Vornado 6803DC Energy Smart Medium Pedestal Air Circulator Fan with Variable Speed Control, Ice White, CR1-0259-43

This fan is MUCH quieter than my older (several years ago) Vornado fan. It moves a lot of air, too! My only con is that the light displays are on all night. It's more light than I would like, since it's in a bedroom. SO, I put dark blue masking tape over them. The remote still works. No problem! I like the compact size and adjustable body to direct the air flow. This product comes from Andover, Kansas. US. Vornado fans have been around for decades and so far, the quality and value is still way up there!

I have many Vornado products in my house. I had ordered what they call a tower fan, and I found it to not move very much air. I went back, looked at what else was available to me and found this one with the little remote. Trust me that little remote is a serenity saver if you’re using it in your sleeping space.

I have had the same small 3 speed Vornado for nearly ten years now, and while my original model truly deserves a 21 gun salute for its service over the years, it was time to upgrade and get something from the modern age. That’s where this Vornado DC Fan comes in.First ImpressionsVornado makes quality products, and this one is no different. It has an elegant simplicity to it with a minimalist design, and more importantly, they last FOREVER. My last model had a 3 speed dial on the back, so you had to go turn it on and off in a slightly inconvenient manner. This model is improved by having two buttons on the front that let you raise/lower with a setting range of 1-100, so much more customizable.PowerThis fan doesn't mess around. Remember as a child when you left a window open and your dad would chastise you for trying to cool the whole neighborhood? With this fan, you can. Perfect for combating the sweltering Texas heat or for keeping you chilly in your blankets like an arctic fox burrowing in the snow. Or maybe you want a mild gentle breeze - that’s fine too, the speed control lets you customize your airflow for the ideal temperature.SoundThis fan is… not quiet, to say the least. If you asked me before I had a Vornado, I might not think this sounded like a good thing. Honestly though, it’s pure bliss. Better than the best white noise machine. It's like a steady, soothing hum that drowns out the world's symphony of nighttime noises. Thanks to this fan, I now sleep like a log - a log in a blissful hurricane. I also sleep with pepper spray because I’m pretty sure someone could break down my door and I would not hear it when this is on.Remote Control Okay conceptually? I love the remote control. Gone are the days of bargaining and pleading with your spouse to get up and turn off the fan so you can stay safely inside your warm cocoon of blankets. Sort of. This remote seems like it has a maximum distance of 4 feet on a good day, and that’s only if you are in direct line with the fan. That being said, it doesn’t necessarily have to point the air directly at you to work, so this isn’t TOO bad once you find a good spot for it. It also keeps the same setting when you turn it on and off, so you don’t have to fuss to get that perfect number each time.Final ThoughtsOverall, I’d say this fan is a solid buy. It's strong, reliable, and it won't let you down when the heat is on. Yes, the remote might make you feel like you're trying to communicate with a stubborn cat at times, but it's an easily fixable quirk for the reward of controlled breeziness. If you have little patience for modification to optimize a product or you want to hear every creak in your house during the night, it probably isn’t for you. However, if you are looking for highly adjustable control and you can’t sleep without arctic winds and a peaceful silence, you’ve found your match.

Great "little" circulation fan but note to self and every buyer. There is no remote storage placement on the fan and don't try to store it in the spot where you and stick your fingers for the hand carry. The remote will drop inside the shield area and you'll have to remove the front grill. Other than that is a great fan. I love that you can tilt it up at virtually any angle and set the fan speed in single increments. I also wish you could position the fan left and right without having to loosen what I'll call the "shaft nut" that is used to raise or lower the fan.

I bought one of the first of the more simplistic earlier generation of this fan, the Model 460 (which is still being sold) based on two factors … the small compact size which was necessary for the limited space available in my bedroom; and the sleek contemporary look, also important to me since it would always be in view.I generally liked the earlier model despite a lot of negative reviews, mostly from people who did not understand how Vornado fans are designed and are supposed to work. The complaints were mostly that it is expensive, that it doesn’t blast air as far as some people expected, and that it is noisy. I wasn’t put off by the price … just like Dyson, Bose and Oreck to name a few people pay for certain innovations that are supposed to make them work better. Usually with those companies they offer a few features people love and will pay more for, but they also have a few duds. I understood when I bought the Model 460 that Vornado fans aren’t supposed to oscillate or blast air all over but rather create a column of diffuse air “circulation” that can be felt quite a distance away but NOT a strong wind like most fans. And as far as noisy, my experience with Vornado is, while every fan that actually moves air has to be noisy if it’s going to be effective, Vornado fans operate at a different frequency and are a bit more soothing to listen to. That being said, it is true at even at the lowest speed the Model 460 is noisy. Would this newer model be any better?The Model 460’s design had some flaws. The on/off/speed switch was mounted on the back behind the motor where it was impossible to see and all but impossible to reach and operate. That was made worse by the fact that a few times a week the knob literally fell off in my hand. The original style has a bright chrome semicircle that the fan is supposed to slide up and down about 90 degrees. It is beautiful to look at but unfortunately my fan body never slid smoothly up and down the ring. And the thing that I liked the least is that there were only three speeds. Fast was much too fast and noisy for such a small fan and I rarely used it. Slow was a little too slow and didn’t move quite enough air. And the medium setting was too close in speed to the fast speed to really be useful. Yet with all of those little downfalls I continued to like the fan for its size and styling because I could tuck it discreetly into a corner in my bedroom.The new Model 5303DC is almost identical to the original in terms of fan blade and grill size and seems to work about the same way. But the biggest improvement is that now the speed control is continuously variable from hardly moving to ridiculously high, and I can set it exactly where I get the maximum airflow but minimum noise for sleeping. And the speed can be replicated day after day because of the 99 step digital readout. Another advantage is that the controls are on the front where they are easy to see and operate. Even at the fastest speed the Model 5303DC is reasonably quiet but where it shines is at the “ideal” speed I use in my bedroom (about 14 on the readout) where it is whisper quiet yet moves about the same amount of air as the Model 460 at its lowest speed.NOT SO POSITIVE THINGSOn the not-so-positive side of the coin is that the base of the fan takes up a lot more table space but worse, being a rectangle I can’t squeeze the fan tightly into a corner like I could with the small round base of my old fan. While I understand that Vornado fans don’t oscillate, it would have helped if the base could be rotated to face in one direction while the fan blows in another direction. The up/down tilt mechanism is all plastic and seems cheap compared to the Model 460.Personally, I think the styling of the new model is awkward compared to the sleek aerodynamic look of the Model 460. The base looks like it was designed by an entirely different group of people and stuck on to the fan part as an afterthought. In fact, everything about the fan’s design seems like it was made by an entirely different company, it’s that different.Another thing on the not-so-positive list is that the price has gone up by almost double to cover the cost of the fancy electronics, while the mechanical parts inside are almost identical. Adding a remote control is a nice feature as I learned lying in bed and being able to adjust just the right amount of air flow from across the room. The handheld remote puts style over function and I have mixed feeling about it. I can operate it by touch in total darkness. However, as many people have noted, the first impression is that it only works from a few feet away. Across the room … nothing. But there is a fix for that and I suspect those complaining about the limited range of the remote haven’t tried it yet. In fact the remote will work 50’ or more from the fan IF you raise it high enough that you are pointing it downward at about a 45 degree angle to the fan. It seems the remote sensor on the fan points upward so if you are holding the remote directly even with the front of the fan or lower it can’t “see” the IR beam. This becomes a negative for example if you are lying in bed and the fan is even with you or higher. I have to sit up and hold the remote over my head to get the fan to “see” the signal. Memo to Vornado … for your next version place the sensor facing forward, not upward.Finally on the negative list is Vornado’s horrible choice to put a big bold flashy permanent label right on the front of the fan that says “Energy Smart”. The fan is in my bedroom, who do they think they are advertising that to and who cares after you decide to buy the product? The label is ugly and unnecessary.BOTTOM LINELike some of the other brands that are trendy and cost more, Vornado tends to hype their “features” to the point that I think sometimes they confuse their customers. The honest truth is that this is a very small personal fan meant for a desktop or a small bedroom. It’s not fair to condemn it as some reviews do because it’s not a powerful fan. The simple answer is if you want a more powerful fan you’re going to have to get a BIGGER fan, and Vornado makes a ton of them. The hype also overdoes it with the 80’ claim. If you read it carefully they are saying that it MOVES air 80’ and that’s true, under the right conditions air that far away is being moved ever so slightly by the fan, but unfortunately Vornado is setting people up to expect to feel a blizzard 80’ away … that’s not going to happen. If you’re going to buy a Vornado you must realize that they don’t call their products “fans” they call them “circulators” and there’s a reason for that and the best way I can describe it is the difference between putting food in a blender and stirring it with a spoon … a fan creates turbulence like a blender, while a Vornado’s job is to just move the air around like a spoon in a pot.To me it the Model 5303DC is a good product and I like it, which Amazon describes as being a 4-star product. The infinitely variable speed makes it better choice for my bedroom in terms of quietness. And I do like being able to control it from my bed or to set a timer for it to shut off after it gets cooler late at night. It’s a good product but not a perfect product.

A very quiet, variable speed fan for any room..I was amazed at the velocity during the hot summer months! I didn't even put the air conditioner on in my bedroom.