If you struggled while working from home during the sweltering days of last summer or suffered through unpleasantly hot nights, you may well be looking for a way to make this year a bit more bearable. The Princess Smart Air Cooler is a white, column-shaped fan with vents across much of the front of its body, meaning plenty of airflow. It has a small footprint at 22cm x 27cm and stands approximately 75cm tall.

Princess Smart Air Cooler 3.5L | Toolstation

There are three fan speed settings. Choose the first and you’ll be able to drift off to sleep with it on. The second fan setting is a bit harder to ignore but you can still work while it’s on and you’ll be glad of it on a roasting day. Via the app, you can also link it to your Alexa or Google Assistant smart speaker so you can switch it on and off with a voice command and add it to scenes. As well as oscillating, the fan has three modes: normal, natural and sleep. I don’t know anyone who enjoys the random natural setting on fans but the start-stop functioning of this one is particularly distracting. The scheduling feature is great, allowing you to choose specific days of the week, so if you use it in a home office, you could set it to switch off every weekday evening at 5.30 and never have to remember to turn it off when you finish work.But as it’s a smart appliance, you also have the option of doing all of this via the Princess app on your smartphone, as well as creating scenes. You could, for example, set it to come on whenever the temperature rises above 25°C or schedule it to come on at the same time every day. We really like the Princess Smart Air Cooler. It’s a clever concept that’s easy to use and highly effective. However, it’s not the quietest fan in use. And, because it has a water tank that’s difficult to remove but which does need regular cleaning, you’ll need to spend a little longer taking care of it than you would a regular fan. I tested it with Alexa and although enabling the skill was a straightforward business, nothing else worked. Alexa was able to find the Princess skill but not the appliance itself. Instead, I had a frustrating time trying to find the appliance via the Alexa app and then several fun conversations with Alexa about other things I might want to switch on instead. Performance

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And finally, it’s another thing you’re bringing into your home that you’ll need to remember to clean. The manual recommends that you empty and clean the tank every three days. And you really should – it’s not a great idea to let bacteria multiply and then blow them all around your home.Emma is Group Home Tech Editor at Tech Advisor. She covers everything from kitchen appliances to smart home devices, from floor care to personal care to air care technology. She’s particularly interested in environmentally conscious brands and products that save people time and money.