I tested three handheld fans costing £11 to £130 – only one is worth your money

The first true heatwave of the year is here and it is a scorcher. Temperatures are expected to reach up to 33 degrees in parts of the UK on Tuesday, with the heat continuing on into the rest of the week. Which means that you will not just have enjoyed some actual sun on your bank holiday – you’ll have to commute in it.

This is the flipside of sunny days: enduring the sweaty, sticky heat of far too many bodies crammed onto public transport; breathing in thick, humid air; feeling your work-appropriate summer clothes begin to cling to your lower back. And all before even opening Slack to say “good morning”. It is, frankly, hellish.

You may not be able to avoid the muggy commute to work this week, but thankfully there are ways to cool down. There are certainly products that claim they can do so – you’ll likely have seen the ads for the Shark ChillPill – and frankly we wanted to see which, if any, are worth it. With that in mind, we trialled three fans of different budget levels and technological advancement on a particularly hot day in Hyde Park. For extra authenticity, I wore a cardigan and “warmed up” before each test (ran around like a toddler). Here are our results.

Traditional hand-held fan, £9.99 from H&M

This is your archetypal fan. Always incredibly chic but particularly so at the minute, I picked this up from H&M for £9.99 in a charming butter yellow and had a lot of fun dramatically flicking it open (if you plan ahead, you can get four for £6.99 from Amazon). The unfurl of a manual fan is, of course, a major part of its charm and given more time I would likely have mastered flirting with 18th Century Georgian women, or maybe learned to death drop. Instead, I stuck to my original purpose: attempting to cool down after doing star jumps in public.

The result was… fine. The air was moving faster around me and it was possible to target specific areas with varying levels of success (back of the neck was fine, lower back a real stretch). Due to the speed though, it wasn’t particularly cooling. I think if I had a motor installed in my wrist it might have been effective but I’m not ready for that.

One thing that annoyed me was that it quickly became difficult to hold the fan fully open which greatly limited their cooling abilities. My arm also did get tired after a while. I wouldn’t say I felt massively cooler but I did feel some relief. That, plus all the fun it brought me, makes this a solid five out of 10.

5/10

Rechargeable USB Neck Fan, £12.99 from Robert Dyas

While only a few pounds more expensive, this is a very different beast. The white plastic fan wraps round your neck and has five speed settings of fan designed to emphatically cool your neck.

The air being fanned onto me is definitely more efficient than the handheld fan – it feels cooler and more pleasant on the skin, probably because it can run much faster than my pathetic old wrist. But I can’t say I found it fantastically cooling otherwise.

Rather than cool me down, it felt like it was just moving the air around. Testing outside, the fan just felt like any other gust of summer breeze. Welcome, of course, but not life changing.

More problematically, the neck fan is clunky on the neck and presumes that you just want your lymph nodes cooled. You can obviously move it around (I attempted a particularly Catholic look of wearing it back to front to cool the back of my neck) or hold it to target particular areas, but that does defeat the hands free nature of the fan. I also found that I was actually heating up underneath where the fan was resting on my neck. It was bulky and ultimately underwhelming. Despite producing cooler air, I rank it lower than the manual fan which at least has 1) drama and 2) flexibility. This, I’m afraid, would get in the way on the bus – unless I had a particularly boiling jawline.

4/10

The Shark ChillPill 3-in-1 fan, £130

This fan, 10 times more expensive than the second cheapest, is naturally the most intriguing of the selection. It certainly looks slick – like a pair of binoculars your grandad would be intimidated by, but then obsessed with. One of the cylinders twists, which is both fun and makes it that bit easier to hold, and it is exceptionally light.

However, the setup is cumbersome. The ChillPill has three swappable attachments and you have to prep for it to work. Not only must it charge (it’s recommended you reach 100 per cent battery for best effects) but you have to fill the little mister, gather together your little bag of tricks, and have the wherewithal to have picked the one you want before you board the train. If you don’t and you want a mist when the fan is on, you either have to dig it out of your bag or, if the commute is crowded, put up with it.

It is also surprisingly loud. There is no subtlety when this thing is going, especially the fan – it sounds like a cartoon lawnmower which isn’t bothersome necessarily, but might annoy others in public.

As for the three settings, they range from fine to wonderful. The fan is exactly what it says on the tin: a powerful fan. But I find that can only cool you so much, even if the air itself is cooled. It’s easy to manipulate around the body but I wouldn’t say it made being in the sun bearable.

The mister fared a bit better once we got it working. The mist it emits is very fine, delicate, and I greatly enjoyed it while it lasted. Unfortunately, the water ran out before I could say I was significantly cooler and then I just had a wet chin.

Oh, but then we come to the InstaChill metal plate. This was delightful – like putting a can of Diet Coke fresh from the fridge on the back of your neck but it never warmed up. More than anything else, putting this plate against the inside of my wrists, the back of my neck, and the small of my back brought genuine, instant relief. This too made a noise by the way, but I didn’t care. I sincerely loved it and would buy one for this alone.

7-9/10, depending on the attachment

المصدر: iNews