This smart bathroom exhaust fan is great for parties

My old fan was loud and cranky, but the new one offers a reasonable whirr on its highest fan setting. (It’s rated for 80 or 110 cubic feet per minute, or CFM.) It’s powered by Home Depot’s smart home platform, HubSpace, which I haven’t had a good experience with before (I’ve never been able to add one. was The damnable smart lock I was testing the Hubspace app). Thankfully, the fan instantly connected to my phone via Bluetooth and my Wi-Fi network. Better yet, it also works with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

I didn’t put this fan in a bathroom with a shower, but I tested the humidity sensor by using my clothes steamer to get rid of wrinkles on a shirt. It works and turns on automatically! But my favorite feature, albeit passive, is the motion sensor. Having a room automatically light up without pressing a single button still feels like magic, and I now want to put motion sensors all over my house.

Motion sensing has some drawbacks. First, you can’t adjust how sensitive this sensor is. In my bathroom, I have a mirror that looks out into the hallway, so whenever someone walks by the past Bathroom, the light comes on. It’s not a big deal (my wife says otherwise), but something to keep in mind. The good news is that you can set how long you want the light on through the app, and I set it to one minute.

Yes, if you’re in the bathroom that long and don’t move much (ugh, you know why), the light will go off and you’ll have to wave your arms frantically for a few seconds before it comes on. On the back. A small price to pay, though you can also turn off the motion sensor.

Physical control

The switch light for a commercial electric smart bathroom exhaust fan is showing settings for power and volume

Photo: Julian Chokattu

Wall switch controls can be intimidating; I recommend Read the manual first. The power button turns the fan and light on and off, but you can also press the individual fan and light buttons to turn them off. (Press and hold the fan button for three seconds to turn the Bluetooth speaker on and off, too.) You can press the plus and minus signs to change the brightness of the light, or the color button to cycle through the colors. Keep-I prefer to use the app for this.

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