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Standing fans tend to annoy me. I find I’m constantly getting up to adjust them; they’re loud; and they become absolutely filthy with no clear way to clean them. None of these issues seem like they’d be hard to solve—and yet standing fans have been around for a long time without much innovation on how to fix these pain points. Somehow, the DREO PolyFan 704s ($134.99) figured it out, and for that reason, I absolutely recommend it as the perfect standing fan for small to medium rooms.
Looks expensive
The PolyFan, whose name refers to the dual motors powering it, stands 43 inches tall when fully extended, with a tapered stem and round base. You can adjust the stem by four inches to shorten it. The fan head itself is on a swing, and can be positioned at any vertical angle (but you won’t need to position it yourself—more on that in a bit). The fan arrives in a few large pieces, and assembly took less than 10 minutes to attach the stem to the base. The Dreo includes a small remote, which is certainly nice—but since you use your phone app for all the remote functions and more, you won’t need it. The PolyFan comes in two colors, a rose gold or matte silver. The tapered stem and rounded edges on the fan head, coupled with the matte finish, make the fan look more expensive than it is.
Multifunctional and cleanly designed app
The Dreo app paired quickly for me on the first try. All of the commands for the fan take place in two panes. First, there’s a general pane that allows you to turn the fan on and off, get a temperature reading for the room, see upcoming scheduled runs, and use a slider for fan intensity. If you click on settings, you’ll be offered a second pane with more options for the fan, including a turbo mode, a natural mode and sleep mode. You can use a visual angle control to aim the fan in any 3D direction you’d like, and then control the horizontal and vertical oscillation. I didn’t realize how valuable this was until I experienced not having to get up to adjust the fan, and then it felt downright luxurious.
Impressive features for a fan
Like the Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan I reviewed recently, the air Dreo produced is breezier than a normal fan. At lower speeds, it feels like a light, natural breeze. At a higher intensity, I felt cooler, but not like I was in a wind tunnel. Dreo uses a brushless motor and a dual vortex technology to achieve this, and while it’s not the same as the Dyson Hot+Cool’s cool air, it felt closer to that experience than a traditional standing fan.
The Dreo is impressively quite. Dreo says the fan never goes above 25 dB, and most of the time, it won’t even reach that. It rarely went over 18 dB in my use, but I rarely had it on max settings. You could easily leave it on while in a Zoom call.
I was impressed at how the Dreo air filled the room. You can oscillate the fan 120 degrees horizontally and 85 degrees vertically, which means you get a pretty wide angle swing, and the fan can reach 100 feet, according to the docs. None of my rooms are longer than 30 feet, but you could certainly feel the fan if you stood 30 feet away.
Fans collect dust and then become impossible to clean—I’ve broken many window fans trying to get them open to clean them. Dreo built a fan that you can take apart for these purposes. After only a week of use, I started breaking it apart. The fan comes apart into three parts, and all are easy to wash. It took a minute to take apart and a minute to put back together.
The Dreo blows other fans away
I know, it’s just a fan. But I suspect you’ve bought a lot of cheap fans in your lifetime under that premise and have ended up with old-looking fans gummed up with dust that you haul out every spring. The design of most tower fans has caused them to not be very stable, or to look anything other than cheap. Standing fans also tend to be top heavy. The PolyFan is none of those things, and performs better, is cleanable and quiet. For those reasons, I think it’s a good value. I’m also excited, after seeing these two products from Dreo, to see what else they produce in the future.
