> Dyson describes the Cool-Me as ‘bladeless’, although that isn’t really the case – rather, the air-moving elements are concealed in the centre of the unit.
isn't that the case with all of Dyson's 'bladeless' fans?
It is the case, but people pointing this out like some kind of gotcha are intentionally omitting that the reason they call them ‘bladeless’ is because almost all of the airflow generated by the fan doesn’t come from the pedestal, but from the induction and entrainment caused by the airfoil.
but a bunch of years ago there was some blameless fan which worked somehow else (electric charges or similar???) and had the side effect of them emitting ozon
this is why if you google dyson+ozon you will find a lot of articles telling you in various details "no they don't produce ozone", because at least some dyson like fans did produce some amount of ozone in the past. Idk. if that also applied to some old dyson products.
There were some other brands that tried it but the airflow is much weaker and has ozone problems. Maybe Ionic Breeze? It was a Sharper Image type product.
The Dysons do have regular bladed impellers in the base, but by expelling the air in a ring shape take advantage of viscosity to pull air around the ring for an added flow.
My main reason for preferring the Dyson type fan is the noise they make is a soothing white noise, instead of the helicopter-like beating noise the box fans make.
There are other brands that make quality quiet fans.
My Vornado runs 24x7 and on minimal setting is inaudible, on second setting is very quiet. And it costs way less than a Dyson!
I have two units in the house, and when I ordered second unit I got a defective one - probably fan was not balanced. It was making noise like normal fan. I exchanged it on Amazon, and boom - second quiet fan in the house.
Somewhat tangential: I met the founder of this https://www.atalantaclimate.co/ at new york climate week yesterday, it does all the regular air purification stuff, but it also removes carbon from the air, they claim this helps with sleep and work focus in your space (not sure), their demo was impressive (off the shelf co2 monitor in 2 spaces) - I wonder if this is going to be a thing?
Starting at around thousand bucks, with a subscription for their pods, requiring constant maintenance, with a huge footprint - I'd say this is targeted for someone with more money than sense. There aren't any clear numbers of what this device can do. The negative effects of CO2 are also quite overstated, and I say this as someone with two CO2 monitors in their home.
Yeah, for sure not cheap - founder was saying they think they can get them down to $300 and half the size, they're a Canadian team so they did the first batch in Canada, I guess they plan to move manufacturing to China. I was more wondering if this is a feature we can expect to see more generally, seems like an interesting idea anyways. :)
I sleep in what would be considered a relatively large master bedroom with ensuite. Recently got an AirGradient One sensor and was shocked at the overnight co2 levels.
When sleeping with window and door closed and just by myself, co2 levels exceeded 2,000ppm by morning and only fell once I was awake and opening doors.
With the window slightly open and the door slightly open, levels were at a much better 700ppm or so.
If this thing works as advertised, that would be great. There are a lot of situations where it’s difficult to sleep with the window or the door open.
I configured my furnace to always recirculate air in the house even when burner itself is off - helps to avoid rooms with stale air and evens temperature through the house.
Your HVAC is supposed to recirculate the air using the fan feature. And you don't even need to run it 24/7; I find that running it for a few minutes each hour is enough to get CO2 levels down.
I bought a Dreo fan early spring, anticipating a hot summer, and it's brilliant. Doesn't pureify the air like this Dyson, but it's a big corner tower unit, has 9 speeds that go from old ladies dying breath to weather-warning-windy, and has a pretty decent remote control + surprisingly good app to set schedules or connect with Google home / Alexa.
Ended up buying one of their air circulators too, which has only 4 speeds, but is amazing at pushing the air out the window when my poor UK house is hotter than outside. Downside is it uses the same ir remote, so you have to math out how to get to the speeds you want as the plus & minus speed buttons loop around. (Or ask google for the speeds directly).
Height of the heat wave it was lovely to say to Google "I'm boiling" and it would go into my built routine, turning both up high and oscillating for a bit, then calming down automatically after 5 mins, and then slowly reducing more over time.
Could never find the right surface to put it on, the weird positioning meant either air points up or down - no in-between preference.
Lastly, the most annoying, the amount of dust that would be persistent on the large center pad area, so I always felt like it was just blowing old dust on me.
I dropped mine off at a donation site. Hopefully someone finds joy in it.
That intro... Yeah Dyson's are pricy, but is it really necessary to put on a hair shirt just to write about it? If you are really troubled by what someone will think about you for writing about an expensive fan, maybe work on caring less.
That struck me, too. I listen to plenty of tech and car podcasts, so I'm quite used to people acknowledging their privilege in complaining about their latest $2000 gadget or the $600,000 car some manufacturer lent them to complain about for a week. I get it! When you're nit-picking a $600,000 car you can't afford, you're not saying it's worse than a Camry, but you're just pointing out the things that could be better. That's fine, but of course it will attract the haters in the comments.
But still, the note at the beginning of this one struck me. I'm not sure we need a warning on _every_ single article. If the warning served to keep the snarky comments away, great. But this is the internet. People are gonna snark anyway, so the caveat up front doesn't accomplish what one might hope it would.
Does this fan even have laminar flow? Pushing purified air through a normal fan often results in a lot of air mixing, and at any significant distance it won't provide much targeted purification.
> Until the ambient temperature reaches about 30 Celsius, I find it as effective as my full-size air conditioner [..]
This sentence made it hard for me to give much consideration to the rest of the review, as I seem to have different standards - 30C is 86F and I'll have defenestrated myself before my office reaches that ambient temp.
"A shortage of personal air purifiers is most definitely a first-world problem."
It's a public health imperative that various kinds of air cleaning be deployed universally in public places to combat COVID-19, particularly in classrooms. It's insane that the denial is so deep.
I suppose there are Corsi–Rosenthal box designs out there for 3d printing. We don't have filters like this here, otherwise I'd make such a diy purifier instead of buying one
They make round HEPA filters for shop vacs that are in the $20-30 range. The hard part is finding a fan that works well at high static pressures. I've had good luck with NF-F12 PWMs.
When you need static pressure, use a centrifugal blower. I've got one on top of a HEPA shop vac filter from harbor freight, some hot glue seals it up nicely to a thin plastic sheet I cut as a size adaptor.
I use a different air purifier, a pretty basic xiaomi one. There are two downsides: it is quite big (I don't mind really) and it can be loud at a high speed.
I host movie nights with friends and sometimes someone might even smoke in the room, air purifier clears the air quite fast and there absolutely are no odors left. So yeah you can and if you solder or 3d print often, I'd suggest to get one, they don't cost much.
I'm not allergic and air here is basically always perfect - 1-5 ppm, but I still love it. It does filter out allergens and people allergic to pets find it easier to breathe (I have a dog). It also lowers amount of dust a bit, and I have an automation to run it on full speed when robot vacuums floors, I think it might help filter some stuff out.
I wish there'd be a way to put activated carbon packs inside somehow, because I'd love to change it more often than the full filter.
Soldering does not generate metal vapor. Soldering fumes are burnt flux residues, which are often acidic and quite nasty.
Laser cutting or engraving makes even worse fumes and requires seriously good filtering. I personally think they're nasty enough that it is irresponsible to just dump this stuff outside into the environment without cleanup but it's certainly better than breathing it.
liquid lead has a vapor pressure (it was easy to google) but at what temperature or sustained duration it would be dangerous I don't have the background to assess. in terms of duration, heavy metal poisonings are cumulative over time.
back when I was a young electronics hobbyist, back in the days when there was still lead in solder, man I loved the smell of flux burning off! I've never noticed any ill effects, but there is still time for me to get emphysema or lung cancer.
isn't that the case with all of Dyson's 'bladeless' fans?