This smart bathroom exhaust fan is great for parties

My old fan was loud and cranky, but the new one on its highest setting provides reasonable noise. (It’s rated at 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 (I’ve never been able to add Defiant smart lock I was testing the Hubspace app). Fortunately, 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 did test the humidity sensor by using my clothes steamer to get rid of wrinkles on a shirt. It works and starts automatically! But my favorite, albeit negative, feature is the motion sensor. Automatically lighting a room without pressing a single button still sounds like magic, and I now want to put motion sensors all over 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 overlooks the hallway outside, so when someone walks by past Bathroom, the light turns on. It’s not a big deal (my wife says otherwise), but it’s something to keep in mind. The good news is that you can decide how long you want the light to stay on via the app, and I set it to one minute.

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

Physical controls

Photo: Julian Chocato

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 press and hold the color button to cycle through colors — I prefer using the app for this.