It is disrespectfully hot out — so hot that my air conditioner alone isn’t cutting it despite my running it all day long. To fill the gap in BTUs, I’ve been leaning on my trusty Honeywell fan, which I’ve been using since 2016. I first came across it the summer before my senior year of college. I’d just moved into my first off-campus house, and my landlord had provided us with a few window-unit ACs. All of them, except the one in my bedroom, worked. I hadn’t gotten my first credit card yet (a glorious time) and was too broke to buy a proper air-conditioning unit, so I figured a fan would do before summer really set in. I went to Target in search of relief and picked up the first thing I saw. It was a little bigger than a desk fan and easy to transport but claimed to have an impressive range.
I took it home, plugged it in, and was so impressed with it that I kept it running nonstop for the next six months, even after I bought the AC. Despite its size, the fan is much more powerful than you’d think. Its size actually works in its favor. The stream of air is concentrated — dare I say person-size — and offers spot-cooling rather than transforming the temperature of the entire room. This works well for me. I often sit it by the bed for a little extra cooling while I sleep or point it toward me while I work. It’s also nice because my fiancée likes it a touch hotter, so the fan cools me while giving her a slight blast of air.
As far as bells and whistles go, it’s very straightforward. There’s a knob at the back that toggles between three modes: high, medium, and low. The coolest thing about it is that it has a 90-degree pivoting head, so you can point it toward you and then tilt it to any angle you like. The airflow also goes pretty far. Honeywell claims it goes up to 25 feet, but I don’t put it that far away. I like to keep it close, around five feet, which offers maximum airflow and cooling.
I raved about it so much that when my cousin moved into a stuffy apartment in Bed-Stuy with a fake window, she asked for my fan. She loved it so much she refused to give it back. I didn’t mind buying another, because in addition to being effective, it’s fairly cheap. I’ve bought it for varying amounts over the years (my most recent one was on sale for $16), but never more than $25 — a price point I can get behind.
Fast-forward to the top of June, when I finally started decorating my home office. I had been using the space intermittently, but now I wanted to spend all my time working there and knew I needed a way to stay cool during the summer months. There’s a tiny window, and my desk sits in front of it, so I knew an AC was out of the question. I opted for another Honeywell fan (my bedroom fan was already running and accounted for), my first since I bought a replacement in 2018, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the brand had released stylish new colors. Before that, I’d bought black ones, which looked sleeker to me than white. Now I could pick from SunnyD orange and terra-cotta and pool blue. I picked the blue one to contrast the yellow-gold paint in my office and then worked in front of it for a week. It offered the same familiar comfort and made the transition from my couch to a proper desk seamless.
I read a review saying that Honeywell has slightly redesigned the fan, making the blades tinier and thus a little less powerful. I will say that I’ve had good results with both my old and new one, so if there is a difference, it isn’t a big one. The real downside to the fan is that it gets incredibly dusty. It seems to catch every single particle, and, unlike the metal tower fans of yore, there’s no way to unclip the cage to clean the blades. In fact, when you Google the fan, the first suggested search is how to disassemble and clean it. I’m not handy enough for that, so I do my best with a wet paper towel wrapped around a butter knife, but it doesn’t get everything. I honestly don’t mind, but if you’re a dust-bunny freak, you might. I’m willing to suffer that minor inconvenience for maximum comfortability, and with a recent text from ConEd telling me I’m using 37 percent more energy owing to constantly running my ACs, now’s my fan’s time to shine.
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