Dyson is delving into the world of the Internet of Things with the launch of its first app-connected appliance: the Pure Cool Link air purifier.
The Dyson Pure Cool Link will be followed later this year by the global launch of the “world’s first” smart robot vacuum cleaner, the Dyson 360 Eye. Both devices connect to Dyson’s Link app, which allows users to monitor how clean the air and floors in their home are from their smartphone.
An earlier version of the Pure Cool Link, the Dyson Pure Cool, came without an app and was launched last year in China, Japan and the U.S. It combines Dyson’s bladeless air-multiplying technology with a round filter that filters out 99.95 percent of ultrafine allergens, odours and pollutants.
Dyson’s Link app lets you monitor the air quality inside your home remotely.Dyson
One of the challenges facing Dyson with this new air purifier product category is making people realize they need one.
“It’s quite a big education piece, in the U.K. at least,” A Dyson spokeswoman tells Newsweek at the firm’s London offices. “Having a Dyson app showing you air quality levels is like having a clear bin on the vacuum cleaners. It shows people what they have in their homes and will make them realize simply shutting the window isn’t going to solve the problem.”
According to a study carried out by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, common indoor air pollutants include solvents, deodorants and scented candles. Other pollutants include gases from cooking and central heating, mould, pet hair and pollen.
Dyson’s filtration system and software uses sensors to detect the air quality and rid it of indoor allergens and pollutants.
“Something a lot of people don’t realize is that indoor air quality can be up to five-times worse than the air outside,” Hugo Wilson, design lead on the Dyson Pure Cool Link, tells Newsweek. “We designed this to remove harmful particles in the air, such as pet hair, pollen textile fibres and dust.”
The Dyson Pure Cool Link is available from today in the U.S. costing $500 for a tower version, while a desktop version is also available in the U.K. and other markets.
For years now Dyson has been the go-to company for impressively engineered (some would say over-engineered) air-moving devices. We all know of Dyson’s vacuums, Airblade hand dryers, and fans, but their fan family is more extensive than you might think. Fans became heaters and, as of September 1, they evolved into air purifiers.
The Dyson AM11 Pure Cool air purifier is a tower fan (it’s 40 inches tall and meant to be placed on the floor) with a “360° Glass” HEPA filter that’s rated to last for six months of nonstop use. Tower fans are nothing new and Dyson does extensive air filtering with its vacuum line, so an air purifier — which is little more than a filtered fan — made perfect sense. For its part, Dyson would stress that adding in a filter is not enough to make an effective product. Poor design and construction means air leaks where tiny allergens (in the 0.5 micron range) can escape making any number of today’s air filters less than fully effective.
This puts us in the normal Dyson-decision-making mode: we know its a good product, but at $400 (list price) it’s not just expensive, its considerably more expensive than options we know to be great and two-to-three times more expensive than good products from reliable companies. As for me, I’ve used a Homedics AF-100 air purifier for years. I’d put it in the “better than nothing” category, which is to say that it has a street price of about a fifth of the Dyson and it seems to be sufficient for my needs. All that said, air purifiers that are designed for big rooms and serious filtration can get very expensive.
At first glance, the AM11 is a Dyson “bladeless fan” with a new filter base. It looks a whole lot like the AM07 tower fan and the functionality is similar — it turns on and off, it oscillates, it runs at power levels from one through 10, and it can operate on a sleeper. The Pure Cool filter cannot be disabled or bypassed, but it can be removed and replaced. It’s fine enough that it will filter out everything from bacteria to pollen to cooking smells. The key here is not just that it’s a good filter, but also that it’s sealed properly in the housing, which means the air being pushed through the fan went through the filter, not around it through a poorly fitted panel or leaky seal.
In addition to offering Dyson-level build quality, the Pure Cool addresses another serious problem with air purifiers: they are ugly as sin. Most are beige plastic boxes that are embarrassing to have in any prominent place in your home. And hiding them away defeats the purpose of having an air purifier, because they need to be where the people are. The oscillation and power of the Dyson mean that it fits in a number of settings, and can sit in a corner and cool most areas. The fan does not tilt, but its height gives it enough vertical coverage for most situations when the fan function is as important as the air purification.
One interesting complication with the Dyson bladeless system is that much of the air that is being moved never goes through the base or, for that matter, the filter. Here is Dyson’s own explanation of the fan’s use of Bernoulli’s principle in its “air multiplication”:
So, the majority of the air being moved by any Dyson fan, including this purifier, is not going through the base, so its never purified. This makes the Pure Cool seem like a product where Dyson’s bladeless technology might not be ideal.
The Pure Cool was first released in China and Japan, and, like most air purifiers, is primarily aimed at markets where air pollution is a serious issue. This extends to the capturing of pollen, germs, and particulate, making it something with wider appeal but it’ll probably never be a big seller in the US or Europe.
Test results
One thing I’m not going to do in this review is pretend to do any scientific testing of the air purifier’s filtration. If you want more on that I’d highly recommend SweetHome’s excellent dive into the science behind air purification. That article didn’t test the Pure Cool and ended up recommending a device that cost $250 — not cheap, but a far cry from the Dyson. The only other thing I’ll note on this front is the HEPA is a DOE standard so there is quality assurance to the filters used by any company whose product uses that label. It doesn’t ensure that the fan quality will be good enough to take advantage of the filter, but at least you know you are starting from a strong foundation.
At its very essence, what does a filter do? It takes stuff out of the air and holds onto it. After 25 days of 24/7 usage on setting four (out of 10) my AM11’s filter picked up less than a tenth of a gram of particulate. I’d say that’s because I live in an immaculately clean apartment, but that’s not the case. And even if I did, the Dyson is less than 10 feet from a window, but was open for at least 5% of the testing time.
I’m not fully sure what the takeaway from this is, but we do have to remember that when it comes to airborne particulate, a gram would be a lot. So you might never see additional weight if the filter was only picking up bacteria, but between things like dust and dander, I would have expect to see some movement, especially considering that this time period used up about 14% of the filter’s life.
What I really wanted to do was to find some way to prove the Dyson was doing its job. Once again, I’d point you at the SweetHome article or this video of the AM11 clearing the smoke from 10 cigarettes out of the air:
Next was testing for noise production and air speed:
For a bit of context you can check out the results from our testing of the best desktop fans (please note, that testing was done at a different time so it’s not apples to apples data). Long story short, the Dyson Pure Cool moves a reasonable amount of air, but it’s not a very powerful fan.
As for the noise levels, I used an iPhone 6 with a noise monitor app, not any fancy test equipment. As a result, the numbers are inflated, but you can get an understanding of the trade off between moving more air and generating more sound. At its lowest three levels the Dyson is basically silent. At its loudest, the fan is more than you’d want to listen to in a typical living room but it’s not obnoxious — it’s along the lines of having a dishwasher or washing machine running nearby.
The final test was for power usage, which will help determine operating cost.
The power consumption of the fan is relatively modest. If you were to run the AM11 at setting level five with oscillation nonstop for a year, your electricity cost would be $13.20 (at 15 cents per kWh).
Dyson Pure Cool conclusions
The price is the major drawback of the Pure Cool, but that’s pretty obvious from the start. There are some other downsides, but they are much easier to cope with. The filter can’t be rinsed, rather it must be replaced. Replacements don’t appear to be available for sale yet, but Dyson has said to expect them to be $70. At $140 for a full year of nonstop use (there is no mention of fan speed, but I’d assume this is at 50% speed), a more typical eight-hour-a-day user will have filter cost of about $47 a year. Not cheap, but more or less in line with the competition. Another downside is the lack of a filter bypass. If you are using the Pure Cool as a fan and you have the window open or have it placed on a porch, you might want to use it without the filter so that you can minimize debris build up and maximum filter life.
The Pure Cool AM11 is a totally sensible addition to the Dyson lineup. It combines the company’s expertise in air moving with its extensive usage of air filtration and throws everything in a fan that was basically already designed. From the standpoint of the general consumer the AM11 makes sense in that it will replace the AM07 tower fan — now for about the same money you can get a beautifully designed fan with a filter, why not do it? As for a purchase of someone with a real need for an air purifier, it’s not clear if the Dyson is a great choice. The air multiplier design inherently means that more unfiltered air is being moved than filtered air.
Dyson’s brand has considerable weight: there’s no shortage of Dyson-envy if you hear someone you know has one of their bagless vacuums.
And while brands can wane over time (hi Bose!), Dyson continue to plough money into R&D, creating not only things you might want, but things that are much better than the stuff you have.
Dyson changed the whole vacuum industry just a decade and a half ago by inventing the bagless vacuum, as well as the transparent dirt bin (which seemed like madness at the time), the cordless handstick vacuum, and much more.
We’re talking about Dyson’s fanless fans, hand-dryers that just dry faster, and today, battery-powered, rechargeable handheld vacuum cleaners.
The Dyson V6 Absolute is one of these.
The vaccum itself
The entire body you hold in one hand, carrying the motor, filter and dustbin. It lasts around 20 minutes while turned on, and there’s no cords – you squeeze a trigger and away it goes.
Dyson V6 Absolute body
Dyson V6 Absolute trigger
To get from your hands to the dirt in the carpet, you snap on an attractive red tube, to which you can attach a variety of heads. More on that later.
HEPA filters: why they matter
Dyson’s put in dual-HEPA filters for air that travels through the vacuum, with the brochure explaining that the filters mean the air is cleaner after it passes through the vacuum. The filters are easily cleaned or changed out.
Dyson V6 Absolute filter
So what are HEPA filters?
HEPA (high-efficiency particulate arrestance) filters are air filters that cut out 99.97 per cent of stuff in the air smaller than 0.3 micrometers. How big is that? Well, you’d need to stitch together around 100 of these to get close to the thickness of a human hair.
And where did HEPA filters come from? Ahem, well, the Manhattan Project, actually. To cut out radioactive particles. That’s how you know they work well.
Put to work: How it was to vacuum with
Well, vacuuming was about as fun as a chore can get. Pieces snap together intuitively. Being lightweight and manoeuvrable, it’s easy to use. It’s perfect for quickly moving from a full set of stairs, to cobwebs you haven’t considered getting for months, and back to the floor as usual.
You don’t have to move furniture. You don’t have to change powerpoints. You’re not pulling around a cumbersome wheeled vacuum.
The V6 easily delivers enough suction to rip through anything from heavier debris to fine dirt. The dirt-bin was simple (and just about hands-free) to empty.
Comparing to a Miele vacuum that was corded and bagged, it performed at a high level while it lasted and it’s far more easy to do odd jobs. You can pull it out just to vacuum a dirty corner – it’s not a chore to quickly use and put back.
That’s not to say it’s the perfect vacuum though.
You have around about a 20 minute cleaning time. And that’s it. The V6 Absolute doesn’t fade out – it just comes to a complete stop. There is a low-battery light, but you can’t see it while using the vacuum. Chances are you won’t charge it every time you use it, so there’s no real way of knowing how much longer it has.
Dyson V6 Absolute battery charging
It takes around three-and-a-half hours to charge fully before it’s ready to go again. Of course, that’s what you get with a battery-powered cord-free device. That’s what makes it portable.
One other mild complaint: the fact you have to squeeze the trigger to make it work makes sense, and the trigger offers little resistance, but when gripping the trigger and the body while vacuuming, the odd hold hurts your finger after a bit. Yes, it hurts the finger of a grown man at peak fitness who, just quietly, has the grip-strength of an orangutan.
For others not as lucky – think an arthritic 60-year-old lawn bowler – it might not be possible to use for too long.
A few people asked if this was just a high-powered dust buster. Well, it is, if you ignore that it’s about 1000 times the suction, isn’t just blowing out allergy-laden dusty air, and is truly fun to use.
One other thing – Dyson include a wall mount to help you click the vacuum in and store it out of the way. Perfect for small houses, right? Well, if you are in a small townhouse or apartment, there’s a very good chance you’re renting. And in that case, you can’t do your own home improvements and drill the mount into a spare surface. That means it’s wasted on a fair percentage of renters, who would probably love to use it but can’t!
Dyson V6 Absolute attachment
Where Dyson gets complicated
Dyson have a range of V6 handstick vacuums. And for people trying to figure out which one is for them, there are too many.
There’s the Fluffy (for hard floors), the Animal (for houses with pets) and the Motorhead (for carpets). There’s even just a straight V6.
Dyson V6 Absolute soft head
The only real difference between all of these is the cleaner heads. And the price tag.
The Absolute includes two heads – the Fluffy and the Motorhead, to target all debris. It’s the all-in-one, and it’s the most expensive, at RRP $899. (Shopping around, we can find it for $854 online.) The others are $100 or $200 cheaper.
Dyson V6 Absolute swivelhead
If you want to save money, it’s hard to know which one you should get, particularly if you have different floors, and a pet that sheds some hair but not a lot.
That $899 asking price for the Absolute makes it a significant investment. And while the knock-offs are unlikely to match Dyson across the board, it’s easy to justify saving a couple of hundred dollars for a tradeoff.
Dyson are firmly in the space that Apple play in. There are cheap knock-offs, but they aren’t Dysons.
Overall
So, what did we think, and should you get one?
The V6 Absolute is for a small house only. That’s partly down to the battery life you get, as well as the dirt-bin size. It is light enough that carrying it around isn’t a problem, and there’s a stack of different attachments for all your needs.
It has incredible suction and power for the tiny motor it packs. There’s a deeply satisfying feel when you first turn it on as the motor whistles into operating at 110,000 RPM.
We see three real problems with the vacuum, and none of them are related to performance.
1. You have to squeeze the trigger to keep it on, which for longer jobs will eventually hurt your finger. 2. It doesn’t run out of battery gracefully – just stops working all of a sudden. You get a low-battery warning light, but it’s not noticeable when in use. 3. There are so many attachments you have to have somewhere to keep them. And if you have a small house, you probably don’t have much storage room.
There’s also price. A Dyson is not a bargain; they’re premium, and come at a premium price. It’s up to you to decide if that’s worth it. Miele are the other real competitor at the high-end of the market.
However a Dyson does come with a five-year warranty, with a lifetime warranty on the filters. That makes it something you’ll own for as long as you need it.
The new Dyson V6 Absolute is available via Dyson.com.au for RRP $899.00 and cheaper if you shop around.
We give it 4/5. Longer battery life, and $150 cheaper across the Dyson range would make it almost perfect.
