Dreo PolyFan 513S Pedestal Smart Fan

Diving in to see what other devices you can make smart around your home is not only fun but efficient when it comes to automating the world around you and even helping to reduce energy use. Both of which can be found when it comes to automating the fans around your home as it can help reduce some of the strain on your HVAC system. Something we take a moment to look into today with the Dreo PolyFan 513S Pedestal Smart Fan.

As the name suggests, this is more than just your normal pedestal fan. This is a model that you can integrate into your network so that it can be operated beyond normal conventional controls (buttons and remote), allowing you to use your smart home setup and/or voice in addition to this. Something we have been wondering how well Dreo is at delivering ever since we learned about the existence of its smart tower fan (which likely operates quite similarly to this one).

First looking at it, the overall design appears to be your typical fan on a stick, with the fan at the top and a base at the bottom to keep it steady. However, even here, Dreo takes things further as it doesn’t just look like any other pedestal solution.

It carries a fun pattern throughout most of the body and base that looks like the metallic specks you’d find in a reinforced epoxy floor coating for a garage or work space. Only the pattern is a big muted in comparison so that it isn’t overwhelming to anything around it. Unless you are standing right in front of it, you likely wouldn’t even know it is there. Just enough to make it pop.

Then you have the faux leather design going around the arm that holds the fan to the stand. Offering an elegant feel to the design as well.

Multiple color tones throughout finishes this effect. It really does look nice to the eyes and helps give it the feeling that it is more than just your typical fan. It was designed to look good in its environment.

So you have good looks and a durable-looking pattern throughout. So how about how durable it is?

The base that comes in the box (which also carries the spec pattern throughout the greys color) provides most of the weight. Keeping it on the floor, preventing it from shaking, and provides the sound assurance that there was a lot of detail shared with how durable it should be.

Then there is the easy of the build process, which can be seen in the above image. The fan comes to you in two pieces with only the base being what you need to attach.

You get a single bolt and washer that is needed to make this attachment and the company does provide you with an allen key that has a phillips head on one side for achieving this without the need of your own tools. This is also a small phillips screwdriver for making adjustments, but we didn’t need to use it for anything.

Within moments, both sections are attached and you are ready to plug the fan into the wall using its included power cable.

The power connection is located near the center of the stand, so you do have a cable dropping down that is visible. You can try hiding it with some electrical tape tagged in a few places on the backside, but this does seem to be a compromise for how easy it is to attach the base.

It might have been nicer to find the connection point within the base as it may look nicer, but again, a few pieces of black tape and you likely won’t worry about the cable after that.

It does have a display across the front so you can easily see which modes are currently enabled and how fast the fan is set to. It’s a soft display that shouldn’t be distracting if you have it located in your bedroom at night.

This information can also be seen via the top, where all of the controllable action takes place. One of the many ways of controlling this fan, at least. You can see here that it breaks the modes down using both icons and small LED status lights.

Then there are five touch-sensitive buttons for controlling it. Including two directions of oscillation (left to right, and up and down), two for speed control (more or less), and a power button. The left to right oscillation button also acts as the trigger for pairing it to the app (holding it down for 5 seconds triggers pairing mode).

The vertical oscillation button (up and down) also allows you to mute or unmute the sounds it makes when you press buttons. This is a nice option that you don’t always find with some of these fans and helps to create a quiet environment for those resting nearby.Speaking of that oscillation, there aren’t many pedestal fans out there that offer up and down oscillation in addition to the left and right. And it is capable of pointing straight up. Allowing you to really control the angle in which the fan is focused on. So if you are trying to shoot air up into an area you are working, this can be accomplished this way.

When it isn’t oscillating, it can easily and smoothly be adjusted manually up and down by simply rotating it by hand. There doesn’t feel like there is any resistance to it nor does it seems to toy with its oscillation when you turn it on. This is just a neat additional feature it has to offer.

Back to controlling it, it also offers a small remote. Something Dreo is known for in its devices. It doesn’t take any space up at all. You just want to make sure you don’t lost it as it is quite helpful to have.

It operates using a coin cell battery inside and arrives with one already inserted and waiting for you to pull the tab out and start using it.

This remote has similar options to the top of the fan with the addition of the mode button. You have multiple modes to choose from, including normal, auto (speeds up and down based on the temperate of its environment), and turbo (max speed).  There is also a “natural” mode that allows it to run randomly at variable speeds to emulate the sound of a small breeze. However, that mode is only available via the app for whatever reason. Likely because it probably doesn’t get used a lot by consumers?

Speaking of the app! The app is the same one used for all of Dreo’s smart/connected products. Which is only a small handful of models at this time. You can find our review of Dreo’s smart air purifier here, which is one of these other products. There is also the smart tower fan we briefly mentioned earlier.

The app is quite user-friendly and it walks you through added the fan to your network (Wi-Fi). Once it is on the network, you can not only remotely control it from your phone or tablet, but you can also integrate it with an Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant device, if you have one/any.

This is where you can now control the fan using your voice or via these digital assistants in other ways. You can add the fan to various automations, like your goodnight or wake-up automations you may have configured. Allowing you to automate the fan so you almost never have to even bother with it.

The only thing it can’t do is integrate with other smart hubs directly. This includes options like Samsung’s SmartThings or more involved options like Home Assistant. This isn’t to say that these integrations won’t come in the future though, as all that is needed is API access (if the company ever plans to offer it). Not to mention, the growing popularity surrounding the new Matter standard is putting a lot of pressure on companies to make their products more flexible to these ecosystems.

Performance (some final notes)

Well, it seems I have touched on much of the performance already. There are many ways of controlling the fan, including the buttons across the top, the included remote control, or via your voice or simple automations within Google or Alexa digital assistants. So you have options here.

However, no fan is much of a fan if it can’t blow. Thankfully, this fan blows quite well. In fact, it quite impressed us when we set it to turbo the first time. At first, due to the size of its blades, you’d think it wouldn’t be on par with some of the larger circular fans out there. But this wasn’t the case. It actually created a stream of air that shot straight across about 30+ feet of space, blowing some papers over. Not bad!

So not only does this fan have many ways of controlling it, but it can be fully automated into your daily routines. Reducing the amount of interaction you ever have with it.

Update (Home Assistant)

An integration has been found for Home Assistant, developed by Jeff Steinbok here. It is third-party, so it doesn’t come with any support from Dreo. But Jeff seems to be hard at work looking to fill the gap with something that works. We have tested it ourselves and can confirm that it works for this model. This update is just for your information and does not affect the score since it is more of a custom hack/mod by the community than it is an official solution. I’m sure when a friendly API solution is provided, we’ll see plugins/addons like this pop-up all over among smart home ecosystems. 

Our Conclusion

This is a powerful fan with many features and looks great in its environment. The ability to control it via Google or Alexa is a huge plus compared to normal non-smart fans since (again) you can automate into your daily routines. I’m feeling a little repetitive here as I had just mentioned that. However, this is important to point out in our conclusion as it carries a lot of weight in our score of it.

It can be used in small to large spaces, although would likely operate best in small to mid-sized spaces. Its ability to oscillate in two different directions is unique enough to point out (again, we don’t come across a lot of fans capable of doing this). It is also pretty quiet when you have it set to its middle speed or less, so it should be great at night while you sleep.

It is a tad expensive for its size and inabilities to (officially) integrate with more complex smart home environments (like SmartThings, Home Assistant, Hubitat, etc). It really would be nice to see an API that gives integration to these other options as it would make Dreo’s products much more powerful than they are already. Not to mention the smart home community would gobble them up. But for now, they are definitely on the right track and the average consumer likely still hasn’t dove into those other smart home ecosystems just yet (but the numbers are growing).

Additional Images:

Specifications:

Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.