Customer Reviews

Vornado FA1-0003-13 Silver Swan Fan

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Pros: moves a lot of air, cool retro look is appealing, nice low frequency sound for those that like the white noise of a fan while they sleep, modestly priced for a product with a lot of steel content.

Cons: cheap plastic switch that feels destined to break before long, a little difficult to clean but this isn't much different from every other fan I've owned. One of the two I own has something loose in the motor housing that results in a metal to metal bell tone when it's oscillating. Probably something I can fix but at only about three months old, something I shouldn't have to deal with.

Bottom line: a good fan with a great look but a little pricey relative to comparable plastic fans (so is everything with high steel content lately). Long term reliability is a question mark. If all you want is a fan to move some air, this isn't the fan for you.

I agree with another reviewer in that the fan is very nicely designed [something I place a lot of importance in] however, practically everything about this fan is aggravating. From having to disassemble it to clean the blades to the fact that on the low speed it rattles to the fact that the side knob to hold angle doesn't actually hold. This product *looks* like it's rock solid but it's a flimsy item.

This fan is extremely solid looking, and powerful, as well as attractive, but behaves strangely. The base and the fan seem to be assembled with some sort of floating mechanism that makes the fan seem like it just wobbles around sometimes. You can tell the second you take it out of the box. In spite of the wobbly assembly, the thing really pushes air around really well, and my air conditioning no longer seems 'stale'. I'm sure there are other fans that are more powerful, solid, inexpensive and definitely lightweight, but none are as cool looking as this one.

(Later on, after a customer inquiry to Vornados web site)
As it turns out, the fan is not supposed to be wobbly, but instead should be very sturdy. The rep told me to pack it up and send it back to the factory. That's pretty inconvenient, because this thing is going to cost me about 20 bucks to ship, let along the packaging that is going to have to be carefully engineered. Dont buy this. The situation now stinks, and by the time I get the new one, I will have paid way more than it is worth. As a matter of fact, I am sending it back to Amazon, and they can pay for the shipping label. Thanks, Amazon, for a great message board for me to vent on.

Sure it's pretty, but it's also pretty useless. Like Hobbs (another reviewer) noted, the knob to hold the fan at a particular angle DOESN'T hold. So it blows air where IT wants, not where I want. Obviously, this is a problematic product. I should have known better, given how many "factory reconditioned" ones I have seen available. Gee, wonder why the factory has so many available to recondition. Dumb me for buying it. Do yourself a favor and find a real vintage fan at a thrift store.

A solid, heavy duty fan which is light years better than the all plastic box fans out there. The heavier than usual weight knobs (which are a heavy plastic) worked fine for me and the fan succeeds just fine in moving air around. We've had ours for several seasons, use it in the bedroom and are very happy with it both in terms of its' style and utility.

this fan is very well built and very stylish looking but it moves very little air for the amount of wind noise it makes!i returned it and it is taking amazon a loooooooooooooong time to put the funds back on my mastercard!

This fan approaches air-conditioning in its cooling capacity in my eyes, and I'm known as the one who's always turning the temperature towards "Arctic" on our thermostat! It's sound lulls me to sleep with memories of sleeping under an enormous GE oscillating floor fan made of steel back in the 1960's before air-conditioning was everywhere. And on top of it all, it's beautiful. I own two and am thinking of buying a third for yet another room in my house. I wouldn't live in Georgia without it.

I love mine, plain and simple. Never had a problem, runs smooth and wonderfully. I've had it a good while too, going on a year I believe.

To let everyone know I own 2 of these fans the first one with black grille I bought over 7 years ago at Brookstone it ran great for a while then the darned oscillator broke and the fan got paralized but it still work over 7 years,..Later the second one I bought a couple of years ago at another online store (silver grille) and worked O.K. the switch knob fell off the first time I used it and the speed selection was all in reverse ( fastest speed first and so on..) right now the fan is seizing up from dust and pet hair..these fans are not pet dander and dust friendly and require a lot of cleaning to keep them in top shape and in some cases the fan cage can be a pain to undo for cleaning and Vornado placed a cheap aluminum end cap on the fan blade hub that in some cases is over tightened and can easily strip with a screwdriver then (you will find out that this piece is also threaded to the motor shaft) and when you run these fans for a while the oscillator gearbox will fail make a note of that it will break because the gear box uses the same cheap nylon/plastic parts a Chinese made oscillating uses,I believe this failure is due to the extra weight of the fan housing and putting either no thought or very little into the oscillator gearbox. over all good fan high maintenance...not for everyone.

Don't be fooled like me, this fan is el cheapo. I just got mine, and it rattles real loud every time it oscillates. It's like a Chinese water torture.