If you're goung to use it in exhaust mode nearly anything will work for a while. We've had fair results with the bigger Pattons but frankly, with heavy use I've never seen a motor on a Patton fan survive the warranty period -- though they seem to be better than anything else that is
widely available. If I were a hardcore electrical type I often thought I'd buy a big Patton, run it 'til the motor pooped out and then go to Granger and spend whatever it took to put the best possible motor in to replace the stock one. That should make a pretty good exhaust fan.
For uses other than exhaust we greatly prefer
ducted fans. The most famous (and expensive) ducted fan is the Vornado.
Pattons, ceiling fans and garden variety
box fans put out a very broad, hollow cone of turbulent air. They are loud and often one must be quite close to one to have it's pattern hit you with a significant amount of air. (Being so close to it will also make it seem louder, too.) None of these factors are important if the fan is used in exhaust mode.
Ducted fans direct their oiutput into a tight, quiet, cohesive
column of air that may be
precisely directed to a specific point -- a point much farther away than an un-ducted fan may reach. Some of the advantages of ducted fans are that the user may utilize much
smaller, cheaper and quieter fans to do the same job and the fan(s) won't have to sit on your lap to be effective. They may also be used 2" above the floor and pointed straight up to destratify the temperature differential between the normally cold floor and hot ceiling during the heating season.
We've been using
this little fan for personal cooling for a few years, now. One is needed for each person, but they are very cheap. We keep a few NIP in stock all the time. The greatest weakness of the cheap ducted fans is that the stock base is never adjustable enough for me so I build little bases that allow full pan and tilt and when a fan breaks I just throw it out and put another of the same model on the homemade base.
As I said above, if all you need is an exhaust fan it's pretty hard to beat a Patton.