Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First off, my friends know me as the "Crazy Fan Lady". I need to sleep with a fan and have a very narrow threshold of temperatures I can deal with. Living in Seattle, we have no air-conditioning and considering that we live in a townhouse, the upstairs gets extremely warm as the internal air-circulation is really poor. I have tried all kinds and all brands of fans and currently own three Vornados (including the 660) and the Lasko 20" Cyclone Fan. I've had fans cheap and expensive, box fans, table fans, pedestal fans and clip-on fans. The problem with most fans I've come across is two-fold: (a) They're usually pretty damn loud (b) They don't move enough air if it's not pointed directly at you. While I love the Vornado 660, I don't think it's quiet powerful enough for a 15 x 15 living room. Also, I need to put it on a stool so that it sits by the sliding door and pulls air in. I wanted a stand-alone pedestal fan that looked nice, wasn't loud (I mean, who can play video games with the sound of wind blowing in their ears; how would you ever detect the Clickers from the Last of Us?) and could blow up a storm for those especially hot days that are becoming the norm. Initially I wanted one of those vintage-y Hunter fans, but I read that they were loud and didn't really generate or circulate much air. The Rowenta was my second choice and though INSANELY over-priced (for which I docked a star), I think it was a really good buy. It's definitely very quiet on the first and second setting. The third and turbo setting gets pretty loud but not as terrible as the Lasko Cyclone and is comparable to the Vornado 660 at the highest speed. The fan is definitely more powerful than the Vornado 660 in terms of air circulation - if I place the Rowenta in front of the sliding door pointing inwards and have another fan at the end of the room redirecting the air outwards, the room gets cool pretty fast. I think the trick is the five really thin blades that seem to just slice through air and spit it out. The one other gripe I have though is that the color is actually a dark brown and not the nice silvery color shown in the picture. I'm not docking another star though, mainly because it blends in nicely with my wood furniture but it is pretty misleading. The fan otherwise has a very sleek modern look to it, and the base is EXTREMELY heavy, so it means no rickety squeaky sounds even on carpet. All in all, a really good purchase, lives up to it's Shhh-Silence name and produces good circulation. UPDATE (17 September 2013) Two months in, and I've finally concluded that this is the best fan EVER. It beats the Vornado 660 hands down in terms of silence and air circulation. I am not generally a lazy person, but I also just realized that the remote control is really useful for times when you're sitting on the couch watching a movie and suddenly it gets too cold and you don't realize that it's because there's a fan blowing because it's so quiet! I've used it almost everyday throughout summer - it doesn't get too hot in Seattle but for the days when it was about 90 degrees, the fan on the highest (not turbo) setting did a great job keeping the temperatures comfortable and did not create a sound any louder than a low hum. UPDATE (17 May 2014) The fan still going strong. I love being able to remove the grill and the blades and just running it under the tap to get it clean. I've noticed that when the blades on any fan gets gunky, performance is slowed down and you don't get as much wind power. Haven't been able to do that with my three other Vornados (didn't I say I'm the crazy fan lady?) Everyone that comes over to the house wants to know where I bought the fan, so at least we know it looks good. UPDATE (7 Oct. 2017) The fan has been going strong for 4 summers. I haven't encountered any of the rusting issues that other reviewers have even though I've washed the grills multiple times. I wonder if it's an issue of humidity/salinity. Seattle has pretty dry summers so we've managed to escape the humidity monster unscathed. I love this fan every bit as much as when I first got it, so much so that I bought the table version of this my baby's room.