This is brilliant as an air purifier, cooling fan and humidifier

The nuisance of the pollution season is imminent. As the authorities continue to rumble, oozing with incompetence as they tamper with so-called graded action plans etc., you’ll be left to fend for yourself as air quality plummets from unhealthy to dangerous to serious. If you spend your time watching a television show called the news, you would be immersed in shots of murky shots of your city with the sun barely breaking through the smog and pollution. And everyone blames each other. Neither saves your lungs. This makes air purifiers all the more essential to your home. Your parents, your children and yourself – save everyone from the polluted air, at least for the time you are inside. And not many do air purifiers better than British tech company Dyson.

Dyson’s mission for multi-purpose air purifiers continues with the new Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool air purifier. This is, as the name suggests, your air purifier, cools the room and also humidifies the air. This joins the Dyson Pure Hot+Cool, another one of those versatile air purifiers that also heats the room, very relevant in the winter months. Until we get a Dyson Pure Humidify+Hot+Cool or something like that (a mere mortal can dream, right?), you’ll have to choose between the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool and the Dyson Pure Hot+Cool – basically whether you want the heating function or the humidifier. Both variants of the air purifier also cost Rs 55,900.

Clean humidification is important, says science

My recommendation would be that if you suffer from itchy throat and a dry throat, especially in the winter months, choose the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool. There are many reasons why you should humidify the air in your home, more than what you already do. In most homes, the humidity is comparable to that of a typical desert, which is around 20 percent. This decreases even further in the winter months. Ever notice the itchy and scratchy throat when you wake up in the morning? Or the chapped lips? And dry skin, especially around the arms? This is due to lack of moisture in the air. Not only is it uncomfortable at first, but it can eventually lead to illness.

Second, science suggests that more humidified air significantly hinders a virus’s potential to infect. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives the example of the contagious influenza virus that is simulated to have an infection potential of as much as 77% of the virus particles when the room humidity was around 23%, but significantly reduced to just 15% virus potency when humidity was increased to 43%.

The Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool doesn’t just screw on a water tank

I’ve reviewed several air purifiers with humidifiers over the years, but none really have the kind of attention to detail that Dyson shows. For example, you don’t have to struggle to eject the water tank to refill or slide it back in. Press the release mechanism on either side and you can slide the water tank onto the floor for the Dyson Pure Humidify+ Cool – there are wheels on the bottom of this tank.

It is a huge water tank with a capacity of 5 liters. I have come across yet another air purifier that offers such a large water tank for humidification, the largest of which is the 2 liter capacity that certain Philips air purifiers offer. You can set the exact percentage of humidity you want to keep in the room, and the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool does that for you by automatically managing the amount of humidification that comes into the air. Dyson says this takes about 36 hours with full humidification. Honestly, you need to humidify your room step by step. In that case, the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool water tank will last for days before you need to refill it.

That’s not the end of cleverness with the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool.

The moisture meets the clean air after it passes through Dyson’s filters and before it exits the vents. In this process, there is a biostatic evaporator with biostatic silver strands integrated into the mesh. This is to protect in the long term against the growth of bacteria in the evaporator layers.

The Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool also uses ultraviolet-C, also known as UV-C and quite in vogue these days to sterilize items etc. at home, to sterilize the water in the tank before it comes out as humidified air . This is to kill bacteria, viruses and other organisms that may be in the water so they don’t come out with the clean air and circulate in the air we breathe. It is very likely that you will be filling tap water into the tank of the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool, and this sterilization layer is invisible yet very important.

Air purification that also works for large rooms, effortlessly

The design and way in which the filters are deployed in the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool is very similar to its predecessors. That means 360 degrees of polluted air supply that is routed through the multi-layer filters. The filters Dyson has in the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool can also capture 99.95% of pollutants and particles as small as 0.1 microns. The filter design itself in the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool is very similar to its predecessors, with multiple layers of HEPA and activated carbon layers in pairs. One pair sits at the front and one at the back, allowing for the intake of polluted air all around.

Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool filters can trap particles as small as 0.1 microns, which is 100 times thinner than the width of human hair. Not only can these particles enter our lungs, but they can also enter the bloodstream. And that is also the scope of the COVID virus. Most indoor air purifying filters can capture particles of 0.3 microns or larger. In a moderately active dining and living room, the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool maintained the humidity at 40% and kept the room at around 20 grams/cubic meter (g/m3), even when the outside air (and the air that sneaks in) is a very poor 319 AQI.

The air purification filters are near the base and the air is pushed out through the annular loop with the air multiplication technology and there is no fan to push the air out. The difference here is that the base doesn’t rotate for oscillation, and instead there are redesigned air outlets that are motorized to move at 45-degree or 90-degree angles for the same results. The reason is that motors at the base would now have had to deal with the weight of the water in the humidification tank which is now at the very bottom. And as always, if you’re not airing directly into your face, you can switch to the more discreet diffused vents that vent the purified air from the sides.

There’s a big difference in how Dyson develops and tests air purifiers compared to rivals. While most air purifiers are rated after what is called CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) testing, Dyson uses another test called POLAR. There are nice differences. The CADR test is performed in a room of approximately 11.8 m2 (127 sq ft), where the purifier is placed in the center of the room, with an additional fan to circulate the air throughout the room and only one sensor to measure air quality. This is definitely not representative of the layout of most of our living rooms, which may not always have a ceiling fan to circulate the air (in winter, for example) and certainly not have room for an air purifier in the center of the room. Dyson’s POLAR test does things differently. A POLAR test lab is based on a larger space of 27 m2 (290 sq ft), with no added fan. The air purifier is placed in the corner of the room, which is a replica of how it is used in our homes and the pollution injected into the room from the other corner. The test uses eight sensors in the corners of the room and one in the center, which detect particles from indoor air pollution that are 300 times narrower than a human hair. This is to test the air purifier’s performance in the farthest corners of the room, not just in the immediate vicinity of the purifier.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

The rest of the Dyson elements remain very much present in the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool. The slim remote, the round display on the front and the very capable Dyson Link app (free for Android and iOS), for example. One observation is that the display on the purifier itself shows the air quality graph by default – it might be better to have a numeric display here. For example, my parents can’t see the screen clearly because they have to crouch to see it, and in some lighting situations they can’t see exactly what the graph is trying to suggest.

The final word: you pay for the premium experience, and that’s what you get

There is often the reaction that Dyson air purifiers cost quite a bit. But is it real? At the time of writing, Philips has the Series 3000 Air Purifier with Humidifier (AC3821/20) which costs Rs 37,995. For that extra outlay of cash, get the Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool, one of the most advanced air purifiers you can find right now. Every interface with the purifier, whether it’s using the remote, controlling it via the app, refilling the water tank or even the oscillation and diffused air output modes just feels incredibly premium.

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