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Turns a sunny day into a force 9 gale, but in a nice way

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Well, we warned you a heatwave was coming, and now it's here. That means it's too late to buy the best fan possible online to cool you on the very hottest day, as that is today. However, while there will be some relenting to the heat over the following week, there is still plenty more UK heatwave to deal with – and who knows what July and August hold?

While my tip top recommendation for heat-beating is to grab something from our best portable air conditioners list, there are some drawbacks to them. Primarily, the fact that they are big, ugly, quite expensive, and in Britain you will only use them for 2 months of the year at most. So how about one of the best fans? On most days I'd recommend one of the best Dyson fans but when it gets really hot, there's another British brand that I turn to. One that makes fans so powerful they can blow your wig off or blast your candy floss from its stick. Yet they are surprisingly quiet – they carry the Quiet Mark, no less – affordable and economical to run. No, they're as sexy or versatile as Dysons but who wants sexiness when your home is filled with semi-clad people sweating and moaning? 

Anyway, the fan I reach for on days like this is by Meaco (opens in new tab) . Specifically it's the MeacoFan 1056 Air Circulator. The pocket rocket. 

The main thing I love about this fan is that it is extremely powerful, but remarkably quiet and compact. There is also a pedestal version, which naturally lacks that compactness, but the desktop version is, if anything, smaller than your average fan, although a bit longer. I once tried that hack where you place a bowl of iced water in front of a fan, in order to get cooler air blown into the room. I don't know if that was all that effective, but I did have to reposition the bowl several times, as the MeacoFan 1056 kept blasting the water out and onto my coffee table. 

The complete MeacoFan fan fam, including the pedestal-mounted version of the 1056, naturally called the 1056P

While truly hot days render most fans impotent, the 1056 is powerful enough to make you feel cooler, rather than that you're simply having hot air blown around the room. Better yet, it manages to do this without it feeling oppressive, and without creating a massive racket. 

While the MeacoFan 1056 could not be described as stunning looking, its appearance is nothing to complain about, and it's also very cleverly designed. It can rotate in three dimensions through almost 360º, rather than just oscillating from side to side as a boring old Dyson does. There's a sleep timer, a built-in light, no fewer than 12 speed settings and an 'Eco' setting, which raises and lowers the speed based on the temperature of the room. It's all very simple and yet highly effective, thanks to Meaco's jet engine-style fan technology. 

All the controls are accessible via a remote, which can also be magnetically attached to the centre of the fan for safe keeping. There's no app control as yet, but that doesn't seem like too big a loss.

There's also another great reason to buy the MeacoFan 1056: for such a design classic, it is extremely cheap. With the heatwave set to continue, and high temperatures apparently likely to become more commonplace in future, thanks to climate change, can you afford to be without one?

Duncan has been writing about tech for almost 15 years and fitness ever since he became middle aged and realised he could no longer rely solely on his boyish good looks. He used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know." Pre-lockdown Duncan was widely regarded as the best-dressed man ever to work for T3 – admittedly not saying much. Post-lockdown he is looking forward to wearing clothes other than shorts and hoodies again very soon, assuming he can still fit into them. He currently writes about cycling, fitness tech that isn’t too heavy, and all things kitchen and home related. 

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