duux in that the pole is just a pole and doesn’t contain any internal connectivity. The power socket and controls are all on the top fan and motor section. This means the cable protrudes rather awkwardly towards the bottom of this section, while the fan as a whole feels a little top heavy, though no less stable on its sturdy base. Power comes from a brick-style adaptor with 80cm of cable between the brick and your mains socket, and another 1.2m of cable to the fan.
The controls sit below a digital delay on a panel at the front, with buttons for horizontal and vertical oscillation, power and fan speed. The limited number of buttons means that most have to double up. Holding the fan speed button switches modes, holding vertical oscillation engages the timer, and holding horizontal oscillation puts the fan into Wi-Fi pairing mode (integrated WiFi allows the AirFlo to connect to the Smart Life app for iOS and Android). Still, the controls are sensitive and don’t require any serious prodding, and you get a nice compact remote with all the controls mapped onto three buttons and a circular D-pad.
What features and settings does it have?
You don’t get much in the way of onboard modes and features. There are nine speed settings and a choice of Normal or Circulation modes. The latter sets the speed to max and turns both horizontal and oscillation on. However, you get switchable vertical oscillation, with 30-, 60- and 135-degree settings, plus a straight 85 degrees of horizontal oscillation. Meanwhile, the timer function turns the fan off if the fan is on or on if the fan is in standby, with options from one hour to nine hours.
You get more control from the Smart Life app. This gives you basic remote control of all the fan’s functions, but you can also add the fan to a room in the app, then create scenes or routines to schedule it to turn on or off at certain times, or when the weather warms up in your area. The interface is relatively simple and intuitive and there’s plenty of control, down to mode, speed and oscillation settings. In theory, you can also control the fan through Google Home and Alexa voice controls, though in practice I couldn’t get it to work on my network, even after installing the Smart Life Alexa skill and searching for new devices.
How well does it perform?
It might be cheaper than the Duux Whisper Flex 2, but it’s not far off in terms of power, creating 3.4m/sec airflows at maximum speed and a very decent 2.1m/sec at the medium speed (five). The Whisper Flex 2 maxed out at 3.5m/sec, and you’d have to look at the Meaco Sefte 10in Pedestal Fan or the Princess Pedestal Air Circulator to find anything significantly more powerful.
There’s not much of a gust at the lowest two settings, going from 0.8m/sec to 1.1m/sec on speeds one and two, but you can still feel a slight draft. With the horizontal oscillation enabled it can dish out a comfortable breeze over quite a wide area. Add in some vertical oscillation – 30 to 60 degrees is perfect – and it’s a great fan for helping you stay cool when you’re sitting at your desk or lounging on the sofa.
It’s also pretty quiet at the lower settings. At the minimum speed I recorded noise levels of just 26.5dBA, going up to just 29dBA at setting three. At five you’re looking at 35.2dBA and even at its maximum setting it’s a bearable 46.6dBA. However, on the highest two settings the general fan noise was accompanied by a slightly annoying mid-range hum, so you might want to slightly lower speeds if you’re planning to snooze or watch TV.
When it comes to power consumption, the AirFlo 42in is impressively frugal. I measured usage at just 2.2W at minimum speed and only 14.2W at maximum, rising to 18.3W in the full Circulation mode with oscillation maxed out. That’s actually lower than the Whisper Flex 2, and the ProBreeze is one of the most efficient pedestal fans we’ve tested.
Is there anything we didn’t like?
There’s no night mode, but the display turns off after a few seconds anyway, so that’s not much of a bother. I’d like the remote control to attach somewhere on the fan for safe keeping, but otherwise ProBreeze has got most of the basics right.
Should you buy the ProBreeze AirFlo 43in Hybrid Pedestal Fan?
Frankly, the AirFlo 43in Hybrid Pedestal Fan is a bit of a bargain. It’s quiet, easy to use and fairly powerful, and while the Whisper Flex 2 wins on style and thoughtful design, ProBreeze’s effort doesn’t look in any way shabby. There are some quite affordable rivals, including the Princess Pedestal Air Circulator and the cheaper Duux Whisper Essence. Still, the AirFlo 43in is more than good enough to go toe to toe with both of them.
