In Review: Dreo Pilot Max tower fan

You may have noticed that we’ve had some articles about deals from Dreo (seen here, for example). This is a home appliance brand that we’ve become aware of as of late, as they seem to be delivering products that are at the intersection of affordable and well-sorted. As part of that, we have been recently spending time with one of their latest tower fans, the Dreo Pilot Max.

While we do have central air in our home, we rely on fans to help move air around in some of the rooms. In the bedrooms, it’s a smaller (but powerful circulator) fan, but on the main floor, we’ve liked to have a tower fan to move air within a room, or even across rooms. Tower fans are great for this, as they take up very little floor space. For that, though, they can move a larger volume of air more quietly due to the taller blades. We’d worn through some more inexpensive ones after a summer or two, so it will be interesting to see how the Dreo Pilot Max holds up.

Out of the box, there’s a small bit of assembly you have to do on the Dreo Pilot Max. You need to assemble the two halves of the base, slip that onto the bottom of the fan, and then hand-tighten a large red plastic nut to hold it into place. Once that is done, all you need to do is to plug in the power adapter, remove the film protecting the battery in the remote (which stores nicely in the top of the fan when you’re not using it), and you’re ready to make a breeze.

On our main floor, you basically have a straight shot across the three rooms in front, so we setup the fan on the far end. You can have it oscillating to move air in the room, but we more commonly have it stationary, moving air across the three rooms. On the highest setting, I’m able to still feel the breeze a good 20-25 feet away, which is no small feat. Yes, at that higher level, the fan is going to be noisier, but it maxes out at 48 dB (at it’s lowest level, the fan puts out a whisper of 25 dB). To have a single fan moving air efficiently across three rooms, that is great. And on days where it’s not nearly as warm, we drop it down to a lower speed, and you don’t even notice it’s there and running.

For us, we tend to keep the Dreo Pilot Max on Normal mode, which just keeps things running at a consistent speed. As you can see in that photo from the manual (above) there are three other modes as well. They’re interesting, but perhaps the most curious one would be the Auto mode, which can adjust its speed related to the temperature. Nice if it’s in a room that starts off cool in the mornings, and then heats up throughout the day. With that, you can leave the fan on all day and let it adjust itself.

Another feature that I rather like is the display on the Dreo Pilot Max. It gives you the information you need (usually fan speed, but you can see the mode as well), but it also has a trick up its sleeve. By that, I mean it has a light sensor. During the day, the display is on, as you’d expect. Once the room darkens, though, the display will turn itself off. I don’t find it to be overly bright, but cutting down the additional light in a room at the evening is certainly helpful if you’re trying to sleep. You can also control whether or not the fan beeps at you as you press the touch-sensitive buttons, also helpful in a room someone is sleeping in.

The base Dreo Pilot Max that we reviewed comes in at $129.99, but there’s a slightly upgraded version that comes with WiFi built in for $149.99. With that, you can control the fan via your phone, either directly in the app, or even with your smart assistant of choice. For us, the non-wifi model is just fine, and it’s been a very welcome addition to our living space as the temps have started to climb. If you want to pick one up, these are of course available over on Amazon, or directly from Dreo at dreo.com