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Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

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Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#401

Post by LegitShady »

LegitShady wrote: post #269
adamscybot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh, those are good. Though they seem to have appeared shortly after the Dyson blade dryers. Dyson seem to have shaken the market a bit into realising you actually need power in these things for them to be useful.

No, the XLERATORS predate the dyson airblade by ~4-5 years. The dyson just made people realize that they were more expensive than the garbage units people used before, but not that expensive.

I checked and I spec'd an XLERATOR in 2004, and I think they became available the year before. The dyson took another 2-3 years to reach market, so 4-5 years is probably overstating it.

Either way Excel were the innovators. Dyson just made it look cool. The apple-style marketers who charged 2x as much so could afford some stupid overengineering.

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#402

Post by semi-extrinsic »

jb1991 wrote: post #397
Judgmentality wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people raise their kids this way. When I see parents laugh when their kids fall down instead of panic, I smile. And the best part? The kids smile too, because they're actually looking to their parents for how to react. I'd rather raise daredevils than anxious wrecks. My best friend has a kid who's always climbing on stuff, falling down, getting hurt. That kid is going to grow up to be awesome.

Falling down is totally different than sticking your fingers into a fan.

Well, for both cases the risk depends entirely on the (here unspecified) circumstances. Sticking your fingers in a fan where the blades have a low moment of inertia and the motor has low stall torque? You'll be fine. Falling down and hitting your head on the edge of a rock? Could put you in hospital for weeks.

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#403

Post by Angostura »

SamBam wrote: post #321
alasdair_ wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We bought a Dyson fan when we had very small children that liked to stick their fingers into moving fan blades. It works really well for that purpose.

We have two cheap, basic standing fans with the standard wire guard around them. At various ages we wondered if the kids could put their fingers in and touch the blades, and so prompted them to (while the fans were off, of course). At no point could the kids' fingers get to the blades. Either their fingers were too short, or, eventually, too fat.

I bet they could get pencils in there though. I Know I did.

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#404

Post by hinkley »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #61
ortusdux wrote: post #4

I still cannot get over this product. They whole selling point of a dyson fan is the 'air multiplier' tech, which creates a low pressure zone that propels air through the ring. According to dyson, this tech can move 15x more air than the fan in the base of the unit. Why in the world would you build an air filter around a system that does not directly interact with 93% of the air it moves? https://www.jameco.com/Jamec…

I live in a large loft-style apartment on two floors which is actually a large room. There are only a few windows and they are placed in a way that no air draft gets created. When I bought a purifier, one of the things I was looking for was air movement. I position my Dyson so that there's a draft throughout the apartment. I thought this would improve the air filtration because the air would move through my home and…

Vornado used to make an air filter that fires straight upward, but they discontinued it in favor of a design with proprietary filter media.

Air filtration shouldn't be this expensive.

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#405

Post by Zardoz84 »

> Siegel and other indoor air experts said you should avoid ion generators and plasma air cleaners, which can emit ozone, a respiratory hazard that can cause serious health problems.

Ozone (O³) are used to deodorize, fungicide, and disinfect air (and water, or products bathed with ozonized water). O³ is secure if the concentration isn't too high. And it's really effective doing this. Far better and secure that chlorine. Plus the O³ becomes natural O² given enough time (like 10 to 30 minutes for a room with a high O³ concentraion to be enought low to be safe.)

I know very well that were it's used to disinfect air coiling tower, the risk of legionella bacterium infections, becomes 0. And I saw personally how effective it's to keeping at bay fungus on a problematic damp basement.

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#406

Post by ACow_Adonis »

post_break wrote: post #2

I bought an expensive Dyson air purifier for a couple of reasons. It has a remote so I can turn it on from bed. It looks attractive. The sound profile is much different than a box fan for sleeping at night. It can analyze the temperature, humidity, and air quality in real time and turn on if it notices air quality is getting bad. It also oscillates. That said yes it was expensive, but it replaced needing a fan for co…

Disclaimer: Own the dyson cool-tower thingy, not the heat/cool one (as it didn't seem worth the money IMO). It was $200-$300 cheaper iirc.

It does seem that they're comparing apples to oranges. Of course if you optimise for one metric ignoring the trade-offs and extra features: fixed air flow for a single given particulate removal measure, the cheapest solution that arrives at and maximises that metric is going to come out on top.

But if you consider:

- Hepa vs Merv - Additional carbon filter - Remote control - Multiple pivot options - Multiple power options - In built sensors and real-time reporting for small particles, large particles, no2, volatile organics, temperature and humidity - smaller horizontal footprint - Smartphone integration + remote operation - noise footprint

then "shock", you have to pay more to have those features! (and they do provide value).

Dyson certainly offers "I like to burn my money" options like many other companies, and they're not priced cheaply, but it's dishonest to review a sports car and a utility van on the metric of boot space and proclaim a "one little trick they don't want you to know about" type headline.

Also, I haven't seen anyone else tackle it: what the hell is up with this "corona-virus protection" hints and claims in this article? Is that not enough to set off most people's internal alarms that the article is quackery?

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#407

Post by wombatmobile »

hangonhn wrote: post #287
numpad0 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fan intakes on non-purifying Dyson do get plugged with dust over time, so it makes sense to add filters. Aside from whether it makes sense to advertise them as air purifiers.

That makes me wonder if that was how the product originated. Dyson realizes its fans have a problem. Engineers suggest an air filter. Marketing see an opportunity.

The Dyson marketing person's angle is a sleight of hand:

"Dyson has developed its own testing methodology, the POLAR test method, which, unlike the CADR, Hill said, "measures the intelligence of the purifier, the ability for it to know when that room is clean or dirty and automatically react, and its ability to mix that pure air around the room."

The detection function seems of spurious value if the device is operating at max capacity regardless of whether a pollutant is detected or not.

Is that the case, or does the Dyson adjust volumetric flow to match the detected level of pollutants? That would make sense in the case of smoke, although humans could detect smoke and turn the device on or off accordingly.

COVID19 particles are a different case. If the Dyson can detect those and switch itself on, eliminating the virus from the room, $800 is a bargain. But it can't.

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#408

Post by throwaway180118 »

ortusdux wrote: post #395
pmontra wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serendipity happens: I was looking at a number of videos about DIY Dyson fans after I learned that bladeless fans exist. Then this post on HN. Examples https://youtu.be/vyJ4wA-3dnY https://youtu.be/sFRXkH2XjsU

They 3d print well if you have a good printer. I've seen designs that use standard size computer fans, which make them cheap and easy.

I wonder if the porous surface of 3D printed materials affects the airflow

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#409

Post by hinkley »

nostrademons wrote: post #359

My wife rigged up a similar box fan + HEPA filter + duct tape solution during last summer's CA wildfires. They are remarkably effective. We also have the BlueAir purifier that was top-rated in this report, and arguably the box fan did better. (The BlueAir is better for kitchen smells, the box fan is better for particulates like wildfire smoke.) I think the filters are like $40 each from Costco and the box fan was $30…

There's a box fan design with a slot for a 20x20 air filter on the back.

There's an issue of whether the fan motor is designed for that sort of pressure, though. Not sure how durable that motor is going to be.

Re: Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test

#410

Post by colechristensen »

AlexandrB wrote: post #3

Dyson : Air Products :: Beats : Audio Products Pretty much every Dyson product I've used, from the public bathroom air "blades" to the vacuums, seem like a gimmicky, inferior products with a premium price tag. None of them do their intended job better than older, cheaper products in their category. I know James Dyson is regarded as a genius engineer, but the consumer product company bearing his name seems to be 99% m…

Dyson focuses on over-engineering and clever-engineering. Sometimes those things get in the way of what is practical, best, or even useful.

But I am quite fond of my dyson upright and handheld vacuums. Their fans and other things seem more like novelties to me, but that doesn't make them bad, they just are what they are. Expensive and neat, but not optimal if you want to chase a metric or price optimum.

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