A compact and well-priced fan heater, the TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan delivers full remote control via the app. It’s arguably a better heater than it is a cooler, since the fan-only mode offers just a single speed. On heat mode, this fan dishes out a warm corridor of air and its thermostat means it will turn off when the right temperature has been reached. It’s ideal for on-desk use or for rooms up to 15m2.
Pros
- Great value
- Useful smart app control
- Flexible heating modes
Cons
- Basic scheduling
- Only one fan speed
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Heat modeThe fan heater has two heat modes and a thermostat, so it will pause automatically when the right temperature has been hit -
Fan modesThere’s a single-speed fan mode -
Smart featuresConnecting to Wi-Fi, the TCP fan can be controlled via the Smart Life or TCP apps.
Introduction
Small and compact, the TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan is a smart electric heater that also comes with a fan-only mode. It’s a useful little appliance for personal heating, although it would perform better as a cooling fan if there was a choice of fan speeds.
Design and Features
- Connects to TCP or Smart Life app
- Fan or heat modes
- Full controls via the front
Not everyone needs a full-sized fan heater, with something more compact and more personal, such as the TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan, able to do the job. Measuring just 370 x 180 x 180mm, this model is designed to sit on a desktop, and doesn’t take up much space.
It’s pretty easy to use, too, with a physical switch at the rear of the unit to cut power and buttons on the front to change the settings. The TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan’s Mode button lets you switch between the fan mode, low heat and high heat modes.
For heat, there’s a temperature button to cycle through target temperatures, which run from 15ºC to 40ºC. The latter is too high for comfort and unlikely that you’ll ever reach this temperature given the size and power of the fan heater.
Having only a single fan-only speed is a bit of shame. Although far more expensive, the Dyson Purifier Hot + Cool Formaldehyde has ten fan speeds in addition to heating controls.
Oscillation enables the fan to swing from side to side. An exact figure isn’t quoted, but it looks to be around 90 degrees. While that appears to be quite a narrow range, and it would be if you were cooling or heating an entire room, sat at a desk, it’s just about the right level.
Timers are available in hourly increments from one hour to 12. There’s no night mode as such, although once running for a few minutes, the fan cuts its lights and the display.
Rather than having to use physical buttons, the TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan also offers Wi-Fi connectivity. As is the case with other TCP products, such as the Smart WiFi Plug, you can use either TCP’s own app or the Smart Life app for control.
There’s no difference in terms of the level of control offered, but I prefer the Smart Life app – through it, I can control devices from several different manufacturers, such as the Hey! Smart Power Bar.
For controls, the app delivers the same options you see on the front of the fan, only they’re a little easier to use here. This is handy since it means you can control the fan from the other side of a room, plus there’s an extra feature in the form of Schedules, too. This lets you set when to turn the fan on and off automatically, but there’s no option to set the fan mode or target temperature, so the scheduling isn’t as useful as it could be.
Alexa and Google Assistant integration are both an option, with on/off controls and the option to set a target temperature. I couldn’t get the oscillation mode to turn on.
Tip-over protection is super-sensitive: as soon as the fan moves from being upright, it clicks off to prevent any potential damage.
Performance
The TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan drew 1462W of power on high heat mode and 1031W on low heat mode. There are more powerful fan heaters available, but since the TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan is likely to be sat pretty close to you, these options are sensible enough. I could sit in the heat stream without feeling uncomfortable.
There’s enough heat output to warm a room up to 15m2. I found that it worked well in the smaller room in the Trusted Reviews home appliance test lab (around 12.5m2), taking the temperature from 23C to 29C in 30-minutes, although the room didn’t get any warmer than that. This room size felt like the upper limit of the fan’s capabilities, and I’d use it somewhere slightly smaller, such as an office room.
I then switched to fan mode. At 15cm, I measured the fan at 1.75m/s. That level of speed is good for a warm day, but I’d want more power on a very hot day. Conversely, on a slightly cooler day, this fan speed can be a bit too much. As such, having a range of speeds is important, as is offered by the Dyson Pure Cool Me.
At 1m, fan speed dropped to 0.74m/s – that’s sufficient to feel a small amount of air movement, but it doesn’t do much for cooling. This fan really is for close-up use only.
At 15cm from the fan, I measured sound at 53dB – which is both the maximum and minimum since there’s only one fan speed.
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Should you buy it?
If you want a compact, smart fan heater, then you’ll struggle to find a unit as well featured at this price.
If you care more about cooling than heating, this fan doesn’t offer as much control or as many options as rival models.
Final Thoughts
With smart options built in, the TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan can be controlled from anywhere. It’s a useful little fan heater: it doesn’t take up much room, and works well to add an extra layer of comfort on a cold day.
It’s less useful as a fan, however. With just a single speed option, there isn’t much control on offer for the level of cooling you get. Rivals such as the Princess Smart Heating and Cooling Tower offer multiple fan speeds on cooling-only mode.
That’s not to say that the TCP Smart Wifi Portable Bladeless Ceramic Heater & Cooling Fan is a poor product, but whether or not you opt for it will depend on the type of heating/cooling you’re after. If you want a unit mainly for cooling, there are better options in my guide to the best fans; for heating, and a cool blast only on occasion, this is a useful product, particularly for smaller rooms.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every fan we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main fan for the review period
We measure the fan speed using an anemometer so that we can accurately compare performance between models
FAQs
Yes, it does. It’s programmable between 15ºC and 40ºC.
Yes, there’s a fan-only mode that runs at a constant speed.
Sustainability
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As part of this mission, whenever we review a product we send the company a series of questions to help us gauge and make transparent the impact the device has on the environment.
We currently haven’t received answers to the questions on this product, but will update this page the moment we do. You can see a detailed breakdown of the questions we ask and why in our sustainability info page.
Jargon buster
Alexa
Amazon’s smart voice assistant
Google Assistant
A voice assistant which is Google’s take on Amazon’s Alexa.
