Dyson Pure Cool Link Review
The brand new Dyson Pure Cool Link marks the company's first foray into the truly ‘smart home’ category. Not only does this ‘fan’ preserve the unique blade-less design of the original, but it has the new additions of monitoring and purifying the air within a home, claiming to remove 99.9% of allergens and pollutants. All this useful info is reported to an App which can be used from anywhere in the world to control and monitor the Pure Cool Link when you’re not at home. But is all this seemingly witty functionality worth the £350 Dyson are asking?
Design
Anyone suffering from aichmophobia (the fear of straight edges & lines) will bask in the circular design theme, right from the circular plug to the sculptured circler blade-less head resting on a circular base with only one circular button to switch it on. Like all Dyson products we’ve previously reviewed, the Dyson Pure Cool Link still preserves that satisfyingly smug persona of engineering achievement. Anyone that vaguely knows about these fans will zoom in on it, ask questions and study every detail as it operates. What other fan can claim to be able to allure people? Of course, the strikingly obvious design note is the lack of a fan blade, proudly replaced with what Dyson refer to as Air Multiplier™ technology. We decide how well it works later on.
Pleasingly all the plastics are still made to the familiarly tough Dyson standards. We frequently transport it from room to room and its lightweight and solid construction make it little effort to do so. Whilst everyone receiving the Dyson Pure Cool Link is 450000 hours away from needing to replace the filter, it’s reassuring to know that it can be accessed by simply pressing two buttons to remove the circular head, where we then have full access to the 360° glass HEPA Filter. And yes, the lifetime of the filter is calculated by the Dyson App.
Controlling & Monitoring Your Air Atmosphere
With previous air purifiers we’ve reviewed the only way to see if it’s working is to check the filter for visible debris collected and to sniff out the air to make a judgement. The Dyson reports the humidity level, room temperature and air quality rating (in populous areas the outdoor stats will show) immediately upon opening the joyously simple to use App. Four levels, from good to very poor, are fed back as a rating of the air quality environment. The standard of good can be raised to a higher level via the settings if you’re someone who is highly sensitive to pollutants, etc. All of this information on a per day (hourly visibility) or weekly basis is displayed via charts within the App for historical referencing. Furthermore, all of this information is actually stored in the Dyson Link cloud - so family members can all share.
Enabling on/off, oscillation of the base, the variable 10 speed settings, timer, night-time mode and automatic mode can either be functioned from the App or the quite literally handy magnetic controller that resides on top of the Pure Cool Link. The only mode that probably needs some explanation is automatic mode. In this mode the Dyson constantly monitors the air quality and if it dips, the Pure Cool Link will spring to life and calculate the length of time and speed necessary to bring the air quality back to 'good' automatically.
Does it Purify the Air Well?
Interestingly, during the first few days of setting the Dyson Pure Cool Link up and leaving it to run for 6-7 hours per day, our air quality fluctuated from ‘mild’ to ‘good’ in rating. We noticed that air quality dropped when people entered through the door or if a window was left open. This was all at the height of the pollen count during the summer, which some of us are extremely sensitive to. Quite literally, the day before the Dyson arrived at the studio a few of us were muddling through with the itchy eyes and general congestion caused by the disruptive symptoms of hay fever. After leaving the Dyson Pure Cool Link on during working hours, it not only rated our atmospheric air environment as good but the collective of hay fever symptoms entirely vanished - although the pollen count outside remained high!
It’s effective at capturing odours from the air too. We first used bleach to clean down some walls and then painted the same room on a stormy wet day, which restricted our ability to use opened windows. So we dragged along the Dyson to see if it could cleanse away these potent scents. As we painted away with it on, it did indeed help a great deal. Fresh noses coming into the sealed environment commented that it smelled much better in the space of 20 minutes. No doubt the oscillation helped to clear so much air quickly. Lastly, you know the days when it’s so hot that leaving the windows open just welcomes in the unbearable clammy heat? Well, in a humid warm environment where the windows and doors are closed and a conventional fan is used, it doesn't take long for the circulation of air to become stale. Contrasting this, the Dyson doesn't suffer from such a fate, constantly streaming out fresh clean air - it’s a credible saviour.
Does it Cool us Down?
Whilst clean air is evidently important, from our near daily usage over the tail end of this summer we’ve noted several reasons why the Dyson Pure Cool Link has proven to be nearly indispensable at the studio for refreshing us. Firstly the projection of air isn't abrasive and instead it’s breezy - quite natural in feel. When compared to the previously reviewed Meaco Air Purifier, that did effectively purify our studio atmosphere but didn't really cool us down due to the displacement of air from the top, the Pure Cool Link has proven to be an entirely nicer experience - refreshing us on warm days here at the studio and with a smidgen of the comparable operational noise too - night-time mode sounds like a faint fridge operation.
But does it have the power to project? The resounding answer is simply yes, and proves that blades truly aren't needed in a fan design for the majority of consumers. If you desire a fan that will sting your eyes in close contact when you reach for something on a desk, the Dyson isn't it, and frankly we don’t want that level of power in a studio setting with loose paper around. When we set it above speed setting 7, the AirMultiplier technology boasts how far reaching it can stream the soft yet forceful oscillating breeze around a room of over 6 metres in length at the studio. The conclusion being that the Dyson Pure Cool Link has no trouble refreshing warm and sticky environments in the summer heat - rather quickly, we should add. Obviously low speed settings are suitable for the colder months ahead and focus on purifying only, having little cooling effect.
Verdict
Put it this way, in a scenario where money is no object and every desktop purifier is lined up - we’d run towards the Dyson Pure Cool Link every time. This sort of sums up everything you need to know about the genius and efficient brilliance of this appliance, from the blade-less design right through to the App. It’s the window to your home's atmosphere and it’s an appliance that doesn't just cool us all down - it cools us down with clean air!