RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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SwitchBot has released a squat, battery-powered, air-circulating tabletop smart fan that works with any smart home platform you throw at it. The $120 fan is called the Battery Circulator Fan 2 Pro . Capital naming, SwitchBot.
Silly name aside, the Fan 2 Pro sounds like a nice gadget to have around on a hot day, thanks to its portability and longevity. It weighs just shy of five pounds, and SwitchBot says it will last for up to 70 hours on a full battery. That'll depend heavily on how you use it, of course, but it's a big improvement over its predecessor, which can run for 49 hours but peters out around four hours when pushed as hard as it'll go . It's rechargeable via USB-C, too, so you don't have to worry about keeping track of a specific cable. (That said, it charges faster—10 hours versus 28 hours—if you use its included AC cable, according to a specs sheet the company shared with me.)
The Fan 2 Pro natively supports Matter, which means you can add it to any smart home ecosystem you might have without bridging it with a SwitchBot hub. That's not the case with the company's Circulator Fan and Standing Circulator Fan . I've been using the latter of those this summer, and although I've enjoyed it, I've been disappointed with its battery life at full speed, the fact I can only turn it on and off with Apple Home, and the SwitchBot hub prerequisite. The Fan 2 Pro's native Matter integration hopefully means that you can control fan speed, oscillation, or the fan's blowing modes from whatever third-party smart home platform you connect it to, although SwitchBot doesn't specify whether that's the case and didn't respond by press time when I asked.
According to SwitchBot, the Fan 2 Pro blows at up to 6.5 meters per second and can push air 110 feet away, and its noise level ranges from 21 to 54 decibels when it's running. It rotates and tilts up to 90 degrees, too, depending on how it's set. For comparison, one of the few other Matter-compatible smart fans on the market, the $160 Dreo TurboPoly 765S, has a 120-foot reach, gets as quiet as 20dB, and oscillates 150 degrees horizontally and 100 degrees vertically. SwitchBot's Fan 2 Pro does have a built-in "fragrance box" that lets you scent the air when you fill it with essential oils, though. And a nightlight.
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