Looks like a giant bubble wand.
If you have money for this…
When a 15 dollar box fan can do the same thing for you…
You obviously are not paying your fair share taxes.
Please find your nearest OWS protest and turn yourself in!
Yes, and for that little bit of Tomfoolery, you get to pay an additional $200. Such a deal!!
We had the table model demo at a BB&B store. Great look, terrible performance, couldn’t feel air movement farther than about 4 ft. Confirmed this with confetti we threw into the fan—it travelled about 3 ft. Guess that’s what they mean by “no buffetting”. For this price you can buy 5 remote controlled tower fans.
Dyson = Great look + poor preformance + $$$$$$
I think that’s called “Style over Substance”
BTW here’s a similar bladeless 11" table fan from woot 4 days ago–$17.
Monster cables and Dyson fans/vacuums:
Solid proof that you can indeed “fool some of the people all of the time”
So that’s how particle accelerators work. At $230 a pop, no wonder they’re so expensive to build.
Don’t forget Amish Heaters.
could not have said it better. All these fanboys try to justify they spent way too much on these gimmick fans. Good idea maybe for the fan but to over charge us a rediculous amount is unforgivable. NO DYSON FOR ME!
Anyone who spends $230 on a fan really has disposable income.
home made particle accelerator…Nice
…QUIDDITCH ANYONE?
Then what do you do? Can you post a video?
Tax payer money hard at work.
That happens anytime you have moving air. That actually happens with REGULAR fans too. I’d like to see Dyson prove that their stupid “air multiplier” can use a fan that uses X amount of force to draw in air at the base, and blow it out with 15X force. That breaks Conservation of Energy, and that’s impossible.
That’s physics. You can can’t ever have a device that produces more energy than you put in, unless you’re Lisa Simpson. So, the same fan, that draws the same energy will produce the same amount of airflow. There’s no such thing as an air multiplier effect… if there was, we’d be using it for free energy, rather than showing how douchey we are.
I am afraid this is actually a time portal or an entry to a black hole!
You obviously saw a bad demo. And I hardly believe that BB&B would allow you to sprinkle confetti in their store. And your confetti demo is flawed since confetti is drawn downward by gravity, and their natural behavior is to avoid the current (the edge automatically turns parallel to the current, i.e. like a weather vane). In other words, it has little to do with airflow, but more to do with confetti. Why do you think physicists use symmetrical smoke and water particles, and not edged confetti-like shapes when testing fluid dynamics?
We first saw a 10" version of this at J&R. On high, the air current was evident at least 12-15’ away, as demonstrated by a newspaper we held at the store (and of course, we felt it). On the lowest setting, a comfortable breeze is felt at least 6’ away, as used in our apartment. To test if air current reaches an area, simply have a sensor (a person, newspaper, threads, etc) in the area of interest.
Finally, the link had a USB fan. I actually have similar model, which are all cheaply made in China. USB outputs 5 volts at 500mA. Do you SERIOUSLY think that a weak conventional 5V motor that uses < 500 MILLIamps compares to this Dyson’s digitally controlled brushless motor? That comparison is as valid as your confetti test.
I can’t validate their numbers but I can validate that it works. And your claims are simplistic. I am a Medical Research Analyst so I am instinctively skeptical, and while my background isn’t fluid dynamics, it is medical physics (electrophysiology). I was not drawn by Dyson’s reputation or aesthetics. In fact, I regularly criticize Dyson vacuums on Woot.
What disappoints me is that most critics are writing from ignorance. For example, simply saying that Dyson’s claims are flawed does not in any way prove that the fan itself doesn’t work as effectively as they say. That’s like saying that just because Galileo didn’t explain gravity correctly, gravity didn’t work as it should. Nope, in research, we say that the results are INDEPENDENT from whether we can explain them correctly.
IN other words, reviews should be left to those who have actually used the product. A similar problem exists on Amazon.
Now to your points:
- No one claimed that Inducement and Entrainment doesn’t happen with regular fans, so your point is moot. What is claimed is that this design exploits the effects efficiently. Just think about it, with blades in the way, just how is Inducement taking place in a regular fan? Where exactly is air being dragged alongside the air being moved by blades? Unlike the halo of the Dyson, there is NO area within the fan that allows FREE air current, not directly affected by the blades.
Entrainment is a little bit more difficult, but an actual demonstration with a box fan and conventional 10" desk fan showed me that there is very little effect. In fact, my guess is that the Bernouilli Effect was more at work than Entrainment. Try it yourself. Put a strip of newspaper outside the perimeter of a normal fan and see if it’s pulled forward. My demo says no, yet it’s pretty obvious with the Dyson.
In other words, these effects are negligible in a normal fan and contributes nothing useful to airflow. See my review regarding taking the multiplier ring off the Dyson, and the resulting air flow from the blades themselves. How would you explain that?
The lesson here is that Experimental Physics trumps Theoretical Physics. So rather than claiming this and that can’t be true, actually try the experiments. We buy fans to be cooled, not to demonstrate formulas.
- You wrote that it’s it’s impossible that "a fan that uses X amount of force to draw in air at the base, and blow it out with 15X force."
You just committed two errors in research. First, you misstated the problem. Dyson never said ANYTHING about force, or the multiplication of force. Read the Woot description: “Air Multiplier™ technology - An annular jet draws in surrounding air, multiplying it 18 times.” Where does it say anything about force? And btw, you CAN multiply force as simple Mechanics demonstrates, i.e. a lever.
What Dyson claimed is that 15x the AMOUNT OF AIR is moved versus the amount of air drawn through the fan inlets. And the reason is simple, some of the air is drawn through the multiplier ring (Inducement) and outside the ring (Entrainment). There is no magic or false claims.
Second, you claimed, “That breaks Conservation of Energy, and that’s impossible.” As I wrote above, the premise of your protest is false so this is simply wrong. No one said anything about force or energy (except you). But worse, you misunderstood the Conservation of Energy. It applies to CLOSED SYSTEMS. This Dyson fan is hardly in a closed system. For these two reasons, your protest is irrelevant in this discussion.
Here’s a short review from Consumer Reports, verifying that the Dyson fan does work as claimed. Compare their valid smoke test versus the silly confetti test used by Cole103. Like most people, including myself, CR was put off by the price. But that doesn’t mean that the Dyson doesn’t work, as some claim.
CR seems to imply that it did top their short list, but is matched by a much cheaper fan. While that’s true for air movement, it ignores the other advantages I mentioned in my review: energy efficiency, ease of cleaning and storage, arguable hardier brushless motor, infinite variable speed, flexibility of placement, effortless oscillation (gear breakage in normal fans is a major problem) and safety.
Since price was the only problem, it’s why I grabbed the 10" from Woot at $169, but refused to buy at the regular $299 price. Not bad for a device that I’ll use daily for hopefully, the next 10+ years.
From Consumer Reports, July 2010:
***"The claim
Dyson’s Air Multiplier is able to “generate smooth, uninterrupted airflow with no unpleasant buffeting,” the product’s website states. Air is drawn into the base and pushed into the round ring, and accelerates as it exits. Dyson says the technology “amplifies surrounding air.” The price is amplified, too: A 10-inch version costs $299.99. (In case you’re asleep, that’s really $300.) A 12-inch version costs $329.99.
The check
We compared the Dyson with three conventional table fans that cost $17 to $35, measuring air speed and looking at slow-motion films of smoke we sent through each fan. We also asked four blindfolded staffers to compare the Dyson’s outflow with that of two conventional fans, one at a time, while standing 5, 8, and 11 feet away.
Bottom line
Our engineers might have joined the Dyson Air Multiplier fan club—except for the high price. Generally, panelists found that the Dyson generated a smooth, uninterrupted airflow, but they felt that one of our comparison fans did that, too; and most panelists found those two fans equally pleasing. The Dyson is easily adjusted with a tilt of the tower, is easy to clean, and is safe, because there are no blades. The moving part (called the impeller) is inside the cylindrical base and is inaccessible. But you’ll save a good $264.99 by buying a conventional fan."***
I have rarely seen anyone’s argument so thoroughly discredited as you have just done. Perhaps the guy with “0” quality posts should think twice before taking on the guy with over 250 quality posts.
On the opposite end of the price spectrum, we just also bought a 16" pedestal fan for $9.99 and FREE s/h. Here is the link.
See? We’re not snobs who prefer form over function (heck, we’ve NEVER owned a Mac!).
