This smart bathroom exhaust fan is great for parties

My old fan was loud and cranky, but the new one on its highest 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 haven’t had a good experience with so far (I’ve never been able to add A challenging smart lock I tested with the Hubspace app). Fortunately, this fan immediately connected to my phone via Bluetooth and my Wi-Fi network. Even better, it also works with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

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

Motion detection has some drawbacks. First, you can’t customize how sensitive this sensor is. In my bathroom, I have a mirror that faces the hallway outside, so every time someone walks by past the bathroom, the light turns on. 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 a minute.

Yes, if you’re in the bathroom for that long and don’t move much (uh, you know why) then the light will go out and you’ll have to wave your hands frantically for a few seconds before it comes back on. Small price, but you can also turn off the motion sensor.

Physical controls

Photo: Julian Chokkattu

Wall switch controls can be confusing; 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 as well.) 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 the colors— I prefer to use the app for this.