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Should you buy a Dyson Pure Cool Fan?
by Josh Teder
Design and Aesthetics
It’s been six months since I bought a Dyson Pure Cool TP07 Fan Air Purifier, and while I love the design and aesthetic of the fan, I’m going to explain why it’s not worth getting, and it’s not for the reason you might think. First, though, let’s go through the best features of this Dyson. The first one is its design: the Dyson Pure Cool is a sleek-looking bladeless fan, especially with the metallic color of the version I got. It not only looks nice, but this bladeless design also makes it easy to clean.
Air Purification and Filters
Plus, because this Dyson is also an air purifier, the air it’s pushing out isn’t just recirculating dust around your room. You’ll find the HEPA filters at the bottom of the unit, which itself is also HEPA-certified. The filters are easy to remove and replace, which Dyson recommends you do about every year. The Dyson app will alert you when you need to replace them. Replacement filters will cost you about $80.
Build Quality and Display
There’s a nice soft-touch material used at the top of the unit where the air inlets are, but the rest of the housing is plastic, which is fine, but for $649 USD, which is what this fan retails for, you’d think you’d get something a bit more premium. Even the remote is plastic, though it looks like something that should be made from aluminum, like the Apple TV remote. The remote will attach to the top of the fan, which is nice, though I don’t think it looks as sleek with the remote sitting on top. At the bottom of the unit, you’ll also notice a display, which some might find to look a bit gimmicky like I first did. But after six months, I’ve come to appreciate the data it can give you on that display.
Display Features
Dyson uses this display for several functions, like indicating how much oscillation you’ve selected for the fan. It also has a backward airflow mode, where the Dyson will just purify the air without blowing it forward. The display will also show you the levels of particulate matter in the air at different sizes and settings like the Wi-Fi status. The display will automatically turn off at night when it senses the room is dark, but you don’t have any manual control over its brightness.
Smart Features and App
So that’s the design. Now, let’s talk about some other smart features that you get with this Dyson. You get auto mode, which will automatically ramp up the air purifier when it detects that air quality has deteriorated. Overall, it’s worked as advertised, ramping up when I was cooking with oil, using a paper shredder, or even spraying rubbing alcohol. In that situation, the VOC sensor ramped the fan speed up to 10, its highest setting.
Wi-Fi and Voice Control
One of the biggest benefits of this Dyson Pure Cool over other models is that you get a Wi-Fi connection, which allows you to control this Dyson with smart assistants for smart home control. It’ll work with the Google Assistant, Amazon’s assistant, and Siri, but only with Siri Shortcuts. This isn’t as full of an integration as you get with Google or Amazon, and Siri Shortcuts does require a bit more work to set up.
Dyson App
You can also control the fan with the My Dyson app, which overall is pretty nicely designed. It’s very simple and has a nice aesthetic, though that simplicity does come at the cost of customization that some may want. For example, the Dyson Pure Cool has an integrated temperature and humidity sensor. Still, there’s no way in the My Dyson app to have the unit ramp up the fan speed when your room hits a specific temperature or combination of humidity and temperature as you get with other smart fans. The app also allows you to turn on what’s called continuous monitoring, where your machine will generate a report of your air quality over time. Another huge benefit you get with the app is scheduling. It makes it easy to set several schedules throughout the day so you can automate how high your fan speed is, if you want the fan to oscillate or not, and if you want night mode enabled, which turns the display off and the fan to its lowest setting.
Major Downside: High-Pitched Noise
Alright, so that’s everything I like about this Dyson. Now let’s talk downsides, and aside from the price, there is one downside that prevents me from recommending this Dyson, and that’s a high-pitched squealing noise that soon developed after I bought the product. This noise developed on my unit about two months after buying it, and it’s most noticeable when the fan is in its auto setting, although I have been woken up by it in the middle of the night when my fan speed is at 10 as well.
Here are a few examples of what this noise sounds like: it’s a pretty annoying sound that can be very distracting while trying to work. Even worse, it’s woken me up in the middle of the night a couple of times. The weird thing is, at least for my machine, it’s not consistent when it happens.
A Known Issue
And when I looked into this issue further, I was taken aback. Not only does it appear to be widespread, affecting several Dyson Pure Cool fan models and air purifiers, including their latest model, the TP9, but this issue goes back years. You’d think within five years, Dyson would have realized there was a flaw with their motor design. And after digging through Dyson’s forums on their website, it became clear that the engineering team is aware of this issue. They think it’s likely caused by the motor’s bearing, and the only way to fix it is to contact Dyson and have the motor bucket replaced.
Disappointing Lack of Resolution
It’s disappointing that this high-pitched noise issue has been going on for so long, and Dyson hasn’t seemed to be able to fix it in the newer produced models. Some owners have reported sanding down, and greasing parts in the motor did fix the problem for them, or at least until the grease ran out. But depending on where you live, that could void your warranty, which is only for two years, by the way, at least here in the US, which for the price of this product, is not great. The warranty really should be five years. I contacted Dyson to get this model sent out for repair, but I’m not optimistic after seeing forum posts with people doing the same thing. They get a replacement model, and guess what? It has the exact same issue.
Final Recommendation
At this point, there is no way I could recommend buying any of Dyson’s Pure Cool products until the company comments on this issue and, more importantly, explains how they fixed it in an updated design. Until then, my recommendation would be, if you need an air purifier, get one from a company like Blueair, which I have reviews of:
And they’re not a sponsor, by the way. As for a smart fan, I bought one from Govee over the summer and have been really impressed with it. While it doesn’t look as cool as the Dyson, it’s about a hundred bucks and has even more smart scheduling features than the Dyson.
GoveeLife Smart Tower Fan (Affiliate Link)