A Light Breeze

Sometimes, you just need a little fan.

Maybe you set up your home office somewhere hot and still, like a refinished attic, and you need some airflow because the little window AC unit you have can barely reach over to your desk. And sure, you could go down and work at the dining table, but then you’d have the family coming in and out, not to mention, there’s just something about working in a place that isn’t optimized for serious work. The results end up as unserious as the environment. Plus, there’s the risk of being close to the fridge. You might get bored and make yourself an unnecessary snack. And by ‘snack,’ we mean get a handful of shredded Colby jack out of a bag in the cheese drawer.

What do you mean you don’t do that? Ha! Ha! Yeah, neither do we!

But you don’t just get a nice breeze from a little fan. You get some white noise too. If you’re working in the above-mentioned attic home office, that means adding a little hum to the air so the room doesn’t get too quiet while you’re deep in thought on days when the AC is off. If you’re not WFH, on the other hand, the fan can block out the mind-numbing buzz of the fluorescents, or the tinny noise of your cubicle neighbor’s cheap headphones, or the conversation two of your coworkers are casually having about some recent medical procedure you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemies.

And just because they’re desktop fans doesn’t mean you have to set them up on a desk. You could bring them on your road trip and plug them in at the hotel if you need white noise to sleep.

In other words, you should buy a little fan. But which little fan? That depends.

The Zippi is a cute lil guy with soft blades that needs to be plugged into the wall. The Refresh is pretty rad looking with it’s baseless base (it has rubber feet, but just kinda sits there all laid back). The Axis, meanwhile, is a versatile son of a bitch with that can sit upright or horizontal and can be powered by USB or AC – perfect for a desk fan.

Also, to be clear: the Refresh and Axis are “Sharper Image by Vornado,” which one SlickDeals customer likened to saying a car is “Kia Rio by Porsche.” But for the record: they’re actually made by Vornado and supported by Vornado warranties.

In other words, your decision to buy one should be easy-breezy!

Eh?