I guess it depends of what comes to your mind when I say, "typical Lasko". For me, this is my third Lasko product and I have to say that I haven't been completely satisfied with any of them. I bought this one to replace another Lasko tower fan which got broken rather innocently. That one was even more top-heavy that this one, so it was easy to knock over. And when it tipped over, it broke in half at the swivel. My first instinct for a ~$100 fan was to try to fix it, but to my great displeasure, I soon discovered that Lasko does not sell replacement parts.
Smart for them I suppose, because I then stupidly bought another Lasko fan to replace it. But they dominate the market. There really aren't a lot of better options. And Sam's had this model for a better price than anyone else, so I bought it, against my better judgement.
So it works okay. It's rather louder than I had hoped, certainly louder than the one that it replaced. I find the noise signature to be kind of grating too. There's kind of a hum from the motor accompanied by a lot of air-rushing noise. I had hoped the blower design would be inherently quiet, but all the plastic resonates, making it louder.
The design basically blows air under pressure into the top part of the fan and then changes the direction near the top. The hole where the air comes out is smaller than what one might expect by looking at the picture, so some of the noise is just because the air is constricted at the outlet. It tends to blow somewhat upward, which seemed too high when seated about 10 feet away. I used the louvers to point it more downward, but in truth, the louvers don't control the direction as well as they might. But if does make it noisier to point it downward, because that's just another obstacle in the path of the relatively fast-moving air.
The remote control actually didn't come with batteries (wow). The remote doesn't have a good feel in the hand. The buttons are stiff and kind of spongy, and there is no audible response from the fan, so its hard to tell when a command was successful. Add to that the fact that the fan is fairly slow to respond to the oscillate button, which is the one I use the most.
This model seems a little less tippy than the previous one, but now the swivel is right at the bottom, so it remains to be seen if it will prove to be any more durable. It is very clear that Lasko gave zero thought to cleaning this fan because there is no simple way to access the blades of the blower. They even go out of their way to warn against opening it, which of course would be the only way to clean it properly. It also came with a card warning not to return to the store, which immediately made me want to return it!
Stylistically I suppose it's a matter of taste. Looking at it from a distance, standing in the doorway, it kind of evokes the image of a vacuum cleaner. I read another review that said it didn't have much swivel range. I thought surely it would be enough for my purposes, but in fact, it barely is. I'm guessing that it only moves about 45 degrees, so just keep that in mind. I think it probably does blow are faster than the previous model, but not necessarily a greater volume of air. I have an old galaxy fan that moves a lot more air with a lot less noise. But sadly, I read that Lasko bought Galaxy, so I'm guessing that they're not what they once were.
Customer reviews for Lasko Oscillating High Velocity Fan with Remote for
