Quilo 211 CFM All-In-1 Indoor Portable Tower Fan, 115V, for Small Rooms up to 150 Sq.Ft, Evaporative Cooling and Dehumidifier, 3-Speed Quiet Fan, Black/Silver

This is an awesome upgrade to a normal tower fan. My old Lasko tower fan stopped working and I chose to spend a bit more on this fan, with the 3in1 features as they advertised. So far am very satisfied. Firstly, it looks great, the material feels solid-not cheap plastic, was easy to move around and blows stronger wind than my original fan. This is my first time trying out an evaporative cooling type fan and I’m glad I did – after putting water into the tank and switching on the evaporative mode, the wind coming out of the unit is a few degrees cooler and there is no mist spitting out of the unit so the floor stays dry. Warning: You do need to be sitting in the direction of the wind to feel the colder air – it’s not like an air conditioner where the cold air will spread and stay in the room – the cold air lasts where the wind reaches, however, it has worked well for us and reaches most of our sofa area where we need it most. The fan is quiet and we could barely hear it running while watching TV. A negative about the cooling function is that it does make the air more moist, but when that happens we just switch off the cooling function and use it as a standard tower fan. They do advertise the unit to work as a humidifier in the winter – so will test that out later. I haven’t really monitored how many hours the water in the tank lasts but it was refilled after using it for about 2 days (around 4-5 hours a day). Overall, I’d say this is a good investment if you are looking for something cooler to replace your old fan. Although if you need to cool a bigger room and don’t want moist air, then opt for a bigger fan without the evaporative cooling option or spend more for a portable air conditioner instead.

Works just as I expected it to. The air was nice and cool. The fan has 2 settings and then a separate button for "turbo", which kicks up the fan even higher. Seems like it would have been more simple to just put 3 speed settings on the same button. It was easy to set up and the instruction booklet was very thorough. I didn't fill the water reservoir all the way full, but was close to it, and the low water alarm went off after 4-1/2 hours of operation. Not a problem for me because I don't plan on using it overnight. The only real thing that I don't like about it so far is that for the price I found the plastic housing to be very cheap plastic. I expected something a little more solid feeling for the $159 price. I would suppose that if you treated this unit roughly it would break fairly easy. Overall, I'm happy with it after the first use. I hope that it works for a long time to come and many uses with reasonable care. It is important to remember that using evaporative coolers requires good air flow in and out of the room, so leave the windows or doors open. I highly recommend buying a humidity monitor and making sure that the indoor humidity is lower than 60% before using any evaporative cooler. This unit raised the humidity level 4% higher with the windows open only a couple of inches. I opened the windows a little more and the humidity in the room dropped back down 3%. The lower humidity is really important to ensure that the air is properly cooled as it travels through the unit. I would guess that many of the unhappy customers are actually not using this type of cooler under the right conditions. Do your homework and I believe you will be very happy with it.

**Update: this is a product that will only last 1 year** DON'T BUY IT. It broke at the beginning of the 2nd summer, terrible design, faulty manufacturing. It has a pump that drops down into the water reservoir and the plastic bracket broke.So far so good, I held back on the 5th star because I wanted to see how it goes when full summer is upon us. Thus far, it is super quiet yet pumps out a decent amount of cool air. The downside is the lights on it, too bright for the bedroom so I will have to cover them up some how.

I’m mostly satisfied with my Quilo. But there are a few odd things. One is that they don’t seem to be offering replacement pads. So, for those who own or are thinking about purchasing, I found a place in Tucson (AZ) that will create a custom pad for $35. They are called Aircool. The Quilo has less fan power than I was expecting—although more air doesn’t always mean more cooling because of things like surface area and dwell time. The fan also blows air only through the left half of the louvers, but you can rotate them to direct air to the right, so this is not a big issue. Finally, the converter (110v to 24v) creates more heat than it seems like it should for such a low wattage. This works against cooling to some extent, but the Quilo isn’t a cooler that’s going to significantly change the temperature of even a small room anyway. It’s a cooler that feels really nice when you are sitting directly in front of it. Finally, the Kickstarter campaign didn't represent what this is fairly, so for people who don’t understand the limits of evaporative cooling, they might be disappointed. For example, the graphic comparing the energy cost of a window air conditioner to the Quilo. Apples and oranges. To cool even a small room, you would need a pad with a larger surface area, a stronger fan, and more water. The Quilo is somewhere between the larger portable evaporative cooler units and one of those little fans you carry around festivals with a spray mister. You have to be really near it to feel much. FYI, I'm in a very dry climate, so I'm using the Quilo in ideal conditions.