- [Reviewer] In this video I test the Arctic Air,
a personal air cooler and humidifier,
a full video review,
of this as-seen-on-tv product.
We measure the Arctic Air's
claimed quiet operation,
and it's power consumption,
with surprising results.
(upbeat music)
Let's start with unboxing the contents.
I recommend reading the instructions, this time.
Just to avoid doing anything dumb
with your Arctic Air.
We have a USB cable, which is curious,
as you don't normally put much power
through one of these, and an adapter.
It's well protected,
so it's unlikely to get damaged in the mail.
It looks impressive.
The styling is very modern,
it looks comparable with something
much more expensive.
On the top of your Arctic Air
you have a power ON/OFF button,
fan speed indicator light,
and a button to change the LED display colour.
You, have a grill front and back,
with directional adjustment for the air,
on the front of the grill.
On the side,
this is where you find your 600 ml water tank,
the water tank lights up,
which we'll look at in a moment.
I've watched reviews of the Arctic Air,
with people testing before and after
room temperatures, that's very misguided.
It's not supposed to lower
the whole room temperature.
The manufacturers give you clues.
One, it's smaller than a shoebox!
Two, it says on the box, personal air cooler,
and it says in the instructions,
stay within a few feet of the Arctic Air
to feel the best benefit.
My, experience is that it does what it says
on the box really well.
I use it in my office,
making a very compact replacement
for my old regular 12-inch oscillating fan,
which I had before.
How does it do this?
Well it's cooling you in a different way.
An ordinary desk fan just forces
room temp air at you quickly.
The Arctic Air uses water,
to cool a smaller volume of air
that's pushed towards you.
This evaporative air cooling,
I found really comfortable,
and I only needed to use the Arctic Air
on its lowest setting.
Inside the water tank are two LEDs,
which give you a built in mood light,
or a nightlight.
You can have one of seven colours,
or have it cycle them,
or you can have the light off.
An unexpected bonus with the Arctic Air,
was it's very low-power consumption.
My old desk fan I mentioned earlier,
was using over 40 watts.
The Arctic Air keeps me cooler,
and watch this,
I tested it on its lowest setting, which I prefer,
and the Arctic Air uses just 1.5 watts.
On the middle setting I recorded 2.4 watts,
and on its maximum setting,
just 4.6 watts, that's crazy!
I paid 39.99 for the Arctic Air,
which is great I think,
and it's saving me money.
The arctic air cools, humidifiers,
and purifies the air around you.
I'm happy to give it a tick in all of those boxes.
They tell us it's quiet an operation,
but ears asked for a second opinion,
so I tested it with an app on my iPod.
On its highest setting I got 55 decibels
from a couple of feet away.
On the middle power setting,
I record around 50 decibels from the Arctic Air.
And on its lowest setting, around 41.
I found the highest setting irritates me a little.
Just one fill of the reservoir
is meant to last around eight hours.
I guess that depends what setting it's running at.
I can confirm it does not leak,
unless your house is built on a slope,
so keep it on a flat surface,
and don't play football with it,
and it works fine.