This may be a good, cheaper alternative to air conditioning your home.

Summer may have officially arrived in much of the country. But here in Southern California, it doesn’t really get hot until September. And despite hating the heat, I’m already looking forward to the season. That’s because we now have in our home the Oscillating Bladeless Fan from Airmate, a circulating fan brand based in China.

The machine is actually a 2-in-1 air purifier and tower fan – with an emphasis on the tower part. It stands 3’8” tall. I pulled it from the box, inserted the included Hepa filters on both sides, and powered it on. What’s great is that it oscillates anywhere up to 120 degrees back-and-forth – you set the width – all the while blowing wind out at up to 10 feet per second. You can definitely feel a breeze from 10 feet. And on warm days, it’s heavenly. I can only imagine how it’s going to feel on blistering days. Although it’s not designed to replace an air conditioner, it does aim to quickly cool down a room – with much more energy efficiency than central air. I’m eager to see if it will cut down on our electric bills. It has five modes – turbo, soft, natural, AI breeze, and jet flow wind – and 24 speed levels that you can adjust to your liking. Its “AI Smart Wind” feature helps you adjust fan speed according to room temperature.

At the same time as it’s cooling down a room, it’s also cleaning the air in it — refreshing air five times per hour, in rooms as large as 219 square feet. So it’s ideal for people with allergies, pet owners, and probably most residents of smoggy Los Angeles. The company claims it captures 99.9 percent of particles as small as 0.3 microns, such as dust, smoke, pollen, etc. The active carbon filter reduces formaldehyde and odors from pets, smoking and cooking.

As its name implies, it uses bladeless fan technology, so its design will not hurt pets, babies or anyone else who accidentally backs into it. And apparently it’s also easy to clean by wiping it down with a rag. We tried it in our family room while watching TV. It definitely has a hiss to it, but not loud enough to where we had to turn up the TV volume.

I think we will move it to our bedroom when it gets hot out, and leave it on while we sleep. Plus it makes a nice white noise for the background. By the way, it weighs just under 17 pounds. So there’s no problem moving it from room to room. And for convenience, it comes standard with a tiny remote that lets you change pretty much any setting to suit your mood.

For what it’s worth, I checked it out on Amazon first and it had plenty of positive reviews. And in my limited experience using it for two weeks, I’ve been fairly impressed with how quickly it cools things off. If it works during the real heat, I’ll be completely sold. And I have no reason to doubt it will be anything short of stellar.