Shark TurboBlade TF200SUK

Design and Features

• Dual blades
• Horizontal, vertical or in between positioning
• Relies on the remote control

Coming in a box that looks too small to hold such a fan, the Shark TurboBlade needs a little bit of assembly before it’s ready to go. In typical Shark fashion, assembly is an easy job. With helpful peel-off labels telling you what to do, I quickly clipped the three components together and didn’t even need the manual.

As you can see from the images, the Shark TurboBlade is different to other bladeless fans, such as the Dyson Cool CF1, in that it has a long (or tall, depending on which way the fan is orientated) vent at the top.

Cleverly, this blade can be stood vertically, where it takes up less space, rotated horizontally, and angled anywhere inbetween. For example, it could match the angle of someone in a recliner.

I love the way the mechanism works. There are no buttons to push, just a bit of gentle force required to rotate the fan blade, and then it sticks in its position. That’s a lot of clever work to make something relatively complicated seem effortless.

As well as the entire blade shifting, the fan is height adjustable, with 26cm of adjustment. Again, the adjustment is effortless: slide up or down and the fan sticks in its position.

That’s a lot of movement available there, but the Shark TurboBlade goes further, as either side of the blade can be adjusted with a simple twist action. That can let you circulate air better by twisting one side down and one side up, or you can cool two people either side of the blades. It’s a huge amount of flexibility that I’ve not seen in other fans.

Control of the fan is mostly through the remote control, which attaches magnetically to the top of the fan. It’s a neat design and I like remotes like this, as they’re harder to lose. And, really don’t lose the remote, as it contains the bulk of the controls.

Fan speed controls let me set the fan at one of its ten speeds. Above the power button on the main unit, the five LEDs light up one at a time to show the first five fan speeds, then speeds six to 10 are show when the LEDs reset.

This layout does mean that it’s hard to see what the actual fan speed is, although I could usually guess by the sound and level of air.

There’s a single button that I could press and hold once to cycle up through fan speeds; press and hold again cycles down through fan speeds. Some manual control is fine, but the advanced controls are on the remote.

These include a timer, which has five options: one, two, four, eight or 12 hours. When pressing the timer button, the LEDs are used to highlight which option is selected, if you can remember what the options are. It does feel as though a small LCD screen would be more useful.

There’s also a special button that moves between three modes: Sleep (quieter, lights off), Boost (maximum fan speed, higher than setting 10 – think of it as going to 11), and Breeze (replicates a natural breeze).

Finally, there are buttons that nudge the fan to rotate a little to the left or the right, and an oscillation button that can be repeatedly pressed to cycle through the three modes of 45°, 90° or 180°.

To help prevent dirty air from being blown out, a simple air filter at the back blocks bigger particles, such as pet hair. This should be removed and cleaned regularly. The Shark TurboBlade isn’t an air purifier, but it’s nice to see that it stops the bigger detritus from circulating.

Performance

• Wide coverage
• Quiet
• Powerful

I tested the Shark TurboBlade with an anemometer to measure wind speed and a decibel meter to determine its loudness (or quietness). On its minimum speed, the fan output air at 1.07m/sec, but I couldn’t get a reading at 1m, although there was a gentle breeze that I could feel. I found the fan exceptionally quiet, with a reading of 38.5dB at 1m, which means that the fan’s noise is no louder than the background noise of the room.

On the medium speed setting, I found that the fan was a more powerful 2.42m/sec at 15cm, dropping to a still-decent 1.14m/sec at 1m. I found the fan quiet, still at 42.9dB.

Moving to speed 10, the maximum by conventional means, the Shark TurboBlade jumped to 3.7m/sec at 15cm and 1.8m/sec at 1m, which is quite a breeze, suitable for most occasions. Sound was still good at 51.6dB, with a hum to the fan.

These speeds fall behind the biggest breezes that fans can generate, such as the powerful Princess Smart Tower Fan, which put out air at 5.6m/sec at 15cm on its highest setting.

However, the Shark TurboBlade has a Boost setting, which ramps fan speeds up higher, giving 5.5m/sec at 15cm and 2.27m/sec at 1m. That’s quite a powerful breeze and helps when you need to recirculate air.

I found that noise jumped to 55.2dB, which isn’t too bad, although there’s a ‘ssshhhh’ sound on Boost that’s clearly audible. I think that this might be because of the thin opening in the blade. Pass anything in front of the opening, and you can hear the sound instantly change.

What is impressive about the Shark TurboBlade is the width of the air. It’s common to sit in front of a fan and find that there’s a distinct sweet spot where the breeze reaches. When you step outside of this, then the effect drops.

Thanks to its wide blade, the Shark TurboBlade delivers a wide (or tall) gust of air, which more easily covers a room.

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Should you buy it?