Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this fan to have on my nightstand while I sleep. It is difficult to find a small, relatively quiet fan with oscillation and this looked like a good candidate. First thing that surprised me is that the fan is a bit bigger than I expected. The only reason I could come up with is that the sizes advertised are apparently the size of the fan blades only. The fan housing adds a significant amount of size; my 5.5" model was actually closer to 7.5" with the housing. It may be common practice to list fan size by the blade size, I'm just mentioning it here as I was not expecting it. Second thing is that the entire base oscillates with the fan. Some reviewers have listed that as a positive and I can certainly appreciate the novelty factor, however this means that the control buttons are also oscillating with the fan. Novelty is fine, but I can also appreciate the difficulty of trying to find the controls in the dark while half-asleep while they rotate back and forth. The other negative about the base oscillation is that on my fan the plastic of the stationary part of the base was rubbing against the moving part of the fan, causing a scraping sound. To be honest, the sound was not incredibly loud but the fan blades themselves are so quiet on the lowest setting that it could be heard very clearly. An oscillating fan is only quiet if it oscillates quietly, which this one does not. The scraping also caused the oscillation to be noticeably jerky, not smooth at all. Despite these things, the real issue for me was the quality. Immediately after receiving the fan I ran it for several minutes to test the quietness and oscillation. Within a few minutes the fan produced loud metallic squealing noises which lasted several seconds before stopping. After another few minutes the fan started to click loudly during oscillation. This is not a good sign for any fan, but is an immediate dealbreaker for a fan that I planned to place right by my head while I sleep. For the price this may be a decent fan for an office or other room where noise and moving controls are not a concern, if you get a better one than I did.