Window Fan

UPDATE May 2018: I've now had this fan for 3 and a 1/2 years and use it almost daily for 1 - 3 hours and it is still working great. I don't know what I do without it - it keeps me from having to use my A/C all the time to cool down my bedroom. Anyway, it is still working great so I still highly recommend this product. Really impressed with it. Best thing about it is how light it is - I can pick it up with one hand. UPDATE Feb 2017: I've had this for about 2 years now and I still love it and think it works great. I use this very often and have had no problems. The one thing I've noticed is that the temp gauge is not accurate to the interior of the room, but honestly it couldn't be since the gauge is part of the fan, so it is measuring right where the wind is and not the whole room. Would be a great feature for new ones to have a remote temp sensor! Anyway, for me this is not an issue since it's easy for me to look at my temp gauge and then just calculate - add 10 degrees or whatever. But I hardly ever use the temp auto off thing anyway since I just blast it for a while before bed to cool the room down and then shut it off. I use it all seasons except summer now because my place is so hot (heat is central to building) so I need to cool the room down when I get home. The fan will cool the room quickly - I can get it from 75 to 68 in about an hour usually, which is faster than my AC! Because it's so light I have also used it in the living room which is a huge open area with the dining room and kitchen and it works well in there too, even though it's a lot of space. I love this fan and would still highly recommend it. I'm buying another one for my mother today which is why I decided to come back and post an updated review. I will start with the caveat that I've only had this a very short time (a month-ish) and have only used it about 10 times so far. I will come back at the start of winter and update this review, after I've used it for a while. I know one of the complaints with the new version is that it breaks down quickly so we'll see about that. Also, I've only needed to use it for a couple of hours before I go to bed, then I turn it off, so I don't know how it is overnight. I have a ceiling fan so after this fan cools the room, I just use that overnight. So I really have a limited view for this review, but I'll tell you what I can. The pros: It's really, really light weight-wise, which I wasn't expecting. I live alone and am not strong, so this was good for me. It cooled the room very quickly and very well - down from 80 to low 70's in about an hour. I've only used the feature that blows air in with both fans. I don't really understand how blowing in on one fan right next to blowing out on another fan would make any difference - seems to me that just blowing in as much cool air from the outside as possible would work best so that's what I did. I had it on high with the temp on the lowest setting - the fans really blow hard so I liked that too. It didn't cool the room below 70 even though the temp outside was cooler than 70, but it made it totally comfortable each time I used it. I didn't find the noise a problem - sounded like my AC unit. I guess it;s not quiet but I like white noise anyway so if noise is an issue for you, you should check out the guy who posted a review with the sound clip to see if it's too much for you. I found it very easy to install (I never have the patience to look at directions and am horribly not handy nor mechanically inclined - actually I'm so mechanically challenged that I put this thing in the window upside down at first!). I just put it in the window and plugged it in, then pushed the buttons until it did what I wanted (i.e. turned it to the coldest setting 64 degrees and high fan blowing in). I like that it is shallow enough that I can put it my window with the screen still in so I dont' have to worry about bugs or birds, etc. But maybe this is true for all of them...The cons: You can't use it sideways so it will only fit in the big windows horizontally, like in the picture. Maybe this is an unfair con but I wish I could use it the other direction so I could have it in the small window now that I have my AC unit in the big window. I did try using it on a very warm (74) and sticky night and it did not do the trick. I didn't really expect it to but it didn't in case there are people looking to use this to replace an AC unit. But there are many nights I come home and my bedroom is 80 and it's nice out and I know I could just use the fan to cool it down but I can't because of the AC unit in the big window. It's not quiet but I didn't find it terribly loud, either. But as I said I like white noise so this doesn't bother me, but it might bother others. So far I love it. I think if it breaks down after not much usage then I would change my mind so I'll come back (if I remember...) and post another review after I've used it for a while.

I bought this fan in the summer of 2024. I honestly didn't like this fan when I first bought it and plugged it in because I was not impressed with it's velocity. So disappointingly, I put it back in the box and sat it aside intending on just giving it away to someone. I never ended up giving it away. After a year of it sitting in the corner I finally decided to pull it out again and try it in the kitchen (this is a 100 year old house) that gets very stuffy during the summer. This fan fits perfectly in one of the windows especially using the extenders to block outside heat from coming in. I turned it on using the exhaust function and left the room for several hours. When I came back I was very pleasantly surprised how much the air felt so much better and fresher in the room. It also kept the room much cooler than if I had a box fan on the floor just blowing air around. I think this fan is misunderstood on it's best use. It's not meant to be some powerful (and usually loud because of the power) fan that blows air around. It's more meant for exhaust as it has an exhaust function. For anyone who doesn't know, the exhaust function allows one fan to pull in fresh air while the other fan pushes air back outside. This allows fresh air in and stale air out. It's great for a small room and it's pretty quiet at all speeds and particularly high speed if you want to use it in a bedroom. I have learned to love this fan because of that. It's a nice fan with dual fans as well as a digital readout that measures the temperature. It's more meant for keeping the air fresh rather than a cyclone blaster. It also has a temperature control that you can set (in auto mode) in case it gets too cold during the night. When it senses the temp threshold that you set it will automatically shut off. At the time of this review I have been using it for a few weeks. I highly recommend this fan if you need a fan for exhaust purposes, or don't need a loud powerful cyclone fan. It's great for small rooms and will keep the air fresh. I give it 5 stars.

This is a great fan. I had been using a Holmes fan in our bedroom Holmes Dual Blade Twin Window fan with One Touch Thermostat and decided to get a new fan for one of our bathrooms that does not have a ceiling exhaust fan, so that we can remove all of the steam and humidity from taking showers and baths. I decided to try this Bionaire and see how they compare. I ended up putting the Bionaire in our bedroom and the old Holmes in the bathroom, for a few reasons. This Bionaire has more power and sucks the hot air out of the room better. The motor must be stronger because I can tell that it doesn't struggle when wind is trying to blow inward. On the Holmes, if it is windy and air is trying to blow into the window from outside, it struggles and the fans slow down. On the Bionaire it basically keeps functioning as normal with no struggling. The Bionaire has 3 speeds, whereas the Holmes only has 2. The medium setting on the Bionaire almost seems as good as the high speed on the Holmes. The buttons on the Bionaire are better too. The Holmes button is sort of already pressed in and feels almost like it is broken... a sort of cheap feel. Bionair buttons are nice and durable feeling and easy to use. They click nicely when you push them, and you know you pushed them and they "took." The Holmes button sometimes needed pressed more than once and never felt like it pressed correctly. I like that this unit has the temperature display too so you know how hot or cold it is in the room and you can tell if it is working or not or which airflow direction is working better... If you set it at exchange and see the temp go up after a few minutes, you know that is not the setting you want, etc. My husband doesn't understand the concept of setting the fan to exhaust to suck out all of the hot air and pull the cool air from the air conditioning from downstairs. He thinks it should always be set to bring air in (so he can sit in front of the dammm fan and feel air and say it's cooler that way.) So, now with the temperature reading right there I can prove to him that bringing in HOT air from outside is not helping the situation and you need to remove the hot air from inside by setting it to exhaust. When he sees it go from 80-some degrees down to low 70's and 60's now, he believes me. Of course there are times when exchange will be better or it will be cool at night and bringing air in is fine, but for the most part in the heat of summer, during the day, you will want to set it to out, to exhaust the hot air to the outside. This fan does a great job of pulling the cool air from the rest of the house too, as long as we leave the bedroom door open. The remote on this one is a nice bonus too because if it starts raining during the night and pulling rain into the room, you don't have to get out of bed to switch the fan direction or otherwise change the settings as needed. I keep the remote right in our nightstand drawer beside the bed and never have to worry about it. If it gets too chilly or whatever the case is, I can just grab the remote and not have to get out of bed. I will see how well the Holmes does in the bathroom, but if it seems to not get rid of the humidity and steam so well as we get into hotter and more humid months, I will buy another one of these Bionaire fans. Overall it is great quality and great performance. Changing the settings is easy and straightforward - pick your speed and pick your airflow direction and that's all you have to do. On the Holmes, you have to press the same button a million times to cycle through all the settings when you want to change it or even to turn it off. It gets to be a pain in the rear after a while. You can also set this one for specific temps etc so it will shut off when your desired temp is reached and kick on again if it gets hotter or colder. Just a great unit all the way around.

I've had more communications with Bionaire customer service. While it is still pathetic that I have to wait a month or more to get a replacement unit and that they don't so much as put you on a wait list, they do honor their warranty. Even though the thermostat doesn't work and it is a pain to control the temperature without it, the unit is very effective at cooling off our unit. Thus, my revised ranking of four-stars instead of the original two. * * * Unfortunately, I have to revise my opinion of this unit because of the distributor's customer service. Took me a day to confirm that the thermostat on my unit was defective. I called the supplied customer service number, spoke with a pleasant woman who confirmed that the thermostat was indeed defective. Then she told me that although I am entitled to a replacement, they have none in stock at the moment. Okay, that happens. Then she told me that they wouldn't have any stock until six weeks from now. Uhmmm, you gotta be kidding. Nope. The worse was yet to come: no, they don't maintain back-orders. I will have to call back periodically to check on availability of replacement units. Considering how trivial it would be to maintain a database to handle this kind of thing, I can only assume that the company really doesn't care about its customers. I should make clear that this comment applies to the importer/distributor of the product, NOT the Amazon Marketplace vendor I purchased it from.) My problem with the thermostat isn't fatal: I can still control the unit manually. But what if the unit stoped working in the middle of summer? Six weeks to replace a unit? And you, the customer, have to keep calling back to see if replacements have arrived? Kind of obviates the value of the five-year warranty, doesn't it? Th product is actually okay, but the company's customer service policies are a killer. I am better off returning it to Amazon while I can and getting a replacement. I was actually thinking about getting a second unit, but will have to think about that now. = = = = = Our apartment boils in the summer, necessitating a larger than usual air conditioner - and boils in the winter as well. We're on the top floor and the heat radiates upward from the floors below and downward from the roof when the sun is out. We don't have cross-circulation from the outside. Thus the need for a fan. Our old box fan died of old age after years of dependable service. My major requirements were 1) that the fan would do the job of drawing in cool outside air, 2) that it be light enough for me to put in and out of the window without strain and 3) that it be reliable. It's too soon to determine this fan's durability - and hopefully it will be years before it reaches the end of its service life. In terms of installation, it's a snap. Just put it in the window frame (after adjusting the extension wings) and lower the window. My one criticism is that there is nothing resembling a handle on the front of the unit, a big omission since the alternative is accidentally lowering the window on your fingers. I'll rig something up (probably with duct tape). So far the inward airflow seems to be more than adequate to cool a good-sized living room/dining room. If all goes well over the next couple of weeks, I plan on ordering a second unit for the back bedroom which I'll set to exhaust. Hopefully the two will be enough to keep us cool during this northern winter. As you probably guessed, we spend practically nothing to heat our unit during the winter. The remote control works, but it really isn't necessary. My original thought was "I'm not even going to bother with the thermostat since it more than likely wouldn't work well anyway." Well, I was unfortunately correct about it not working - and the thermostat control is an important feature. Construction is okay, but not a standout. Treated reasonably carefully, I think the unit will last, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't last. The instructions are reasonably complete. So, do I like the unit? Generally speaking, yes. Do I think it represents good value? No. My sense is that it could and should be priced somewhat lower. Overall, I recommend this unit. Jerry

I wanted an expandable window fan for my garden shed, and this worked out perfectly. My windows are 48" tall x 36" wide, so I was concerned about the expansion width being enough to fit. I used the 2 solid expansion panels on the left side, and pulled out the sliding panel on right to fit the opening. This fan is relatively quiet, and puts out a good airflow. A real plus for me is ability to fit into the window in front of the screen with no issue. The slim width easily allows for this, as you can see from last photo, taken from outside the building. You can see from photos the fan fits nicely into opening, but there are very small gaps where insects could get through. Since I have a screen on the window anyway, this is no issue for me. The only thing I see that could use design improvement, are the locking tabs on the expandable side. they are pushed outward to unlock, and inward to lock. this is fine on the top side, but basically impossible on the bottom side, since you have the fan placed in the window opening against the bottom edge! I was able to manage it eventually, but wouldn't want to repeat it more than necessary (like once or twice a year!) I also though a remote was dumb and just another thing to keep up with, but have actually grown to like using it from my potting bench to adjust the air as needed. I had considered getting 2 of these - one for each side that could blow in and draw outward, but now I do not feel that is necessary. If I do end up trying that configuration at some point in the future, I would certainly purchase another like this one. Sure, the price is a bit more than the majority of the other brands (typically around $39), but well worth it for decent quality. I am happy with this purchase!

This review is for customer service more so than the fan. When it arrived, new out of the box, it made a loud clicking noise as if something was obstructing the fan blade, but inside the motor housing. Rather than ship the unit back to the retailer and get a refund (like I should have done), I called Bionaire directly because there's a large STOP! leaflet included in the box, which says not to call the retailer but to call the manufacturer if anything goes wrong. I'm not sure that this is the right approach for customers. The first customer service rep essentially said, "the unit is DEFECTIVE, cut off the cord and DISPOSE of the unit”, and Bionaire would ship us "an UPGRADED" unit. Sounds like a good deal, right? Wrong. A couple of weeks later, I received a package that had not one but two fans in it. One was a Holmes small tower fan that I had not ordered and didn't want, and the other was a Holmes window fan, that, while similar to the fan we bought, costs half as much, doesn't have a remote control, and has a 3-year rather than a 5-year warranty. When I called Bionaire (or rather, “Jarden Consumer Solutions”) customer service again, they said that I'd agreed to accept the Holmes fans as suitable compensation as they did not have our unit in stock. I explained that I was told only that I was getting an "upgrade", and if the lack of a remote control had been mentioned I wouldn't have accepted the switch. At this point the rep became...combative, and from this point treated me like a liar. It is a valid point that the third-party retailer had my money, so Bionaire couldn't provide a refund, but absolutely wrong that I agreed with plan that they specified which DESTROYED the rightfully purchased and DEFECTIVE fan, and saddled me with two useless-to-me, underperforming Holmes fans. Their potentially unscrupulous policies (…tell the customer they are getting an upgrade, and mark your report as “customer agrees to receive two under-performing fans to get them out of the warehouse”…) leave me with no merchandise with which to get a legitimate refund or replacement, the burden or returning two useless Holmes fans, and the pleasure of checking in with them every two weeks to see if they happen to be stocking the model I bought. Or, in short, it leaves me with $70 of nothing but hot, windless hassle, as I’m pretty sure the second rep, the so-called, and no-last-name “Jared”, knew very well that they will NEVER stock this unit, and they will NEVER fulfill my purchase, and NEVER make right the instruction to DESTROY the first fan. (Now that I think on it, that was certainly there simply to ensure that I couldn’t both get a replacement fan from them and return the defective fan to the retailer. Good one.) So, in the future and as a matter of principle I will avoid products from the Jarden family of products (Holmes, Sunbeam, Oster, Rival, Health-o-meter, Bionaire, Patton, Magic Chef, VillaWare, Crock Pot, Food Saver, etc). I will also return defective products to the retailer and get an immediate refund and ignore the manufacturer’s advice.

This is a wonderful window fan and operates as advertised. I set up another table fan on the opposite side of the room and then with a ceiling fan pushing air down, it creates this wonderful window vortex that get a very hot 3rd floor bedroom manageable. The only dilemma is I live in a very humid area and we are experiencing a heat wave with high humidity and occasional thunderstorms. The indoor humidity throughout the house skyrocketed to 64-70 percent for 2 days and dust mites took over the house. When I removed the window fan, the indoor humidity plummeted 8 percent in less than 30 min. I did a solid job installing this fan with added rubber insulation to get a better seal, but as with all window units, some air from outside still seeps in. If I lived in a less humid area, this fan would probably be just fine. UPDATE: I am so glad I did not return this fan because of the humidity issues. I was contemplating adding a 2nd ceiling fan in the lofted 3rd story bedroom to push hot air down the staircase. It would have been expensive to hire an electrician to add another ceiling fan and it dawned on me that I had the perfect solution. The existing ceiling fan over the bed pushes air downward, and this “window” is now on the floor next to a lofted staircase, and it is drawing the hot air out, thus creating an even better downdraft from the ceiling fan. There are also two small tabletop fans located in opposite sides of the room, drawing hot air out of the corners and into the middle, thus being sucked out as well by this floor fan! The temperature is still quite high in lofted bedroom, but with this incredible air flow it does not feel hot at all.

I previously had purchased this fan from Costco four or five years ago and I loved it from the very beginning. Two of the blades broke after doing some routine maintenance and I was heartbroken. I tried different fans, but nothing compared to the Bionaire fan. My daughter let me have one of theirs and again, after routine maintenance, it completely died even after replacing the fuse. This fan is powerful and cools my bedroom down very nicely during the summer and icey during the winter. It's quiet but helps drown the outside noise. I highly recommend this fan.