Duux Globe Review

The Duux Globe is a compact desk fan offering a range of decent features, and packing a surprisingly powerful punch. While it lacks the app-based smart features of some other Duux fans, it comes with a remote control, so you can still change settings without having to get up.

This fan appears too small for circulating the air in a big room, but it can throw a breeze for several metres, making itself felt from far further than you’d expect – and with minimal noise. While I wouldn’t choose it for the biggest rooms, it’s more than capable of cooling you as you sleep or work. As a bonus, its modern design and unobtrusive hum means it’s an inoffensive addition to any room.

Introduction

If you’re looking for a big brute of an air circulator to move air around your East London loft, move on. If, however, you’re after a compact and quiet fan that will go anywhere in a typical home, Duux might just have the answer. The Globe is a modern and reasonably stylish table fan, built to stir up a decent breeze without shouting you down in the process.

While the Globe skips the smart features found in some other Duux models such as the Duux Whisper Flex Smart, it has everything you’re likely to need for the workspace or bedroom. Perhaps its most important quality is that it’s effective but very quiet on its lowest speed, making it super-easy to have on in the background while you’re working, or to ignore at night time.

Given that it’s essentially a small and simple fan, the Duux Globe might seem ambitiously priced. It costs marginally more than one of my favourites: the excellent Meacofan 650 Air Circulator . So how does it compare, and should you buy it?

Design and features

• Modern design
• Horizontal and vertical oscillation
• Needs a couple more speeds

The Duux Globe arrives fully assembled, and ready to go once you connect up the external power supply. It’s unmistakably a modern fan. From straight on, its compact DC motor is almost obscured by the roundel on the front grille. Its three-blade rotor is transparent, creating an impression that there’s lots of empty air behind the front grille.

The curved fan head rests on a neat conical base. At the front are indicator lights for power, fan speed, and the off timer. The touch-sensitive controls are perhaps a little basic: there are only three speeds, and the timer counts down for just one or three hours. With no dedicated button, changing speeds is an intuition test: you need to tap, rather than hold, the power symbol.

Fortunately, the seven-button remote control also covers all of the Duux Globe’s features.

The Globe has both horizontal and vertical oscillation – a clear advantage over the Meacofan 650, which only turns from side to side. You can have either, neither, or both enabled at the same time. With the horizontal swing on, the top section of the base rotates through a 90-degree arc. The vertical range is from slightly downwards to about 10 degrees short of straight up. I found the fan sometimes took a couple of cycles to gain its full range of vertical movement after being switched on, however.

Unusually for a modern DC fan, the Globe has only three speeds. It could certainly do with an even more gentle waft at the low end of the scale, plus another speed or two in the middle would offer more choice before the noise begins to pick up at higher speeds.

Performance

• Very quiet and efficient
• A long-ranged, focused breeze
• Doesn’t shift a huge volume of air

Plugin the Duux Globe, turn it on, and you’ll be relieved you didn’t buy a cheaper fan with a noisier AC motor. At its lowest speed there’s just a thrum, and you can’t hear any wind noise at all. I measured the sound from 15cm away at just 37.5db, falling to only 26.7dB at 1m. I repeated the measurements from a 90-degree angle – completely out of the air flow – and measured 25.0dB and 20.6dB respectively.

Although that makes this objectively among the very quietest fans we’ve reviewed, subjectively it seems slightly louder than it is. There’s a subtle hum from the motor, and very faint whirrs if you turn on either oscillation feature. Despite soft rubber feet, this fan transmitted gentle vibrations into some of the hard surfaces on which it was placed, which amplified its volume slightly further.

To be clear, this is still a very quiet fan, but its noise does go up considerably with the speed setting. At full chat, I measured 65dB at 15cm and 55dB from 1m. Completely out of the air flow these figures fell to 43dB and 35.9dB respectively, which is still quiet for a fan of this power.

Speaking of power, the Duux Globe is extremely efficient, consuming only 6 watts (W) at full speed. On its lowest setting, power consumption fell below the 1W minimum that my power meter can measure. The supplied AC wall adapter has a reasonable 2m cable length, but the Globe misses out on the flexibility of a USB power connection – if you want to use it in a caravan or boat, you’ll need an AC socket.

Duux says that the Globe can shift up to 198 cubic metres of air every hour, which seems like a conservative estimate. On its lowest setting I measured a wind speed of 2m/s from 15cm away, falling to a gentle 1.1m/s at 1m. Cranked up to full power, the Globe propelled air at up to 4.6m/s, falling to 3.6m/s at 1m. Significantly, even after 2m, air was still moving at up to 2.2m/s.

This penetrating breeze reflects the Globe’s ability to generate a tightly focused, fast-moving column of air. Duux claims a 7m air flow, and at top speed I could feel a mild breeze from nearly 8m away. However, the effect was centred around a fairly narrow point. In a bigger room, the Globe’s oscillation means that everyone would get occasional blasts, but it wouldn’t actually stir the same volume of air as the Meacofan 650, let alone monsters such as the Vonhaus 18” Floor Fan.

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Final thoughts

If you want a quiet and unobtrusive fan for a workspace, bedside table or smaller room, the Duux Globe makes a great choice. It’s quiet, very efficient, and throws out a powerful breeze over some distance. While it’s a little short on fan speeds, and it could benefit from a longer sleep timer, it makes up for it with both horizontal and vertical oscillation.

We like the Globe’s modern design, and the novelty of its empty-looking head. While the uninitiated might struggle to work out how to change speeds, you can always just hand them the compact remote control.

The Duux Globe is a great fan. Its performance, size and features are quite similar to the slightly cheaper Meacofan 650 Air Circulator – although, ultimately, it doesn’t push as much air around the room. If vertical oscillation is a must, we’re happy to recommend it. If you can live without it, save a tenner and buy the Meacofan 650 or check out our other best buy fans.

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