No better than a fan on a pedestal and a lot more expensive.
583317
Its relatively quiet, works relatively well in keeping me cool when it's about two feet away from me, but next time I would just buy a pedestal fan for 1/3 the price.  It CERTAINLY does not keep an entire room anywhere close to cool.

Also, the second day I got it, it started making a slight clicking noise, indicating the fan blade is touching something. Hasn't impeded the function, but it's a bit annoying.

Not sure about the Ion feature.  I use it, but cannot for the life of me notice any difference in the quality or smell of the air.
3967455
I can't say I hated it, it seemed to be well built, just simply inadequate.  We used this in a 15x15 bedroom.  It is noisy, fits poorly in the original ducting, doesn't really pull cool air, and is really a waste of money.  We used it with blinds fully down but no impact on room temperature.  We spent a lot more and installed ceiling fans instead - and these solved the problem of air circulation.
3228859
A fan boils down to this: you want to move the most amount of air with the least noise and the smallest footprint. Most fans that actually move the air also make a lot of racket. Lots of sound and fury, signifying little. This particular Vornado is one of the very few that scores well on that essential scale.

I've never been impressed by Vornado fans or their marketing hype. The "air circulator"  and "vortex" things are pure gimmicks. Any fan that moves enough air will circulate the air in a room. Give me a break. And all the Vornados I'd ever seen made quite a roar and even on lower settings never really quiet down. Though they do have a striking design, if you like big black kind of techy looking things.

The problem is, there's not much decent competition in fans. Sure there are 50 or 100 models to choose from, but almost all of them are primitive noisy things. Very little effort and research has been done on making fans quieter. At least, it's not reflected in fans that you can readily buy. Essentially, if you want a truly quiet fan that actually moves some air, you'll have to buy a ceiling fan, with all the expense and installation hassle and non-portability.

Well, I still need a relatively portable room fan, so I just spent about 40 minutes at BBB with all of the 15 or 20 fans they had plugged in on the floor. I looked at all the tower-style fans and all the conventional bladed fans. The tower fans seemed quieter, sure, but even on high they didn't move much air. This Vornado seemed different from the others: it's actually fairly quiet. On high it makes a fair bit of a roar, but on the other lower settings it's quiet while still moving a substantial amount of air. Unfortunately it was also about $100 and that seems pretty high. There were 3-4 other cheaper Vornado models that were much noisier on all settings.

On reflection, I will probably buy one. If only for pathetic qualities of the alternatives, on the essential rubric of airflow-to-noise ration, this fan is simply the best I've seen. I'm only giving 4 stars, but understand that all the other fans out there deserve no more than two, three rarely.

Take away at least 1 star for a $100 fan with no oscillator. You can easily buy a $20 fan with an oscillator. And the silly electronic button controls. If this fan fails it will probably because of the electronic control, there's nothing wrong with a simple dial 4-speed control as on most simple fans. And you could probably replace a dial switch easily enough if it ever failed. Not on this thing.
4205408
Well, I thought I was buying a laptop cooler.  Nope.  I bought some speakers with a little tiny fan in the middle.  If you're laptop overheats ANYWHERE except right in the middle, this will not work for you, period!  I have a Dell Inspiron 1564, and the internal fan is constantly running even while on the cooler.  I don't quite understand why the fan doesn't just blow a little harder because that would solve my problem, but you can barely even feel it.

Speakers are pretty decent.  I think the design is kinda ridiculous.  If you leave you laptop on your desk, this damn thing will lift it up off the desk about 2.5-4 inches.  It's way too big and bulky for my tastes.

In the end, I wish I would have gone with a different product.  This thing has done nothing but anger me.  Save your money, this is the most expensive out of all the coolers I was looking at, and now I wish I woulda spent about $40 less.
3603227
Honestly my $59 tower fan from Sam's Club is quite than this. I wouldn't spend $350 on this.
4909260
I like the look of this fan on my porch, however was extremely disappointed in the performance.  On high, I can barely feel a breeze from it!
4485410
A total waste of money. The airflow is nearly non-existent. With the fan running, I put a paper towel over the fan and it barely moved!
1015657
IT DOES NOT COOL THE AREA ...THAT THEY ARE CLAIMING IT DOES!!!!.....IT IS A FAN BLOWER!!!!...THAT'S ALL....WASTE OF MONEY.....NOT SO COOL
4063435
This fan is *severely* underpowered.  It barely moves the air.  It looks good, but does not work well.  All of the extra settings on the thing are worthless as they don't really seem to do anything.
128793
I really had high hopes for this fan.  It isn't what I thought it would be.  Not much air and if it hot, the air is not cool.  Would not purchase.
4395314
Purchased the fan 3 years ago. I was excited to purchase a powerful window fan after growing up in my parents house with an old window fan. After 35 plus years my parents fan is going strong and is noticeable more powerful. I have no idea the make? I set about looking for something like theirs and this is as close as I can buy today. Hoping to decrease energy use and carbon footprint by using less central AC. I was a bit disappointed with power of the fan not as strong as older fans. The noise level is what one should expect from a fan of this nature, so that was satisfactory. The fan quit working after 3 years and there are no replacement parts available. This is a shame because Air King by design builds these to be disposable.

After considering the monetary cost and the environmental cost to produce I doubt that this fan provided any benefit. I don't think it even got even. I will NOT buy another and find no sound reason to recommend this if you have central AC. After reading the growing number of reviews of them failing very early I find it important to also share our experience. Air King charges a premium price and one would expect a product that supports its price. That has not been my experience.
1992753
The "Storm" SF-17 is pretty junky. Wayyy bloated plastic tonka toy type construction. For a $50 fan, you'd think it would be a nicer unit. My MSI Apache Pro slides down on the lowest elevation setting. Thankfully, there are catch clips but they're too small to be functional on the higher elevation settings. I'm disappointed. The fan which is supposed to be super quiet is actually a noticeably noisy low hum. The fan doesn't run at a constant speed so there's just enough variation that it makes noise. The price has dropped now to $41 with Prime and I can see why - there isn't a great value here. I would stick with the Cooler Master X-Lite II (http://a.co/cexLqxR) for $20 (which I own 3 of). It's the same functionality minus the bloated plastic, junk LEDs, non-working elevation options, and seems to be THE EXACT SAME FAN ASSEMBLY. Good grief :-/

Back in the day, Cooler Master was a great brand. If this is really their product, things have gone way down hill.
2370682
This is really a terrible fan. On the high setting (3) it feels like low on every other fan I have. It just does not move much air. In addition, the way it's made, you cannot remove the front plate to clean the inside. It also began to squeak and rattle and make noise only a few months after having it. Very poor quality in my opinion.
310044
I ordered this because I thought it was going to blow cold air out. It's always about 90 degrees+ here in Texas so I was very excited about this item. It's basically just a ceiling fan but aimed right at you.

It has a theromastat option, I honestly have no idea why. It won't even cool a room more than 1 degree so that feauture is useless. The worst part is that the base is so cheaply made, it tips over all the time! The second time this thing tipped over on me the base was still on the ground and it just snapped the little plastic screws that hold it into the base. The tower is just too heavy for the base and they need to add weight to it and provide better screws. The screws probably go in about half an inch in so there's not much holding it there. If you get this, know that it's just a fan, with a theromstat and a cheap base. It's all made of very cheap plastic and the entire thing is kind of just splitting open, I'm sure it's all put together with the same cheap plastic screws that go into the base
3328866
Ordered two for two 2.4 amp fans I own. Has been less then a week and the controller has already started to fail on one of them. Seems to randomly pick what speed to run at now regardless of the knobs position.

I think it's obvious now that these are only meant for a single generic case fan you'd find, and nothing performance oriented. If the fan you're using can move more then 85 CFM- then don't bother hooking it up, it's just going to burn the controller out. Which begs the question of why it's almost 9$ USD then. You'd think for that much they'd make something that could handle more then a low end fan....you know, something that'd actually require a fan controller in the first place.
3679475
If you wish to have a short-lasting nice decoration with expensive ($6 each) hard-to-find GU10 Base lights (not included with the fan) (LOWE'S don't have them!) and no wind at all, then buy this fan. If you are looking for a functional and fast fan and long lasting blades - then buy something else. There is no wind coming from the blades of the fan whatsoever. At the fastest speed the fan is very slow and should not be used for anything else just as a (Christmas) decoration. The blades and body of this fan are made from painted plywood and deteriorate fast with high humidity. Fan is not blowing at all - the reason I think is because the blades are totally flat and the angle of the blades is wrong. The manufacturer apparently did not test the fan before selling it or they are looking for a chance, where people think it's not worth the trouble to return the fan back to the store. This product should not be for sale and should be immediately withdrawn from the market. I give one star for the functionality and longevity of the fan and 4 stars for the design alone.
3553300
This cannot be called a cooler or a fan. Very very weak. Ended up buying a Lasko box fan from walmart which works lot lot better than this.