TechRadar Verdict
The MeacoFan 1056P is a brilliant floor-standing fan that does an excellent job of keeping you cool. Its unique design means it can effectively move air around your room, and it's impressively quiet as well. It's expensive compared to some fans, but the performance it offers is well worth the price.
Pros
- +
Solid design
- +
Very good performance
- +
Quiet in use
- +
Remote control included
Cons
- -
Pricey
- -
Not ideal for homes with small children
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Two-minute review
The Meaco MeacoFan 1056P Pedestal Air Circulator is a quiet yet powerful fan from a brand that’s quickly gaining a fantastic reputation. During the recent spate of heatwaves, many of us were searching for the best fans that could keep us as cool as possible.
With increased electricity bills hitting many of us, a good fan is also increasingly important, as they should be cheaper to run than air conditioning units. During the latest heatwaves, we noticed one brand in particular get a lot of rave reviews from its customers: Meaco.
The company has been around for a while, but is often overshadowed by more flashy competitors such as Dyson. However, its powerful and quiet fans, which are relatively affordable, have been gaining new… well… fans.
The MeacoFan 1056P that we review here isn’t a budget fan – it costs £134 (around $160, AU$230), which is a pricey investment, but still quite a bit cheaper than Dyson’s range of fans.
It’s a pedestal fan, which means it stands on the floor, rather than a desk. Meaco refers to it as an “air circulator”, and this means that the fan can oscillate not just horizontally (as most fans do), but also vertically as well. So, you can have it turn from left to right, or up and down, and you can also have it do both, which makes the fan turn its head in a sort of large circle. This is a great option for making sure that all the air in a room is circulated.
During our time testing the MeacoFan 1056P Pedestal Air Circulator, we were very impressed with its performance. Not only did it do a great job at keeping us cool, even on incredibly hot days with little breeze, but it was impressively quiet – even when on higher fan speeds.
So, it’s a great choice for a fan in the bedroom, as you’re unlikely to be kept awake by the noise. It also comes with a remote control (which attaches via a magnet to the front, which is a handy way of keeping it from getting lost),
For the price, this is an excellent fan that will keep small to medium-sized rooms nice and cool by keeping the air circulated. It won’t cool down rooms as quickly as an air conditioner, nor will it lower the temperature, but it’s smaller, cheaper and quieter.
MeacoFan 1056P price and availability
- List price: £134
- Difficult to get outside of the UK
The MeacoFan 1056P costs £134 (around $160, AU$230), which puts it well above standard pedestal fans you may see in stores, but it’s not as eye-wateringly expensive as certain Dyson models are. If you sweated your way through summer, then this may seem like a worthy investment, especially as it comes with certain features and build quality that you wouldn’t get with cheaper fans.
There’s also a desktop version of the fan, the Meaco 1056, which doesn’t come with a pedestal (hence the lack of ‘P’ in the name), and is cheaper at £94.99 (around $110, AU$160).
This is a good choice if you don’t have the space for a pedestal fan, meanwhile, the MeacoFan 1056P is the one to get if you don’t have any surfaces such as desks or tables to place the fan.
While Meaco is gaining popularity in the UK, its products are harder to find outside of its native country, so unfortunately, readers in the US and Australia will likely struggle to get hold of the MeacoFan 1056P.
Value score: 3.5/5
MeacoFan 1056P design
- Solid design
- Magnetic remote is useful
The look of the MeacoFan 1056P is stylish yet understated. It’s certainly not as eye-catching as a Dyson fan, but it has some nice touches that sets it apart from other fans. There’s elements of iconic fan design here, but rather than having a circular head, the MeacoFan 1056P has a elongated spherical head. This is mainly due to the Meaco 1056P oscillating both horizontally (like standard fans) and vertically.
The fan blades are set far enough away from the front guard grille to not be dangerous, but the gaps in the grille are wide enough that small fingers could be poked through, so this isn’t a fan you may feel comfortable leaving on with small children about – unlike the fanless design of Dyson products.
That said, the base is sturdy enough that it never felt in danger of tipping over, even when it was being prodded by an inquisitive three-year-old. At the top of the head is a small (faux) leather handle. It looks nice, and while it makes moving the MeacoFan 1056P around a room easier, we wouldn’t recommend holding just the handle while carrying the fan between rooms – when we tried it, the handle came lose after a while, which led to the fan almost being dropped down some stairs. The handle was easily reattached, but it made us wary of carrying the fan by it.
On the front of the grille is a round space where the remote control magnetically attaches. It’s a nice feature that means that should prevent the remote from getting lost, and it looks good when it’s attached – and when it isn’t, the metal plate it attaches to maintains the stylish look.
The pole can be easily extended by clicking a button around the back, then moving the head up or down. There’s a decent range of heights that can be set, depending on your needs.
On the base of the fan is a control panel with touch-sensitive buttons and a display. The display helps you know what settings you’ve chosen, and it can also display the room temperature, which is handy. The light from the display is quite bright, and this can be turned off via the remote control.
All the settings on the control panel can also be found on the remote control, and we actually found that it was easier to use than the control panel, as the remote has more buttons.
Overall, while the MeacoFan 1056P may look a little bit plain when standing next to a snazzy Dyson, there is an understated traditional charm to it, with some nice modern touches.
Design score: 4/5
MeacoFan 1056P performance
- Great at keeping you cool
- Quiet in operation
Of course, the most important consideration when buying a fan is performance, and the good news is that the MeacoFan 1056P does an excellent job of cooling you down. It’s important to note that like all fans, the MeacoFan 1056P doesn’t cool the air, but cools you down by moving air over your skin, causing convective heat transfer that makes you feel cooler.
So, you need to be sitting in front of the MeacoFan 1056P to feel the benefit. Thanks to the decent range of movement the MeacoFan 1056P’s fan has, both horizontally and vertically, the area you can sit in to be cooled is quite large.
You can have the MeacoFan 1056P oscillate either horizontally or vertically, and you can have it do both, which makes it rotate in a circular criss-cross pattern. This helps move the air around a much wider area, again, making the fan particularly impressive when it comes to performance.
There are 12 speed levels, with each one getting progressively more powerful. We found even on very hot days (our tests coincided with a heatwave) we didn’t need to go higher than level six or seven. As you’d expect as the fan speed increases so does the noise, but the MeacoFan 1056P is a remarkably quiet fan, and even at the higher settings it doesn’t get distractingly loud.
We were able to have it on and running overnight in a bedroom without being disturbed by it. There’s also a sleep mode which lowers the fan speed by one level every 30 minutes until it reaches level one, which it will then stay on until it’s turned off.
The MeacoFan 1056P also comes with a ‘natural’ mode, which alternates the fan speed between high and low (you set which level is the highest), in order to replicate a natural breeze. It’s a nice enough idea, but didn’t really impress us, and it was the mode we used the least.
Finally, there’s an ECO mode, which uses to built-in thermometer of the fan and adjust the fan speed depending on the temperature in your room.
Overall we were very impressed with the performance of the MeacoFan 1056P, which offers great air circulation, good cooling and low noise.
Performance score: 5/5
MeacoFan 1056P score card
| Attributes | Notes | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Value | A pricey investment compared to some fans, but cheaper than Dyson | 3.5/5 |
| Design | Stylish but not flashy with some nice touches | 4/5 |
| Performance | Excellent cooling performance - and quiet as well | 5/5 |
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First reviewed: September 2022
