TaoTronics 12" Rechargeable Floor Fan

I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Losing profit, for sure, but the actual cost of these units could very well be less than this too-low selling price even with a business rate shipping cost added on.

Sorry this didn’t work for everyone. I had that happen to me a couple times over the years. On the flip side, if these suck or catch on fire then maybe us lucky order people will be the losers. lol

Mine is coming from Charleston Tennessee and should be here tomorrow. If I can safely get the cover off where the batteries are, I’ll post a picture. Sorry for all the folks whose orders got cancelled, that sucks.

Ah, was misremembering his handle as “tao-mmap”, so thought he was “related”. My bad. :blush:

Got mine day before yesterday; fully charged it and ran it “dry”; fully charged and in the process of running it dry again; so far it ’s ok.

It’s a big heavy fan and will be nice during power outages.

$20 and change.! !

Thank you for the photos. For my curiosity do you know what the boxed or unboxed weight actually is? (Kg or lb)

I placed 2 orders. The first one was on 6/16 and the second order was on 6/19. The first order has shipping confirmation and UPS tracking numbers. The second order got refunded.

I used a discount code for TaoTronics that I found on a deals website. I believe the original deal of $49 + tax & shipping is a decent deal; I don’t think TaoTronics will cancel any orders for that price.

On 6/16, I received an email from TaoTronics for their Clearance Event. The floor rechargeable fan was on sale for $99.99, down from the regular price of $129.99. Just for the heck of it, I added a fan to my cart and applied the original discount code and it worked. The final price was $19 + tax & shipping. That is when I immediately posted that deal on this forum.

I suspect that for any of us who placed the order on 6/16 and 6/17, TaoTronic bit the bullet and stepped up to the plate and honored the orders. Any orders placed after that got cancel and refunded.

I guess I got lucky for a change. I ordered one the day the deal was posted. Coming from Charleston TN. It shows as being in town, maybe delivered tomorrow…

Received mine today, initial impressions are positive. It seems solidly built and moves quite a lot of air. It is also quiet in operation and has a good weight, not so heavy as to be unwieldy, not so light that if feels cheap or flimsy. The blades are set deeply and are well protected from fingers and dog noses. The controls aren’t the best feeling but seem functional. I don’t see a way to open the battery compartment without disassembling the fan.

Time will tell for sure, but this seems to have been quite the bargain at $25 delivered!

UPS shows the package as 15.7lbs.

Just received it today, well packed and surprisingly in an Amazon box. It is currently charging, but I can confirm that it does operate using the cord while charging which is nice. Looks pretty well made. This will come in real handy when working in the garage or if we get some Hurricane related power outages.

Got mine today as well…and what a strange journey it took (quickly!). Ordered directly from their site (assumedly California). UPS tracking number shipping from Texas. Tracking showed it to be out for delivery. It arrived, but in an extra large Amazon box and delivered by Amazon. And my name/shipping address was NOWHERE on the box! A couple of shipping labels that were totally irrelevant…and stickers with QR codes, which maybe is how they got it to me? Bizarre. It did have a lithium shipping sticker on the fan carton, but nothing on the Amazon box itself…and no, no indication anywhere in the manual or on the unit about lithium cautions….dumb.

Initial impressions are very good! Blade is indeed 12”, cage is about 15”, pretty sturdy plastic and nicely done (no sharp flashing or sprue). Overall dimensions to the widest points with the cage vertical are 19” x 19” x 9.5”. The top handle is about 2.5” and removable via two screws. Cage comes apart easily for cleaning (haven’t done it yet but it looks like 4 screws and the entire back metal cage/motor/control panel will separate, manual indicates similar). The tubular base has a footprint of 17.5” x 9.5” and some pretty nice flexible plastic feet that are stable and appear to isolate vibration really well. I say that last part because the blade appears to be really unbalanced and yet there is surprisingly no felt vibration anywhere on the unit! May check that more thoroughly later. The two side knobs do a good job keeping the cage position but I’m not sure how their grip will fare over time.

Weight of the unit on a hanging digital scale is 9lb 3oz (4.17kg).

Interesting behavior out of the box - not sure if that’s affected by the low state of charge but after it finishes charging I’ll check again, ran it via the wall wart to check things out. The motor is very slow to start up. Max settting is right next to the click from Off, and at first it looks like the blade isn’t going to move…then it creeps up slowly until it reaches full speed. Takes about 15 seconds to get there. On shut down the blade stops in 3-4 seconds and you can see the jerkiness of the DC motor. Not all smooth and silky long easy spinning like an AC fan motor in good condition.

At 25% power it’s not silent but very, very quiet….on lowest it’s close to silent but still moves decent air. 50% up to Max is what most people might call noisy but I call it normal fan air flow…it’s not bad at all. The blade is a pretty thin cheap stamped, channeled and riveted affair so some turbulent noise is to be expected (like the majority of fans these days). I didn’t expect it to move so much air but it’s pretty impressive, and I think equaling a comparably sized AC fan, which is awesome!

About the only thing that might be a negative (assuming it never goes up in flames) is that the control panel lighting/charge leds are in the rear where you can’t see them in most situations, so you may not see it running low until it quits. And it won’t take an AC extension cord for power, just the wall wart, but that does seem to work nicely for powering it.

I don’t think I’d ever pay the $125+ or even $80 pricing for this, but it really does seem to be well made and performs nicely. Definitely a no-brainer for $50 or less (and a heel-kicker for $20!!). Half expected to see an order cancellation today since the tracking on UPS early this morning hadn’t moved since they created it, but here it is.

And thanks for sharing this, tammap! Wasn’t in the market but what a great purchase. :slight_smile:

I guess I’ll find out later myself, but did you happen to notice if the fan speed slows down near the bottom of the charge, or is it steady and then cuts off? Curious about the controller…clearly they have some smart-ish things going on in there.

These fans were probably in Amazon warehouses — It’s my understanding, products that don’t sell within a certain time frame are thrown in dumpsters— I think this is where the Vipon Deals were created from — I bought a Westinghouse 9500DF generator for $775 last month, now they’re $999 and were as high as $1199

Yes…looked at the box and peeled of blank cover labels and it had amazon stickers all over (a few red ones…). I’ll bet these were stock pull after Amazon gave them the boot. Must be some collusion still afterwards with the FBA contracts. I’ve heard that Amazon can really stick it to vendors badly when things like this happen (even less severe infractions) to the point that the sellers can lose product AND cash in holding accounts and not be able to recover them.

After a full charge, all behaviors are the same. Nifty fan here. I think I’ll hold off on disassembling for a peek at the cells/circuit unless I get a wild hair this weekend.

I only ran it down to the red light; was still running when I unplugged it; the first time I ran it on variable speeds; the 2nd time on low; there was no noticeable change in speed.
At the 2nd test I let it run for about 5 min on the red light; it was still running when I unplugged it.(turned it off,not unplugged) :person_facepalming:

Ordered a fan from Taotronics on the 18th, received a shipping notification on the 21st, and just received a large empty Amazon box from UPS. I picked it up as soon as the driver put it next to my door, realized it was empty, told him so, cut the packing tape and showed him there was nothing in the box (just a bit of brown packing paper).

Driver took the box back, marked it as “Rejected”. I just left a contact message for Taotronics requesting an immediate refund. Not going to give them a second chance. Glad to hear some of you actually received your fans. Amazing that someone actually thought they could get away with shipping an empty box.

I ordered three fans.

Today, I received one of them.

One is scheduled to show up tomorrow.

The third one hasn't shipped yet.

I received a full refund from Taotronics less than 12 hours after making them aware of the problem. Their response was “It appears that Amazon shipped an empty box by mistake.”

Really wanted the fan, but at least the customer service was good.

I received my fan yesterday. Wish my second orders didn’t canceled. My fault for was indecisive in pulling trigger on multiple units at that price.

mine was cancelled :frowning:

edit:

I just got a fan in the mail, addressed to just my first name. Thanks for the free fan. Couldn’t get it to run on battery even after charging for 10 minutes. Maybe it will take a charge overnight.