The 5 Best Fans of 2025
Top pick
This compact fan can send breezes to the far corners of a large room. It’s also relatively easy to control and clean, and it has an established record of reliability.
We’ve been recommending the Vornado 630 Medium Air Circulator since we first tested it, in 2017. And it continues to offer the best combination of quiet, powerful, and efficient performance at a reasonable price. This basketball-sized air circulator is just 12 inches in diameter, in contrast to a standard box fan’s measurement of 16 inches square, yet it creates a powerful cooling breeze that fills most rooms of average size. Simply put, it’s the best overall room fan you can find.
It blows hard and circulates well. When the Vornado 630 is on its highest setting, the air it emits can achieve wind speeds of up to nearly 12 mph, and even the low setting produces an impressive 8 mph gust. But what really sets the 630 apart is its air-circulating design. Instead of just blasting the air straight ahead, the 630 creates a sort of spiraling helix that keeps the breeze blowing continuously around the room. The fan’s design (video) is based on the earliest Vornado fans, from 1945, which in turn were based on the way air moved through early jet-engine propellers. If it works well enough for flying, it should work well enough for your bedroom.
It’s impressively energy-efficient. By our measurements, the Vornado 630 consumes between 38 and 53 watts of power, depending on the setting. Based on average electricity costs in the US, that means you could run the 630 model on high 24/7 for three months in summer, and it would still add only about $18 to your total electric bill (on low, the cost would be about $13). So the 630 is an especially affordable option for cooling your home or spreading AC air around. Some fans (including our previous budget pick, from Honeywell) use even less energy, but none of those fans produced the same kind of airflow in our tests, with the exception of our DC-powered pick from Dreo.
It produces a pleasant white noise. The sound is quieter than normal conversation levels, with no annoying frequencies to drill into your head. In our tests, at the 630’s lower and middle settings, it issued a pleasant buzz that measured between 47 and 49 decibels, and we could easily talk or watch TV over it. The fan was noticeably louder on its highest setting, but even then, the noise still measured only about 56 decibels—less than the 60-decibel cap that the National Institutes of Health uses to define “normal conversation levels.” In fact, we’ve found that the white noise from the 630 is great for muffling street noise. So it’s particularly helpful if you live in a busy city, or if you just want a gentle hum to fall asleep to. You can even watch TV with the 630 blowing on high (though you may not want to sit right next to it).
It’s relatively easy to maintain and clean. Simply press down on one of the grille clips, and the grille face pops right off, so you don’t have to deal with any screws (though a flathead screwdriver may help you out). Wipe the blades with a towel and some soapy water, and pop the grille back on. If you need to do a deep clean, you can also pop off the fan blades, but that might take a little more elbow grease. Either way, cleaning the fan should become second nature soon enough, and that means you may be more apt to do so regularly.
It’s sturdy and well built. This simple black fan is made of sturdy plastic, so it won’t bend or break like other, cheaper fans we’ve tested from Lasko, Holmes, or Honeywell. And its squat, circular body won’t wobble or topple over—an issue we encountered with several top-heavy tower fans in the past. If anything goes wrong, the 630 also comes with a five-year warranty (PDF) that covers defects in material or workmanship. Vornado’s customer service also has a reliable reputation, with some people reporting that the company helped them out at no cost, even for issues that fell outside of the warranty.
If the Vornado 630 isn’t exactly what you need, the company sells a lot of other, similar fans as well, including the smaller Vornado 460 (a previous runner-up pick) and the larger Vornado 660, which is also available with built-in Alexa connectivity.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
The Vornado 630 has just three speed settings. That might be limiting for some people. By comparison, our DC-powered pick, the Dreo PolyFan 704S, has nine different power settings; similarly, the Vornado 610DC, which we previously recommended, offers a speed dial instead of preset power levels, allowing for even more-nuanced speed adjustments. Both of these models do cost more, however.
It doesn’t come with a remote. Remotes are remarkably easy to lose anyway, so they’re really a perk only if you remember where you last put them. But if you are concerned about controlling the 630 remotely, we recommend a smart plug.
It doesn’t oscillate. Some people don’t like that. We’ve heard readers—and family members—complain that they don’t feel the air from the 630. More specifically, they miss that jarring but tangible moment when an oscillating fan points their way, offering a pleasant but fleeting relief from the heat. We respect such preferences, and we realize that the 630 doesn’t provide that exact same sensation. But our tests have shown that it keeps the air in the room moving more consistently, creating more of a steady breeze than a sudden gust.
Homes with pets create some cleaning challenges. If there’s a downside to the 630’s powerful wind gusts, it’s that a lot of particles are constantly moving through the fan blades. If you have pets, all of those little hairs could gum up the grille pretty fast. Even with the 630’s front face popped off, we struggled to access the rear grille area, where some of that hair tended to collect; in the past, we’ve had to use an old toothbrush to clean the area. To be fair, this is a problem common to many fans.
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