Okay… I promise: No Blow Job Jokes.
Vornado 530 Fan
Living in Southern California is an adventure and I’ll tell you why… You wake up at 7:00 am in the middle of the fall and it’s already 78 degrees outside and you’ve pretty much had enough of belly flopping naked into a pool of sweat at 3:00 am because it’s so damn hot… So you decide to go buy a fan… Trouble is it’s the middle of the fall and for some bizarre reason even though this is Southern California there isn’t ONE DAMN FAN ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND…. Well there was one… A Desk fan… A little one sitting on the shelf in CVS.
What the hell is it that all these companies doing business in California have Zero clue as to what the weather is like here?
Now… I was none too happy that after hitting up every darn store in a 20 mile radius all I could find was this little desk fan… I mean what I really needed was one of those industrial floor fans that like to about knock you over after blowing bubbles under your eyelids… After looking at all the impressive diagrams of swirling air and the CFM rating and the blah blah BS on the package of this overpriced little desk fan I said screwit, and bought it figuring I could point it right at my head and at least get a little relief from the heat.
I pulled the thing out of the box when I got it home and my one thought was it’s even smaller than I figured… I plugged it in to see if it even worked and… To my surprise and delight… This little bastard blows.
What a marvel of engineering!
This little thing has a little blade that looks like it came off of an Evenrude outboard motor cased in a duct that looks like a model of NASA’s wind tunnels… Pretty amazing how much air it pushes and how low the noise level is… It blows twice the air as the 24 inch box fan it replaced with at least a 50% lower noise level…
My wife says it’s really easy to take the front grill off in order to clean it so I guess that’s a big plus… Whatever… I want to review an industrial air compressor soon.
“Leaders in air flow technology.” Beyond a marketing message- this statement defines Vornado’s past, and charts the course for the company’s future. In the early 1940’s, the O.A. Sutton Company produced the first Vornado fans. These fans were well received, differentiated from other brands with their unmatched power and unwavering performance. The early “Vornados” served as the foundation for the company’s reputation for innovation, product performance and durability.”(They continue to blow smoke here):http://www.vornado.com/AboutUs.aspx
Now the Bad News.
WHAT A MARVEL OF CHEAP CHINESE MANUFACTURING!
I’ll never understand why such a neat piece of American engineering is subbed out to the lowest of the low in manufacturing… This little thing would sell for twice the price if it was better built right here in the USA with a good ad campaign… I mean WTF guy’s? People don’t work in Kansas anymore?
Two days out of the box the switch knob split and fell off and what was left is too painful to turn with your fingers… So I leave it on… 63 Days and counting… We’ll call it destructive testing. The fan is still fairly quiet and still blows like all get out… I’ll tell you about it when things change.
So okay I give this thing an A+ because it works so freaking good due to the tech, and an F because the #%@* knob broke due to cheep A$$ manufacturing… So that’s what… A “C” overall?… A C+ if it came with pliers?