I live in one of the most unbearably hot flats – in the summer, it often feels like I’ve been transported to the surface of the sun. The second it hits 18C, it’s already time to break out the shorts and tee. I’ve tested more portable fans, air coolers and air conditioners over the years than I can count, all in a bid to stay cool.
One of my favourite gadgets last year was Sony’s reon pocket pro, a wearable thermal device that cools the part of your skin it sits against. Now, Shark’s gone one step further ans combined that cooling plate tech with a handheld fan and a fine mist spray.
I’ve been testing the 3-in-1 Shark chillpill for a week and, while we’re not quite in summer territory yet, my flat’s already starting to heat up. So I gave it a whirl – would it actually be able to cool me down once temperatures actually began to rise?
Read more: The best fans to keep you cool in a heatwave, reviewed by our experts
The chillpill has a, let’s say, rather unique design – it looks a bit like a compact pair of binoculars, with two rounded barrels sitting side by side and connected by a hinge. The smaller barrel houses the controls and charging port, while the larger one contains the motor and interchangeable attachments. There’s a dial around the LED display on the smaller barrel too, letting you crank the fan speed up from 1 to 10.
You can angle the fan exactly where you want it, or twist it into a right angle and sit it on a desk, using the smaller barrel as a base. Shark also sells accessories, like a crossbody strap (£9.99, Sharkclean.co.uk), so you don’t have to constantly hold it in your hand.
While it’s kind of awkward to hold at first, the tech is actually pretty neat. Unlike most handheld fans which just blow a nice breeze in your direction, the ChillPill uses a modular attachment system – yes, exactly like you’d get with a Shark vacuum.
It ships with the standard fan head attached, but you also get a misting attachment and a cooling plate in the box, so you can swap between them depending on how you want to cool down. The cooling plate is the most power-hungry of the three, lasting around 1.5 hours per charge, which makes sense given it’s actively generating a cooling effect. With the fan and misting attachments, you can get up to around 11 hours of battery, depending on the speed setting.
With Shark’s experience in airflow, it’s no surprise the fan is seriously powerful – far more so than the cheap handheld ones you’d buy off a bloke on Oxford Street in July. It does get loud at higher speeds, but that’s the trade-off for that extra punch.
I think the most interesting attachment has to be the misting spray. You flip open the lid, fill it up with cold water, then screw it onto the barrel. Turn it on and you get a fine spray of water, along with the airflow. It kind of feels like a cold shower just for your face.
I can already tell it’ll be a lifesaver in an actual heatwave. But right now, in milder weather, I mostly just ended up feeling a bit damp. While you can turn down the intensity of the fan, it still spits out the same amount of water. I did get pretty drenched when I kept it running endlessly.
Thankfully, you can switch between a constant spray and an intermittent mode, which helps rein it in a bit (and saves battery too).
I was most excited about the cooling plate, which is one of the interchangeable attachments designed for direct, contact-based cooling rather than airflow. Once you screw it on, you can choose between two cooling settings, and the metal plate gets noticeably cold to the touch.
It’s great for targeted relief – press it against your neck or wrist and you get an instant cooling effect, but unlike Sony’s reon pocket pro, you have to hold it in place. That makes it less effective for longer, hands-free cooling, even if the sensation itself already felt like a relief.
But at £130, is the chillpill worth the price? It’s hard to give a definitive answer before the summer months arrive. I’ll be testing it again once the temperatures start to soar, but based on early testing, the versatility alone could mean I pick this up over every other summer cooling kit.
For more, I’ve rounded up the best handheld fans to cool you down this summer
