PC Toys Breeze MAXX Personal Cooling Fan

Something for hot geeks – Brian

SUMMARY: Turning the tables on computer heat.

After spending a bunch of your hard earned money on case fans, heatsinks, watercooling, perhaps even as far as phase change cooling for your PC, don’t you think
it’s only fair that your computer should cool YOU off for a while??

Well, that’s what one inventive company thinks.

The good folks at PC Toys
sent me an item today to have a look at. Their
“Breeze MAXX Quad LED Personal Cooling Fan”.

So, what IS a “Personal Cooling Fan”, and exactly how is my PC going to cool ME with it?

Well, this fan is designed to sit on your desktop, and cool you, personally. It features a dual power source option, wherein you can run this product with 4 “AAA”
batteries, or plug the supplied cable into an open USB port on your computer, and use the USB +5v power to operate it.

Let’s take a quick visual tour around the item here:

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I thought it a bit curious to have a “Power On” LED present, when there’s four LED’s lighting the fan. If it’s turned on, they’re also on…

While the fan is small, it does move air. It’s certainly not going to fill in for your air conditioner in the summer, but it can certainly be useful.
The “Fast” setting does push a bit more air than low, and is strong enough to be felt as far as four or five feet away. I held a BIC lighter as far as six
feet from the fan on “Fast”, and it would make the flame flicker.

The four (five, really) LEDs emit a fair amount of light as well.

This is a really neat item to throw in the bag if you’re headed off to a LAN party. It’s very quiet, even on the “Fast” setting, the cord is easily
long enough to reach from under the table to the desktop, and it will even illuminate your keyboard a little bit in a darkened room while gaming. And when
the fragging gets hot and heavy, you’ve got this fan to keep you nice and cool. Speaking of that, here’s the numbers on the fan itself:

• Fan size: 70x70x25mm, Ball Bearing
• RPM: 2800 – 3200 rpm (+/- 10%)
• Noise: 25.0 – 27.5 dBA
• 20.13 CFM@2800 rpm
• 27.19 CFM@3200 rpm
• Power Source: USB (+5v DC) or 4x “AAA” batteries

I really like this item. It’s no replacement for a 12″ pedestal fan, but would come in handy at the office, or in that cramped little cubicle you might be stuck in.
The LED’s are definitely attention getters, to those who might not be acquainted with such things as a lighted case fan. While somewhat of a “novelty”
item, it really can be a useful thing to have on occasion, and like I mentioned, I can see it being a bit more popular with the gaming crowd, where it’s
small, quiet, can run off of your PC itself, and will take that edge off in a warm room.

I’d like to thank PC Toys
for sending this out for review.

Email Brian