This Smart Bathroom Exhaust Fan Is Great for Parties

My old fan was loud and cranky, but the new one offers a reasonable spin at 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 good experience with before (I’ve never been able to add one. Counterfeit Smart Lock I was testing in 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 haven’t installed this fan in a bathroom with a shower, but I have tested the humidity sensor by using my clothes steamer to get rid of shirt wrinkles. 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 button still feels like magic, and I now want to put motion sensors around my house.

Motion sensing has some drawbacks. First, you can’t customize how sensitive this sensor is. In my bathroom, I have a mirror that looks out into the hallway outside, so whenever someone walks by the past Bathroom, lights 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 for that length of time and don’t move much (ah, you know why), the light will go off and you’ll have to wave your hand frantically for a few seconds before it comes on. You can turn off the motion sensor, though there’s a small price to pay in return.

physical control

Photo: Julian Chokkattu

Controlling wall switches 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.) You can press the plus and minus signs to change the brightness of the light, or press and hold the colored button to cycle through the colors—I prefer using the app for .