This Smart Bathroom Exhaust Fan is great for Parties

My old fan was loud and cranky, but the new fan on the highest fan setting offers a reasonable hum. (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’ve never had a good experience with (never, I might add). Mutual smart lock I was testing the Hubspace app). Thankfully, this 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 install this fan in a bathroom with a shower, but I tested the humidity sensor using my clothes steamer to get rid of wrinkles on a shirt. It works and starts automatically! But my favorite feature is the motion sensor, albeit a passive one. It still feels magical to automatically light up a room without pressing a button, and I now want to put motion sensors all over my house.

Motion detection has some drawbacks. First, you can’t customize how sensitive this sensor is. My bathroom has a mirror that faces out into the hallway, so when someone walks by past bathroom, the light is on. It’s not a big deal (my wife says otherwise), but it’s something to consider. The good news is that you can set how long you want the light to stay on through the app, and I set it to one minute.

Well, if you’re in the bathroom during that time and not moving much (ugh, you know why), then the light will go off and you’ll have to wave your hands frantically for a few seconds before it comes on. back. It’s a small price to pay, though, as you can also disable the motion sensor.

Physical Controls

Photo: Julian Chokkattu

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. (Hold the fan button for three seconds to turn the Bluetooth speaker on and off, too.) You can tap the plus and minus signs to change the brightness of the light, or hold down the color button to switch between colors—you’d rather use the app for that.