Lasko Aria Smart Tower Fan Review

Many areas of the country have been experiencing super-high temperatures this summer, which means it’s time to break out the window air conditioners and fans. If you’re in the market for a new tower fan, a style that’s popular thanks to its small footprint, Lasko recently released a fancy new gadget: the Lasko Aria Smart Tower Fan (available at Amazon for $115.84) .

This smart Lasko fan connects to your phone, allowing you to control it through the new Aria app, and it’s also compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant. I love discovering the latest smart home technology, so I took the fan for a spin on a few 90-degree days. Keep reading to find out everything I liked—and what I didn’t enjoy—about this smart tower fan.

What we like

It’s powerful yet very quiet

The Lasko Aria fan arrived at the perfect time, allowing me to put it to use just as a heat wave swept through New England. We have a small window air conditioner in our main living area, but because the room is fairly large with high ceilings, the air conditioner often needs help distributing the cool air throughout the space.

This Lasko fan was the perfect option for this task—I set it up next to the air conditioner, and it was able to push the cool air all around the room and even into the next room, helping to cool down a large portion of our home.

This fan has five speed settings, and I found that the third setting was just right in terms of power and noise level. On the medium setting, you can feel the light breeze from 10 or so feet away, yet the fan is virtually silent—it’s much quieter than our other Honeywell tower fan.

The sound didn’t disrupt us while we were watching TV, and I think it would be a great choice for a bedroom if you like to keep your space as quiet as possible. (Plus, you can turn the lights off on the control panel to use it in a dark room!)

You can control it via voice commands

I use Amazon’s Alexa every day to control all sorts of gadgets around the house, so I was excited to see that this smart fan can be synced with voice control. The app doesn’t connect to Alexa automatically—you have to go into the settings and select the digital assistant you want to use under “Third Party Control”—but once I enabled the skill, I was able to control this Lasko fan using voice commands. This came in handy when I wanted to turn the fan on or off but didn’t feel like getting up or didn’t have my phone nearby.

However, I will say that the Alexa controls are very basic. I could only ever get the fan to turn on or shut off through voice commands—I wasn’t able to adjust the speed or oscillation. When I asked her to adjust these settings, Alexa would simply say, “Hmm, I’m not sure about that.”

What we don’t like

The app is essentially just a remote control

While I do like that the Lasko Aria fan can be controlled through Alexa, I’m not completely sold on the necessity of its smart features.

Generally speaking, the best internet-connected devices are more convenient to use or have more features than their traditional counterparts.

For instance, with a smart light bulb, you can change the color from your phone, turn it on and off without having to flip the light switch, and even monitor how much energy it’s using—all things that regular light bulbs can’t do.

On the other hand, the Aria fan has most of the same features as a regular tower fan. The app interface has the basic controls that you’d find on a standard remote—on/off, speed adjustment, timer, oscillation, etc.

The only “added” feature is the ability to schedule the fan to turn on and off at certain times, but I can’t think of an instance when I would use this feature.

Bottom line? I don’t think the smart features add much in terms of functionality or convenience that you couldn’t get with a remote-controlled tower fan.

It’s more expensive than other smart fans

For a standard 40-inch tower fan without smart features, you can generally expect to pay between $50 and $80. The Lasko Aria Smart Tower Fan is quite a bit more expensive, retailing for around $125.

Considering that I wasn’t blown away by its features, I think this is a bit steep—I’d rather buy a standard fan with a remote control and save the $50.

Even if you have your heart set on a smart tower fan, the Lasko model is still one of the more expensive options. The Govee Life Smart Tower Fan and Dreo Smart Tower Fan both offer Alexa-compatibility and other smart features, and they retail for $90. It seems like the Lasko model is a bit overpriced, especially because it doesn’t offer any new or wow-worthy features.

Should you buy the Lasko Aria Smart Tower Fan?

No, there are more affordable smart tower fans.

The Lasko Aria Smart Tower fan is powerful and quiet, and overall, it helped keep my house cool during a string of hot days.

However, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it—not at full price, anyway. Its smart features are limited to scheduling and syncing up with Alexa or Google Assistant, and while sometimes handy, its Alexa integration is still very basic and doesn’t offer a full range of controls.

Overall, the feature set on this smart tower fan simply doesn’t justify its higher-than-average price point. It’s not a bad choice, but there are more affordable options out there, like the Govee Life Smart Tower Fan and Dreo Smart Tower Fan, that will work just as well.

Lasko Aria Smart Oscillating Tower Fan

The Lasko Aria Smart Tower Fan is powerful and quiet, but it is more expensive than similar options.

$118 at Amazon