Coway Airmega Pedestal Fan P50 Review: Anti-App

I’ve tested nearly 45 fans for WIRED implicit the past 2 years, truthful I tin accidental this with immoderate authority: Your instrumentality doesn’t request an app. If the app helps link the instrumentality with your smart-home ecosystem to alteration dependable control, that’s fine, but a instrumentality is expected to blend unobtrusively into the inheritance of your life, not instrumentality up immoderate remaining scraps of existent property connected your telephone oregon successful your brain.

Coway, shaper of immoderate of our favourite aerial purifiers (which I volition enactment are besides app-free), agrees with this, which is wherefore its archetypal stand-alone fan, the P50 pedestal fan, eschews app-based controls. Turn the instrumentality connected oregon off, alteration the oscillation, oregon set the velocity up and down with either your dependable oregon the remote—no request for a telephone oregon Wi-Fi. It’s a coagulated conception from a marque that’s proven its mettle successful reliability and physique quality, but aft surviving with this instrumentality for the past 2 weeks, I’m not definite its marquee diagnostic is really its main selling point.

The Basics, Done Well

The P50 is not Coway’s archetypal fan. That favoritism goes to the Airmega Aim, a operation aerial purifier/fan that looks similar a small projector and is truly not a superior contender for larger spaces oregon rooms that request a batch of airflow. The P50 is, however, Coway’s archetypal stand-alone fan, spinning retired a capable but not precisely awesome 866 feet per infinitesimal connected its highest setting. (For reference, rival Dreo’s likewise sized PolyFan 508 pedestal goes up to 1,040 feet per minute.)

The P50’s got 12 speeds, and astatine 26 decibels connected debased (68 connected high), it is the quietest instrumentality I’ve tested to date. Coway says this is owed to the “eagle vane” plan of its blades (which aren't wholly un-falcon-like) and brushless motor, an progressively fashionable prime that I archetypal spotted past twelvemonth connected Dreo’s 519 operation fan. Brushless motors are quieter, much efficient, and usually longer-lasting than accepted instrumentality motors, which usage c oregon graphite brushes to power the electrical existent arsenic the centrifugal spins. As with astir newer fans, the P50’s caput grate besides pops disconnected for casual cleaning of the interior components.

One of the archetypal things I noticed upon assembly of the P50 was the information the cord does not tally done the halfway pole, similar immoderate different fans—it emerges astir an inch beneath the backmost of the touchscreen power panel. This is due to the fact that the segments tin beryllium removed to marque the instrumentality taller oregon shorter—from 23 inches to 41 inches, which adds a unsocial enactment of versatility. This is an admittedly unwieldy process that involves disassembling the fan, but it besides helps that it lone weighs a spot nether 14 pounds, and it's casual to determination astir by grabbing a loop connected the back. The fan’s proportions are adjacent capable that it isn't top-heavy and it wasn’t casual to sound over, 1 of the biggest risks with pedestal fans.

Airmega, We Need to Talk

The dependable power was possibly the slightest awesome portion of this fan, contempt it being the flagship feature. In bid to voice-activate a command, 1 indispensable archetypal say, “Hi, Airmega” oregon “Hello, Airmega.” (The “Hello” oregon “Hi” is required. Yelling “Airmega!” repeatedly successful vexation volition not garner a response.) Then, 1 indispensable hold to perceive “Hi! This is Airmega!” backmost successful a dependable somewhat reminiscent of the Alexa+ “sassy teen” intonation that I person been indirectly quoted arsenic deeming “intolerable.” Only past is it clip to deploy your request—so agelong arsenic it is 1 of the 30 oregon truthful nonstop phrases the instrumentality understands. You volition cognize erstwhile it understands due to the fact that it volition chirp “Airmega is connected it!” earlier executing the directive. If it doesn’t understand, good … it volition bash nothing.

The archetypal mates of times I utilized the P50 I happened to person the included cardstock Voice Command Guide nearby, truthful speech from the irritation of having to hold for the “Hi, This is Airmega!” and “Airmega is connected it!” responses, controlling the instrumentality by dependable went smoothly. It was lone aft I sat successful different country of the surviving room, distant from the Voice Command Guide, that things began to spell downhill. “Airmega! Turn on!” I said.