s all feature a fairly compact design that allows for use in many areas of your home and easy storage in the winter. If you’re looking for a powerful, energy-efficient box fan in a fun, bright color, the Lasko Be Cool Box Fan is your best bet. With summer just around the bend, it makes sense that we’re all on the hunt for cooling home solutions. According to Google Trends, searches for box fans are expected to peak this week. The wide, usually square-shaped fans can blow larger amounts of air than oscillating models, which makes them handy for blowing cool air into a room—and blowing hot, stale air out. Many box fans can’t tolerate a filter, but Lasko assures that they designed this fan specifically to work with a filter to powerfully clean the air in your room while providing maximum airflow.
We used these factors and real customer reviews to find the best box fans out there. The Lasko name is synonymous with reliable products and fair prices. Founded in Philadelphia in 1906 as a small family shop, Lasko expanded its product range after WWII to include air purifiers, lasko pedestal fans fans, heaters and humidifiers. Lasko Holdings currently bills itself as one of the largest home appliance companies, with factories in the U.S. and overseas. Standard household box fans typically range from 1000 CFM at the low end, to 2500 CFM at the high end of the scale.
Though powerful and well made, we think the other fans we tested would look better in a home or dorm environment, as the Vornado is kind of bulky and hard to miss visually. The wobbling action of the Lasko did not happen on its own during testing, but rather, after we gently pushed the tower from side to side; it rocked from side to side as a result. It was not sturdy and rigid like the other towers we tested, which gave us pause in recommending it to anyone with pets or small children, for example. We did like the remote control of this fan, which let us turn it on and off, select its three speed settings, set it to oscillate and set the timer for one, two and four hours. This timer button was surprisingly missing from the remote control of the Honeywell Quietset Whole Room HYF290B tower fan, even though the Honeywell includes a timer on its control panel on top of the unit.
According to reviewers, the fan sits at a soothing middle ground between noisy and silent, and it even has other tricks up its sleeve. “The plastic-to-metal ratio makes it more lightweight and reduces the noise level,” said one. “The outstanding feature, however, is the attached support legs. No more broken or misplaced plastic attachable legs.” Demand for air purifiers has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this Lasko device combines the same pollution-filtering mechanisms with a tried-and-true box fan. Its pleated filter is MERV10 rated, which means it captures at least 85 percent of larger particles and up to 64.9 percent of smaller ones.
Office floor and box fans move air at floor or surface level for spot cooling near desks or workstations and for general cooling in open areas. These lightweight cooling fans can be freely moved between locations. They have a motor that rotates the fan blades to move air and a guard that helps protect the blades from damage and prevent injuries from accidental contact. They’re used as a cooling fan in clean, dry environments such as offices, residences, healthcare facilities, and light commercial and manufacturing spaces. The Lasko 20-inch 3-Speed Box Fan combines the cooling power of 3 fan speeds with the wide-area air flow of 2500 CFM air circulation and a 20-inch fan diameter, all in a compact, lightweight, energy-efficient design. The 6 feet cord and slip-resistant feet allow flexible placement without fan slippage and the built-in carry handle makes it easy to transport the fan between rooms.
Carry handles will make it easy to carry your fan from room to room without damaging the grilles. Since most fans within a given category work pretty well, budgeting more gives you more features and better aesthetics. You can find super-affordable basic units like the approximately $17 Black+Decker circulator, or scale up to the striking, feature-laden, multipurpose Dyson tower at just under $770. Once put together, the heavy base, secure connections and solidly built extension rod made it the most stable of the towers we checked out, even though it adjusted to a taller height than the Black+Decker, Lasko, and Honeywell models. The head unit was easy to adjust, with soft clicks indicating the four available angles. The other towers were all stiffer-feeling and more difficult to tweak to a desired position.