Can Dyson's air purifier help you breathe better?

In the last few years, air purifiers have gone from being a luxury to an absolute necessity. With grim reports on air pollution across India making headlines daily, breathing clean air has now become a luxury too. You may be forced to lock yourself and your children indoors but here's another grim fact, the indoor air quality is deteriorating too.

Slowly and steadily, air purifiers have made their way into hotel lobbies, school classrooms, office spaces and even gyms and spas. There's an air purifier for every budget, every space and every person.

The premium space in the air purifier category has been dominated by Dyson. The company has now launched its new range of air purifiers, the Dyson Purifier Cool and the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool.

I have the latter, more expensive one with me for review right in time for pollution season. With terms like hazardous air quality, toxic gases and PM2.5 doing the rounds, let see if this air purifier, priced at Rs 47,515, can cleanse the air in our homes.

More importantly, we'll try and answer a crucial question -- do air purifiers make any difference to indoor air quality?

DYSON HOT+COOL AIR PURIFIER 

• Price: Rs 47,515
• Comes with remote
• Pairs with Dyson Link app
• Effective air purification
• Needs a 16A socket

LOOKS

Dyson has an edge over the competition when it comes to design. Its gadgets look sleeker, more advanced and that often becomes a gamechanger for modern homes where a lot of thought goes into how a gadget fits into the "aesthetics" of the interiors. Dyson's new air purifier uses the company's famous bladeless fan system and comes with a white body with silver accents.

The cylindrical base holds the crucial parts that is the air filters and also houses the display. Before you invest in this gadget, do note that the Hot+Cool comes with a larger 16A plug and you'll need to connect it to a bigger socket. You get a power button at the base and the hatch at the bottom can be easily removed to change air filters.

The display at the base is quite useful since you get to know all about indoor air quality in your bedroom or living area. You can see the fan speed but more significantly, the PM2.5, PM10, volatile organic compound and Nitrogen Dioxide levels. All these parameters are a testament to the grim reality of our times --- where even the indoor quality is not safe for breathing. At most points throughout the day, every time I switched on the air purifier, the air quality remained in the 'very poor' category.

The display also tells you about the remaining life of the air filter which should tell you when you need to change it.

The purifier comes with a matte silver remote which is magnetised and can be placed on top of the air purifier. So, you wouldn't have to worry about misplacing it! The remote can be used to control your air purifier from a distance and performs well. For everything else, I would recommend using the app.

DYSON LINK APP

Controlling an air purifier through an app may sound like too much of an inconvenience but in this case, it's quite the opposite. Once you have set up the device, the app offers you useful insight and also allows you to control multiple Dyson devices from one control centre. You can find detailed data about the air quality inside your house. You can also set the purifier to a schedule, activate night mode and even connect the air purifier to other smart devices in your home. With smart homes becoming a reality in urban centres, this functionality will go a long way.

The 'Hot+Cool' feature lets you make the purifier into a heater or a cooling agent. While it does warm up the room well, I wouldn't use this as an air conditioner substitute in the summer months. You can control the heating or cooling through the remote or the app.

DOES THE AIR PURIFIER CLEAN THE AIR?

Judging if an air purifier works or not is not that easy. With air quality outdoors and indoors deteriorating in winter months, allergies rise, respiratory troubles increase and watery eyes, itchy throats become the norm. So, the only way to test if an air purifier is doing its job is by finding out how effectively it can capture particulate matter and other harmful substances. All this should help you breathe easy.

I put the Dyson Hot+Cool in my bedroom a little before air pollution peaked in North India. My reasons were simple, my husband and I are both prone to seasonal allergies. On the other hand, my three-year-old son has stayed indoors in the pandemic and his exposure to poor air quality has been minimal.

Here's the good news, after placing the air purifier in a closed room, the air quality turned from "poor" to "good" levels in around 40 minutes. If you don't trust the data, here's a personal anecdote. After staying in a room with the air purifier for 4 hours, I stepped out, only to find myself coughing, sneezing with watery eyes. Once I stepped into another indoor space without an air purifier, my eyes continued to water. So, with the air purifier on, allergies can be managed better.

Essentially, if used right, air purifiers do provide some relief from poor indoor air quality. Make sure you put the air purifier at a certain height off the floor and keep windows and doors shut.

DOES THE PURIFIER HELP YOU BREATHE BETTER?

Yes, if you use it correctly. Park your air purifier at a height off the ground so it's not just cleaning the dust off the floor but actively cleaning the air that you breathe.

Another tip, shut all doors and windows to avoid the air from outside from trickling into the room. While this is not possible at all times, the air purification process gets delayed if you're constantly opening windows.

So does the Dyson Hot+Cool tick all the boxes for a good air purifier? I would say yes. When plugged in, I breathed easy especially when compared to the hazardous air quality outside. While there are cheaper air purifiers in the market, Dyson claims to use a different testing standard known as the POLAR test which aims for whole-room purification. It is very difficult to test out this claim but the air purifier does arm the user with more information when it comes to air purification.

SHOULD YOU BUY THE DYSON HOT+COOL?

The Dyson Hot+Cool performed well in most cases. We sneezed less, coughed less and were able to get our indoor room quality to a level we could all appreciate. But the moment we stepped out, all those problems came back to haunt us and that, in many cases, has been the only argument against air purifiers. I also like the fact that the Dyson Hot+Cool regulates the room temperature to a certain extent and doesn't make too much noise while doing it.

At 47,515 rupees, the Dyson Hot+Cool is a luxury to say the least. There may be more affordable variants in the market that suit your budget. But then again, can you put a price tag on breathing clean air?