NSA UK Ultimate Column Fan review: The fan that lives up to its name
Powerful, quiet and packed with features, this NSA UK Fan is appropriately named
Pros
- Powerful at max fan speed
- Very quiet
- Ionising air purifier built in
Cons
- Plasticky build
- Nowhere to stow remote control
NSA UK’s The Ultimate Column Fan is ambitiously named and it certainly looks the part. Measuring more than a metre tall, it’s an imposing sight and it matches that with effective cooling and more features than you can shake a stick at.
What do you get for your money?
In the box is the fan itself, a circular two-part base – which you have to attach yourself – and a compact remote control plus a couple of AA batteries.
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It’s pretty tall, measuring 1.1m in height, and isn’t the prettiest thing, either, with air emitted via a rectangular aperture positioned around halfway up the column. It’s a fairly plasticky-feeling affair, too, although this isn’t unusual for this type of appliance.
The controls are all situated beneath a latched, sprung flap at the top of the fan; you can adjust all the same settings using the remote control as well. Everything you do is reflected on a colourful backlit LCD panel at the front, which indicates which mode the fan is in, how much oscillation is set, the fan power level and the temperature in the room at the time.
What features and settings does The Ultimate Column Fan have?
In a word: loads. It has eight fan power settings to play around with and three different oscillation modes – you can even set it to spin around the full 360 degrees if you wish. In addition to this, there are two variable power modes – breeze and sleep – which cycle through different fan speeds over time.
There’s also an “AI” mode, which sounds exciting but absolutely isn’t. It’s a fairly simple feature that sets the speed of the fan based on the temperature in the room. The hotter it gets, the faster the fan will run. It’s useful but not groundbreaking.
Perhaps The Ultimate Column Fan’s most interesting feature, however, is its built-in air ioniser. Turn it on and it electrically charges air molecules that pass through the fan so that particles such as pollen and dust are attracted to other particles and to nearby surfaces. The idea is to purify the air without the need for a filter. It’s simple enough to activate: just press the Ion button on the fan control panel or the remote control and it’s ready to go.
How well does the Ultimate Column Fan perform?
I ran a basic set of tests and was surprised at how effective it proved to be. In terms of fan power, measuring with a simple anemometer showed it to be fractionally more powerful than the £600 Dyson Pure Humidify and Cool in max power mode, reading a wind speed of 3.5m/sec from a metre away dead in front of the fan aperture. The Dyson outputs at up to 3.2m/sec.
It’s also a touch quieter than the Dyson. Again, measured at a metre distance – this time off to the side to prevent turbulence skewing the reading – I recorded noise levels of 55dB(A) from the NSA UK fan compared with 56dB(A) from the Dyson.
In terms of power consumption, the Ultimate Column Fan draws 35W in high power mode with no oscillation, 40W with oscillation enabled, while enabling the ioniser adds an extra 1W. That’s similar to the Dyson Pure Humidify and Cool, which consumes 41W in its max power mode with the humidifier and oscillation running, although it consumes less power running in its lowest power mode than the NSA UK fan.
Should you buy the NSA UK Ultimate Column Fan?
If you want the best-quality fan aside from a Dyson, then yes. This NSA UK fan is both powerful and quiet, plus it does double duty as an air purifier.
It isn’t particularly attractive to look at and it is irritating that there’s no slot on the fan to stow away the remote control. However, at its core job the Ultimate Column Fan really does live up to its name; if you want a top-quality fan without having to pay Dyson money, it’s a very good choice indeed.