18650 Portable Mini Fans for Summer

Its getting hotter, been looking to pick up one of the mini 18650 fans from Amazon.
Still researching and reading reviews but wanted your opinions.
If anyone has gotten one of these portable mini 18650 fans, would love to here how you like it, what you don’t like.
Please also list what brand and model.

Here is one of the few I’m currently looking at:
https://www.amazon.com/Topwell®-Electric-Portable-Rechargeable-Operated/dp/B00X9JV0KI?ie=UTF8&**Version**=1&**entries**=0

I bought this one: Welltop 360 Degree Rotation

Works pretty well in confined spaces (in the cockpit.) It doesn’t blow out a TON of air, but it helps if you just need a little airflow. The 18650 is replaceable and has a micro usb on the back to charge it, or use it if the battery is dead. I like it because I can easily swap out a spare 18650 quickly.

That looks great, the clip will come in handy!

i got one of this fans, sure help me a lot during hot seasons

I have 3 fans, all based on the same concept, for the girls in my life, on hot days; my wife and 2 daughters…

This USB fan from Bangood uses about 1.1 watt/h, and provides a good breeze for personal hand-held use.

and i have them plugged into this small “lipstick” power bank, 11-12 Watt/H:

Which gives a fair few hours of cooling breeze for them. And very portable. Easy to keep in handbags etc.

Gotta look after your ladies after all.

I have a couple of USB fans that I run off power banks or desktop chargers

On the left is the Xiaomi USB Fan w/ an Xiaomi 10400 mAh power bank. Lasts all day on a charge, and it’s powerful for it’s size.
On the right is an Arctic Breeze USB Desktop Fan with Flexible Neck and Adjustable Fan Speed powered by an Xtar SP1 charger with USB output. This one is my bedside fan because it’s nearly silent. It normally get’s powered by an Anker 5 port desktop USB charger, but it works fine for hours on the single cell SP1 w/ a Panasonic 3400mAh unprotected 18650.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/172177185683?\_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

That Xiaomi fan you both posted looks really compact, I like that but being so small doesn’t it tip over while blowing air.

I’m really looking for something with an integrated 18650 so no wires to mess with.
One of the reviews on Amazon mentioned their smaller fan actually moves around while in high mode.

So far the one with the clip seems best as it will stay put in high mode but will have to find it outside of Amazon as they’ve raised the minimum free shipping total to $50.
Appreciate all the input!

Thanks, people, for the links. Gonna get one of these!

I watched the video from one of the reviewers on the one you mentioned in your first post. It’s very noisy. I personally couldn’t live with that. You may not have a problem with that. We all have our own requirements. For me, noise is unacceptable especially when I’m trying to sleep. This is why I love the Arctic Breeze. To each his own I guess.

It has a continuously variable speed adjustment. It’s almost silent on the lowest speed, but still not noisy on maximum speed. I have to say, this is not a powerhouse fan, but if you’re within 3 feet of it, it does put out a nice gentle breeze. The much cheaper Xiaomi Portable Flexible USB Mini Fan I have, has more power and more noise, but it’s a single speed fan. I have 5 of those in stock because they are a great deal for around $2.00. I paid $14.99 for the Arctic Breeze. I also bought a spare of one of those just in case the original one fails. So far it’s been working almost every night for a year, even in the winter. I like air movement when I’m in bed year round.

I have one of those, they came with 2x chinese crapola 18650 with “2,600mah” marked on them. The powerbank function is handy, but I wouldn’t trust it for regular charging.

The fan is surprisingly good, it has 3 levels and makes a lot of noise on the highest. I have no way to measure airflow CFM but it seem to move about 3 times as much air as the Xiaomi USB fan.

This fan even when off has a self discharge so it was really nice to see the chinese having thought of that and placed a plastic tab to avoid battery contact, oh how wrong I was… This tab only covers one of the battery so the second one was 0V on arrival. I guess you know what happened when I connected them both one 0V and the other one 3.6V.

Anyways a nice little gadget to have around, for about $10 bought locally I must say it is pretty good.

My browser/laptop is old enough where the video doesn’t show, just a black box instead of the video.
I don’t mind some noise but can’t comment on this particular fan since can’t see the vid review but it wouldn’t used for sleeping more for when I’m out and about. :slight_smile:
I agree though, for sleeping, the quieter the better.

I’m also seeing some of these portable fans with a water mist function, might be a bonus on the hot sunny days to come.

From the pics, this fan looks to be a single 18650 fan. Are you saying it’s actually 2x18650 fan?
Pushing 3 times as much air as the Xiaomi sound great! The more power the better.

THE-dAY, the water mist thingy sounds great! It would be awesome sitting outside on a hot summer day with a Pina Colada next to your lounge chair! (Better if it was next to mine!)

Mine is exactly like this one: it has more depth on the base to fit 2x 18650 in parallel. Specs show 2hr on max but I’m sure you can get 3 times as much runtime using high capacity cells. With the 2x 18650 it can only charge my iPhone 6 from 0-80%, which means less than 3000mah combined.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-USB-Cooling-Fan-4-inch-Vanes-3-level-High-Speed-Portable-Two-18650-to-292-/162037045937?hash=item25ba291ab1:g:VsEAAOSwYmZXDjJZ

Made this just now, ingredients:

- one 12VDC fan from outdated/blown computer PSU - 0$

- one DCDC step up converter - ~0.60 - 0.70$ on ebay

  • shady no name batteries from shady bike battery pack that I bought because of the nice casing that I used for other project,
    it was something like 12$ but I really wanted/paid for the casings, batteries were considered scrap from the beginning so you could say 0$ in batteries…

but you could also use power bank (Xiaomi ZMI lipo pack here)


draws about 800mA at 10V, blows like a champ :smiley:

wow your setup really blow my mind :laughing:

I learn about the coolest things on this forum! Thanks to all of you!

I bought that same exact fan from Amazon, the Topwell unit. Says so right at the top of the page when I followed your link. I posted a sorta mini-review on another forum. You can read that over there if you’d like. Short version — it does what it claims and works quite well. Its not spectacular, but its far from useless.

Hey Paul, we all do :slight_smile: And thank you too for being here!