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.