Meaco has launched a new portable fan with one very welcome upgrade: the battery can be removed and replaced. That means it should be good to keep you cool for many years to come. Less electronic waste and a more sustainable product lifecycle is better news for the planet, but it's also good to know your fan is built to stick around.
Meaco makes some of the best fans we've tested, and the portable MeacoFan Sefte 8in is the latest addition to the brand's award-winning Sefte range. It joins the larger Sefte 10in table and pedestal fans, as a more compact, lightweight option with a smaller footprint and shorter profile.
With a quiet and energy-efficient brushless motor, the Sefte 8in is designed to be as cheap as possible to run. It can be used cordless or corded, but unplugged it offers up to 17 hours of use on a single charge.
There are also several features designed to make it well-suited for use at night: there's a Night mode that disables lights and sounds, and the magnetic remote glows in the dark, so should you need to adjust the settings in the wee hours, you can do so without having to put a light on. Meaco has also made the lower levels (1-4) purposefully more gentle, so they're suitable for close-range use, while higher levels (5+) pack more of a punch.
Technically, this is an air circulator rather than a fan, which means it's designed to project a narrow beam of air a long way, bouncing it off walls and ceilings, delivering an even temperature around the room (in contrast, traditional fans move a wide arc of air, but not very far).
A battery boost
A battery hatch could spoil the look of a high-end product, but Meaco has taken time over the design and integrated it in a classy way. The lid has been extended to follow the perimeter of the base, so it blends in and looks like a subtle design flourish.
At this point, it's rather rare to see gadgets with accessible batteries. That's about to change though, in the EU at least: forthcoming European Union regulation requires all electronic products to offer easily replaceable batteries by 2027. Meaco is ahead of the curve here, but I'm looking forward to seeing more appliances built with longevity in mind... even if it is predominantly due to legal requirements.
A replaceable battery is particularly good news in a fan, because batteries tend to lose their capacity if you don't charge them up fairly regularly. That's a danger with fans, which people tend to pop in a cupboard and forget about over the winter months.
We're in the process of reviewing the MeacoFan Sefte 8in to see how it performs in practice. It comes with a list price of £79.99 and will be available to buy direct from Meaco, as well as via Amazon, from 17 June. Meaco's MeacoFan 1056p and 1056 fans are also available in the US, but due to economic uncertainty there are no current plans to launch the Sefte 8in there.
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