One of the first pieces of feedback Dyson got when it entered India was that the peak pollution months here also coincided with the winter season. As a result, while its air purifiers were effective indeed, they were troublesome too. People felt cold while they were turned on. That led to the Dyson Pure Hot+Cool, an update to which is the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool.
Dyson claims that the Purifier Hot+Cool generates 20% less fan noise, and I have no reason to doubt that. But then, the Pure produced about 40dB or lower noise when it was at its quietest, and I can’t tell the difference 8dB lower would make. But loud or silent, the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool really doesn’t disturb me, whether I’m in a virtual meeting or watching something on my television.
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A funny spec I can give you here is that Apple’s music-mixing app GarageBand barely registers this as noise when placed about two metres away from a Macbook Pro recording through its built-in microphones. The ceiling fan in my room creates much more noise than this purifier.
But noise aside, I find it difficult to tell what’s different in this year’s Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool, or why anyone should buy this over the Pure model, released in 2019. Unlike the Pure, the entire body of the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool is HEPA H13 certified, which means it will retain as much of the aerial impurities in your room as possible within its frame.
In practice though, it feels like a distinction without a difference. The Purifier takes about 15-30 minutes to clean the air in a medium-sized room, depending on how bad the air quality is, which is the same time the Pure took. And it handles smoggy days, cooking or cigarette smoke as effectively as its predecessor.
There are two points to note when using the Dyson Purifier (or even the Pure) for heating. The first is that while it is quite effective in heating up a room, it’s not a room heater and won’t be as effective as room heating air conditioners and more. However, it is much more effective as a heater than a cooler. That means that while it could replace a heater in small to medium-sized rooms, it won’t be able to replicate what air conditioners do during the summers, ever.
The second thing is that the Purifier will barely make a dent in your electricity bill as long as it’s being used in ‘cool’ mode only. On the heater mode, it can rack up the same tab as an air conditioner and even more. The heater requires more power, which is why the Purifier Hot+Cool will require a high load bearing power socket — the same ones that air conditioners need.
The Dyson Link app also works the same way it did earlier, but it has been redesigned, with vertical scrolling to see data on PM2.5 levels in your room, VOOC content, PM10 and more. As long as the Purifier is connected to the internet, you will also be able to control the device from anywhere in the world with this app. You can turn it on or off, set times, control the degree of oscillation (between 0 and 350 degrees), and switch from heating to cooling modes.
The Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool also connects to Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home smart speakers too, but the system is as convoluted as ever. Alexa continues to tell me that there’s no device connected, even though the Dyson Link app says I’ve connected the air purifier to the voice assistant. Voice support is more of a ‘good to have’ feature though, so I’m not complaining.
To sum it up, the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool is a great air purifier, but I can’t think of a reason to buy this over the Pure. The Pure is priced at around ₹40,000, while the Purifier will set you back by ₹50,310. Unless Dyson takes the Pure off the market, there’s no way to justify why we should spend the extra ₹10,000 on the Purifier.
Dyson is often considered the Apple of the appliance world. In that sense, the Purifier is to the Pure what the iPhone 13 series is to the iPhone 12 series. Incremental.
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