Research Desk · New series · Updated weekly through summer
Every week this summer we log the price of the 20 cooling products we most often recommend, using the same listing, the same retailer and the same day each time, then publish what moved. This launch edition sets the baseline and includes one result we didn’t expect.
Why we’re doing this
It is widely assumed that fan prices go up whenever Britain hits 30°C, but as far as we can tell nobody has properly checked. Retailers don’t publish price histories, so a shopper standing in a heatwave has no way of knowing whether £123 for a tower fan is normal or £30 more than it cost in April.
From this week we are checking. Every Friday morning we log the live price of a fixed basket of 20 cooling products, covering fans, portable air conditioners, evaporative coolers, cooling bedding and paddling pools. At the end of the summer we will publish the full log, showing which products got quietly dearer, which got cheaper and which retailers held their prices.
The first surprise: big-brand fan prices went down this week
Our launch week happened to coincide with both the July heatwave and Amazon’s Prime Day event, and the effect on big-brand fans was the opposite of what most shoppers would expect. Prices fell in the middle of a 35°C week:
| Product | Was | Launch-week price | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreo 42″ smart tower fan | £99.99 | £84.99 | ↓ 15% |
| Dimplex Flexblade bladeless fan | £199.99 | £123.00 | ↓ 38% |
| GoveeLife 42″ smart quiet tower fan | £149.99 | £119.99 | ↓ 20% |
Prices checked 17 July 2026 against retailer listed was-prices during the Prime Day event. Treat was-prices with the usual caution, since retailers choose them. Building an independent log is the point of this series.
The upward movement is happening somewhere less visible. When a popular model sells out at the main retailers, the remaining stock tends to belong to third-party marketplace sellers, who reprice by the hour. Meaco and De’Longhi’s most popular portable air conditioners sold out across UK retailers this month, and Currys described supplies as “pretty tight”. In those conditions a shopper can end up paying considerably more without any retailer having raised a single price, because the cheap listings have gone and the dear ones are all that’s left.
The basket we’re tracking
The basket contains twenty products, all drawn from our own buying guides, since we already check those on the day each guide publishes. To qualify, a product had to be in stock at launch, sold by a mainstream UK retailer, and typical of what people actually buy in a hot spell.
| # | Category | Tracked product | Baseline (w/c 13 July) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Desk fan | Budget 12″ desk fan (bestseller listing) | – |
| 2 | Pedestal fan | Mainstream 16″ pedestal fan | – |
| 3 | Tower fan | Dreo 42″ smart tower fan | £84.99 |
| 4 | Tower fan | GoveeLife 42″ smart quiet tower fan | £119.99 |
| 5 | Premium fan | Dimplex Flexblade bladeless | £123.00 |
| 6 | Air circulator | MeacoFan 1056 (or listed equivalent) | – |
| 7 | Portable AC (budget) | Entry 7,000 BTU unit | – |
| 8 | Portable AC (mid) | 9,000 BTU mainstream unit | – |
| 9 | Portable AC (large) | DREO 12,000 BTU | – |
| 10 | Evaporative cooler | Bestselling tower evaporative cooler | – |
| 11 | Dehumidifier | Meaco MeacoDry ABC 12L | – |
| 12 | Cooling mattress topper | Top pick from our cooling topper guide | – |
| 13 | Cooling bedding | Top cooling duvet from our bedding guide | – |
| 14 | Paddling pool (family) | Top family pool from our paddling pool guide | – |
| 15 | Paddling pool (framed) | 10ft framed pool from our guide | – |
| 16 | Ice maker | EUHOMY countertop ice maker | – |
| 17 | Cool box | Top pick from our cool box guide | – |
| 18 | Insulated bottle | Top pick from our bottle guide | – |
| 19 | Sunscreen | Top pick from our sunscreen guide | – |
| 20 | Garden parasol | Bestselling 3m garden parasol | – |
Where a dash appears, the baseline price is going into the log this week and will be published with the first weekly comparison in the next edition.
How the tracking works
Same product, same retailer listing, logged every Friday morning through to mid-September. We record the listed price, stock status, and whether the seller is the retailer or a marketplace third party. A price only counts as “creep” if the same listing rises without a stated reason such as a spec or bundle change. We publish the full log, including the weeks where nothing happened, so the end-of-summer report can’t cherry-pick.
What we expect to find (and will happily be wrong about)
A few working hypotheses, stated now so readers can hold us to them in September. We expect headline brands at major retailers to hold or cut prices, because heatwaves are their shop window. We expect any creep to concentrate in marketplace listings for sold-out categories, portable air con above all. And we suspect the biggest jumps will come in the 48 hours after a Met Office heat warning, then partly unwind within a fortnight. If the data shows something different, we’ll print that instead.
Sources for this edition
Launch-week prices and market context: retailer listings checked 17 July 2026; Prime Day fan pricing as reported by GB News and TechRadar; Meaco and De’Longhi availability and Currys supply comments as reported in trade and business coverage of the June and July 2026 heatwaves; Ofgem July–September 2026 price cap for running-cost context. Full methodology: how we work.