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This summer will be another hot summer, which may make you scrambling to find a better way to stay cool. 

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For overheated consumers, this has reignited an old debate: Should I buy a fan or an air conditioner?

As you may have guessed, the answer may vary from person to person, depending on several factors. To understand this and determine which cooling solution is best for you, we first need to understand how each technology works.

Although fans and air conditioners help you stay cool in very different ways, they both mainly use the cooling capacity of evaporative cooling. 

The fan blows air across your skin, which promotes the evaporation of water. Evaporation is an endothermic process, which means that when moisture becomes steam, it absorbs heat from the surroundings. Part of what makes fans so efficient is that they don't cool the entire room, only you.

Air conditioners use the same mechanism, but the method is much more complicated. Inside the air conditioner is a ring of coolant, which constantly evaporates and condenses. The air is sucked into the air conditioner and cooled by the evaporation process. The condensation process takes place elsewhere in the equipment so that the heat can be dissipated outside the home.

Compared with the energy required by a fan to blow air onto the skin, an air conditioner requires much more energy to transfer heat to the surroundings. Therefore, it is significantly more energy efficient to stop yourself in front of the fan. The fan uses about 1% of the power consumed by the air conditioner. You can run the fan for a full 24 hours and still consume less energy than an air conditioner for 15 minutes.

Although there are some ways to minimize the energy used by home air conditioners, fans should be the preferred cooling option for environmentally conscious people. 

Having said that, they are not ideal in all situations.

Although it is ideal in many situations, you should avoid fans when things really start to heat up. 

By speeding up the evaporation of water from the skin, fans will also increase the rate of dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. This is why CDC only recommends the use of fans at temperatures below 95°F. Increasing hot air circulation and sweat evaporation can actually accelerate heat-related diseases such as heat stroke. Unless you can use a fan to suck in cooler air from the outside, it's best to turn it off.

The fan will not reduce the overall humidity. Humidity will make you feel hotter. On humid days, sweat will evaporate from the skin more slowly, which further limits the efficiency of the fan.

Fans work best when used at close range, so if you are sitting a few feet away, they won't do much for you.

Although air conditioners consume a lot of energy, they are the most comfortable cooling option when the temperature starts to rise. Because they reduce the ambient heat in your environment, they are better at cooling larger areas. Air conditioning also helps to remove moisture from the air, reduce humidity, and allow your body to dissipate heat more effectively. If the temperature is higher than 95°F, air conditioning is the best choice for cooling.

It is not fair to compare fans and air conditioners directly, because they are good at different things. Deciding which one is more suitable for you depends on the current situation.

Use air conditioning in the following situations:

No matter what decision you make, we can meet your needs: we have conducted laboratory tests on the best fans, desktop fans, air conditioners and portable air conditioners (and can explain the difference between the latter two), so you You can figure out which fan or air conditioner best suits your needs. 

During the heat wave, you don’t have time to deal with products that can’t get the job done, so shop wisely and stay calm!

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