Levoit Classic 36-inch tower fan review: Budget breeze

Best Prices Today: Levoit Classic tower fan

It’s hot and you want a fan. But there are too many fans to choose from!

If you’re here because you’ve just searched “fan” on Amazon and wonder if the Levoit Classic tower fan is any good, then you’re in luck. No, I hadn’t heard of Levoit either, don’t worry.

This review is of the 36-inch model, but there’s also a 42-inch available with similar features.

What you need to know is this is a competent tower fan that is ideal for a bedroom or living room of small to medium size. It doesn’t take up too much space and has a surprising number of settings and features for the price.

I’ve found it a touch temperamental, but overall it’s a fine cheaper option that costs well under $100 and won’t cost much to run.

Design and build

• Black and white plastic
• Circular base
• Touch controls on top

The design on the Levoit fan is standard fare. It’s a cylinder of white plastic with a black grille on the entire front where the fans blow. It comes with a remote control. Point the remote, press a button, and air comes out.

Plug-in devices can be pricey to run, but this Levoit fan is surprisingly economical

There’s a curved air inlet panel on the back that you won’t see most of the time. You can remove this panel to clean away dust.

The two-part circular base is easy to construct, and the top unit is completely made in the box and attaches with one screw-on part to the base. You can slot the remote into a recess on the back when not in use. This gap can also be used as a handle to carry the fan from room to room.

Altogether, it’s far off the premium look and feel of the best fans out there, but it also costs a fraction of the price.

On the flat top of the fan is a set of touch controls. These operate the oscillation (whether the fan is slowly turning side to side), fan mode, timer, quiet mode, power, and fan speed.

It’s good to see an LED read-out too that shows fan speed, room temperature, and the current mode via little icons.

The remote has all the same controls, plus a mute button that stops the fan beeping every time you press a button.

When on, the fan stays sturdy and turns silently, but it does wobble considerably on the light plastic base if knocked. Perhaps something to bear in mind if you have small children or pets, but there’s no danger of them getting hurt by turning fan blades as the grille gaps are very small, even for the tiniest fingers.

It’s worth noting that in the US, the fan seems to come with the display on the front, which is better for seeing the current settings without having to go over to the fan. The UK model I tested has the Levoit logo there instead.

Performance

• Five fan speed levels
• 90-degree oscillation
• Normal, Auto, Advanced Sleep, and Turbo modes

The fan has five speed levels that get increasingly loud the faster the fans blow. I found level one quiet enough to sleep with, which Levoit says is just 28dB.

It’s a powerful fan that easily cooled my small bedroom and office, and was adept in the larger living room too

Pleasingly, turning on the 90-degree oscillation to make the fan turn doesn’t add any audible noise. But turning it up beyond level two is quite loud.

The remote control performs the same operations as the touch controls on the fan itself, and is responsive.

The fan is particularly good at cooling a stuffy, warm room. You can even put it in front of an air conditioning unit and boost air flow using the turbo mode, which Levoit says has a seven-meter range. It’s certainly a powerful fan that easily cooled my small bedroom and office room, and was adept in the larger living room too.

In all, the performance is what you’d expect with the added bonus of a particularly quiet low setting that’s great for sleeping near to.

Economy air

Plug-in devices can be pricey to run, but this Levoit fan is surprisingly economical. It’s a 39W appliance, so it’ll cost US owners about half a cent per hour to run, and UK owners about 1p.

Features

• Advanced sleep mode
• Temperature sensor
• 1-12 hour timer

The Levoit is not a smart fan but it does have a couple of clever features. Thanks to a temperature sensor, it has an advanced sleep mode that aims to start at the best fan speed for the ambient room temperature, and then turn down the fan speed as the room cools and you are (hopefully) comfortably slumbering.

This mode also turns off the bright display lights.

Auto mode also uses the temperature sensor to decide what fan speed you should have. I found it usually stayed quite high in small rooms, but it did keep the stuffiness at bay.

This is a great feature to have at this price, but I did find that, on occasion, it would quickly jump between levels. This isn’t a big deal during the day but the change in audible fan noise at night was enough to wake me up, though I am a light sleeper.

I tended to set the fan to level 1 with the oscillation disabled, as well as on a one- or two-hour timer, so it blew a gentle breeze over my conked-out bod. However, every single time I woke up, the fan had turned at some point in the night and was facing the wrong way. It also sometimes did this before I fell asleep, which was annoying as I’d have to get up and turn the oscillation off.

Price and availability

The Levoit Classic 36-inch tower fan costs $69.99 (or £89.99 in the UK).

It’s available in the US from Levoit or Amazon, and in the UK from Amazon. At the time of writing in August 2023, both Amazon listings had the fan for less than the recommended retail price.

But the initial purchase is only part of the cost where any appliance is concerned and, while it’s a reasonably budget-friendly buy, it is extremely cheap to run.

Verdict

The Levoit Classic 36-inch tower fan is an excellent, affordable fan for the home. It quickly (and quietly if you want it to be) cools rooms down and circulates stuffy air away.

It’s also great for sleeping next to and has clever sleeping mode that automates fan speed, while a timer function lets you set and forget, while saving energy by not having it on all night.

I found the fan a little temperamental, changing fan speeds frequently on auto mode on occasion, and it turned often overnight when set not to, but other than that there’s little to fault in a powerful fan that costs under $100.

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Best Prices Today: Levoit Classic tower fan