Dyson is an odd company, in the best way. Whereas other technology brands make their bread and butter out of cheap headphones, or cheap TVs, or other generic, soulless, cheap electronics, sold for modest margins in immodest volumes, Dyson takes a different route. They abstain from almost all the most popular categories and ask profound questions such as, “Hair dryers aren’t cool enough, are they?” And the products spawned by those questions are,  against all odds, a hit, be they premium hair curlers, vacuums or air purifiers. Even their lesser-known products — like their amazing desk lamp, or less-than-amazing headphones — are the most interesting, bold takes on their segments.

Ultimately, though, these are basic household electronics at very high prices. And so, when a review unit arrived for the $850 Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde™ HP09 air purifying fan, I faced the question: how good can a fan be? In short, very.

My review unit is in white, silver and bronze, sits at 30 inches tall and almost 10 inches wide, and though it is initially imposing — it certainly makes more of an impression than your corner store fan — it’s also quite handsome, and fits perfectly on my coffee table, alongside magazines and books. 

There are three core functions of the fan — blowing air, heating and cooling air, and filtering it — and these are managed through either Dyson’s app or the included remote, allowing you to customize temperature, rotation, duration and fan speed. It’s fun to tweak at first, but the automatic mode works so well that the only button I would otherwise hit was for the ‘night’ mode. The MyDyson app allows you to connect to your fan alongside any other Dyson products, and though I don’t use a smart home system — they’re finicky to set up, often unreliable, and of little benefit, at least for now — it’s compatible with Apple’s, Amazon’s, and Google’s solutions.

To start with the basic fan function: everyone who has been to an airport bathroom should be familiar with the power of bladeless fans, but even so, I was shocked by how much power the Dyson fan packs at its  top settings. With rotation on, even at a medium setting, it moved cool air from my living room window, all through my apartment, and though it makes a noticeable noise, it’s not unpleasant or overbearing, either. I did not even turn it off for Zoom calls.

It is worth noting that, with windows open, the filtering won’t be able to do its work; but with the windows closed, making a closed circuit in your apartment or room, the air purifying is superb. 

For a stress test, I cooked various meals with the extractor fan off, filling the air with caramelized onion and sizzled steak and frying fat, and within half an hour or so of turning the fan on, the smell was almost gone, and its inbuilt screen showed that my air quality had gone from the dirty reds down into healthy, pleasant green. 

In everyday use, various chemicals can seep in from paint and sealant, along with mold spores or various particulates from spring flowers, and the fan catches all of these, with Dyson claiming that it has the ability to filter out “99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns”, courtesy of the four large intake filters at the base of the unit. When Canadian bushfires next send billowing smoke through New York, shelter with your Dyson-owning friends.

Finally, you can set a desired temperature that you would like the surrounding air to be, and the Dyson can heat or cool its output accordingly, and rapidly. This was so impressive that in cold London Januarys, I didn’t turn the heating on once, with just a heated airer and the fan heating up my apartment, and it was constantly toasty, and used less energy than a conventional radiator heating system. I doubt it would be as competitive with an air conditioner in the summer, but the energy savings will be even more pronounced there.

It is worth noting that the detection of air temperature is a bit hit and miss — the air temperature of my window-facing coffee table is noticeably warmer than at my desk — but, to quickly heat up, you can just dial up the temperature and it will almost instantly bounce up, and your room temperature shortly with it. 

The irony is that, in a well-insulated apartment, in a cold country, I imagine the Dyson could save you more than it costs on energy bills within a few years; but even if that’s not so, if you live in a city, it’s a huge benefit to the healthiness and comfort of your home. 

Do you have to pay the $850 to get that? For all these features, yes — at least, when it’s not on sale, as it currently is for $700 — and for the interested customer, it’s a fantastic product. Additionally, they do offer cheaper, smaller options if this is a bit too much to spend — and larger, more expensive options for those with particularly huge living rooms, or event spaces. Once again, Dyson has a luxurious, class-leading product despite a mundane product category.