Duux Whisper Flex 2

Introduction

Worried that your current room fan doesn’t have all the bells and whistles to get you through the next heatwave? Sounds like you might need the Duux Whisper Flex 2.

If you’ve already gone looking for an upgrade to your existing home cooling set-up, then there’s a good chance that you’ve come across Dutch manufacturer Duux in your research. The company puts out everything from air conditioners to humidifiers, not to mention a sizeable array of fans.

I’ve already tested the excellent (and budget-friendly) Duux Rize, and so I had fairly high expectations for the much pricier Duux Whisper Flex 2, but I wasn’t quite expecting it to provide features I didn’t know I wanted. Here’s my take.

Design and features

• 30 levels of airflow
• Oscillates both horizontally and vertically
• Scheduling available via the Duux app

Having been spoilt a tad from the Dyson Cool CF1, I wasn’t quite anticipating the building process that initially goes into setting up the Whisper Flex 2. It only takes a couple of minutes thankfully, but it does involve putting the apparatus together piece by piece, and unscrewing the fan cage to then attach it to the main stem. Once the fan is set up though, there’s no denying that the Duux Whisper Flex 2 is one slick bit of kit.

Forget the rickety fans of old, this all-black frame has a very confident look to it, particularly with the uncluttered circular stand at the bottom which features an eye-catching little touchscreen. When assembled, the Whisper Flex 2 stands at a tall 95cm, and while you can’t adjust the height of it at the stem, you’ll soon realise that you won’t need to when you see just how many features are under the hood.

Kicking things off with oscillation, not only can the Flex 2 move horizontally up to 90 degrees, but it can also shift vertically up to 100 degrees, and those two modes can operate at the same time to really increase the reach of the airflow. It’s by far the most versatile fan I’ve come across in this department.

There are 30 speed settings in total, four more than the original Whisper Flex so you have greater flexibility than before (if you pardon the pun). There’s a ‘Natural Wind’ mode that can be toggled which, to its credit, does feel a bit more organic with noticeable pauses in airflow, much like what you would feel when walking around outside.

Beyond the airflow levels, all of the key smart features are here including a timer, a night mode that dims the display and silences any beeping, and there’s even a child lock mode that can only be deactivated by holding the child lock button for a short while.

It’s all great stuff, and in addition to the control panel on the device itself, you can control all of these settings via the included remote control, as well as via the Duux app on your smartphone. I did find that the remote wouldn’t always register inputs and would require precise aiming at the base, so I ended up using my smartphone to control the Flex 2 more often than not.

What I hadn’t come across before (but I’m now obsessed with) is a scheduling function within the Duux app that lets you set specific times for when the Whisper Flex 2 switches on, and you have full control of all the aforementioned features when establishing a routine.

For example, if you know that you tend to run a bit hot throughout the night, you can have the Flex 2 switch itself on in the early hours of the morning, oscillating both vertically and horizontally to provide your entire bedroom with cool air. This is truly ingenious, and I now wish that all of my fans had this feature.

As a final note, even though the Whisper Flex 2 is fairly hefty at 4.2kg, there is a well-placed handle behind the fan that makes moving the device from one room to the next a fairly easy process. If you want to make the device even more portable, there is a battery pack that can be added, but it’s an accessory that’s sold separately.

Performance

• Powerful cooling from a distance
• Performs at a brilliantly quiet level

If everything I’ve said until now has you convinced that the Whisper Flex 2 is the fan for you, just wait until you hear about the performance. As I’ve been testing this particular fan, the weather in the UK has really ramped up in intensity, but having the Whisper Flex 2 on hand, I’ve been as comfortable as can be.

Even at the lowest level, the Whisper Flex 2 can put out an airflow level of 1.4m/s from a 15cm distance, but what’s really impressive is how powerful that airflow continues to be at 1m away, as I registered 1.0m/s on the anemometer.

Turning the intensity up to the mid-way point of 15, I picked up 2.2m/s at that same 1m distance, and at full blast it was a powerful gust of 3.0m/s. Given that the Whisper Flex 2 is more likely to sit further away than a personal fan would be, these stats are great because, even at a lower level, you’ll still feel a wonderful cooling sensation.

If you find yourself struggling to be productive when there’s too much background noise, then you’ll get on just fine here too.

Sure, when you crank things up, there is a noticeable (but not unpleasant) degree of noise, with level 15 and level 30 outputting at 43.5dB and 52.8dB respectively from 1m away. At the same distance, I only clocked 31.9dB on the lowest level, and speaking for myself, it was around this area of intensity that, after a while, the sound would end up being almost silent to my ears.

Should you buy it?

FAQs