My Dyson Air Purifier Got Me Through What Felt Like The End Of The World

The Dyson Pure Humidify + Cool is a three-in-one purifier, humidifier, and fan that helped me deal with some of the worst smoke and air quality I've ever lived through as a result of the California wildfires.

Let me start by explaining two kinda big things here — first, I live in San Francisco, which in the last week has experienced what can only be described as scenes from a dystopian horror movie to be released sometime in 2021.

Elena Garcia / Via Instagram: @elenagarcia

The closest fires to us are hundreds of miles away — I can't even imagine how those closer to the blaze dealt with it.

Second, my husband suffered through what was honestly the scariest sickness of his life — COVID-19 — back in March and is still dealing with some of the side effects, mainly trouble with his breathing.

Alien Productions / Via giphy.com

He's OK now (for the most part). During his bout with COVID, not only could I not be at home with him to help but he was coping with what he described as his lungs giving up on him. His breathing was labored and painful, and it prevented him from being able to sleep at night. He still struggles and has this constant, short but deep, cough.

When the smoke and ash from the fires surrounding us started to really affect our air supply my husband felt it the worst. The weakness in his lungs was already there but the smoke triggered his labored breathing.

So when it came time to look for something to help us deal with both of those things, I wasn't here to play. I went with a brand I know, love, and that multiple people had recommended to us — Dyson. Specifically, the Dyson Pure Humidify + Cool.

Elena Garcia / Via Instagram: @elenagarcia

Dyson makes other variations of their air purifiers but none of them are all-in-one like this bad boy. That said, if you already have a humidifier or don't need one, Dyson's other air purifiers have all come highly recommended to me by so many people.

The Dyson Pure Cool TP01 starts at $299.99 and is both a refreshing fan and an air purifier. It's capable of removing 99.97% of pollutants and allergens that are as small as 0.3 microns — so basically super tiny.

The Dyson Pure Cool TP04 starts at $570, comes in five colors, and it literally captures the pollutants all around you. It has a 360-degree sealed HEPA and activated carbon filters. It also automatically detects the pollutants in the air in real-time and reports air quality levels on PM 2.5, PM 10, VOC, and NO2. You can check your air quality using the Dyson Link app too, which is awesome but more on that later.

Before I talk about anything else, I need to address the hefty price tag associated with the Dyson Pure Humidify + Cool — it's $800! Just saying that makes my breathing labored, forget my husband. But here's how I justified it:

It's not an easy pill to swallow, and there are def other options on the market that may be a better fit for your budget. All that said, none of them did everything we needed in our house and this Dyson convinced us that it was worth the cash.

It's a humidifier (great for helping with respiratory issues*), fan, and air purifier in one — plus, it does it all automatically thanks to fancy monitors, sensors, and personally selected settings.

Dyson, Elena Garcia

*The Mayo Clinic actually recommends humidifiers to ease some of the symptoms of a cold or other respiratory conditions.

It offers continuous humidification and is built with a 1-gallon tank capable of giving you up to 36 hours of hygienic humidification. Now, it is a purifying humidifier but if you don't need the humidifier you can just use the purifying fan.

You can customize your settings to monitor the air conditions inside and outside your home while regulating the air flow and intensity.

It cleans the water before it humidifies it — which, if I'm being honest, I never even considered until I started learning more and more about spit particles and air-born everything. Thank you COVID.

Dyson

It's built with a brand-spanking-new 3D Air-mesh evaporator located behind the air filter system and is designed to hygienically humidify the air before it's projected into your space. As air gets sucked in, its first stop is a fully-sealed filter system. It then passes over the evaporator where the air is humidified by the water vapor released from the evaporator. Then the clean, humidified air is projected out of the amplifier using a very fancy Air Multiplier technology.

Within its water tank, there is also a technology that uses UV-C light to kill bacteria that could be in your water — it basically zaps bacteria's DNA so they can't multiply — then a PTFE tube (which is basically just a super reflective, chemical resistant piece of piping in the machine) reflects the UV-C light so the water is exposed to it and it can kill 99.9% of the bacteria that was probably having a pool party in there.

But wait, there's more! As a second line of defense, that 3D Air-mesh evaporator I mentioned before is actually interwoven with silver strands to create structure and provide biostatic properties. (That just means it stops bacteria from growing in the evaporator itself, which is apparently a problem with humidifiers.)

The purification process includes a fully-sealed filter system that captures 99.97% of air pollutants that can be as small as 0.3 microns — it uses, among other things, HEPA and activated carbon filters.

Elena Garcia, Dyson

"Okay, what in the world are microns and what does their size got to do with it?" —me, to me, as I looked at that price tag.

I've recently come to learn that the public education system failed me and that microns are a unit of measurement — a tiny unit, one-thousandth of a millimeter tiny. So if we're doing the math here, something that is so tiny that it's not even big enough to be a whole micron (0.3 of one to be exact), and sure as hell not big enough to be visible to the human eye, can somehow, possibly still wreak havoc on our lungs. Science is wild y'all.

Anyway, Dyson's fully-sealed filtration system basically traps all the gases and particles while its state of the art Air Multiplier technology projects purified, humidified air throughout the room.

And speaking of clean — it has a deep clean cycle that makes maintenance so freakin' easy.

Dyson

The machine has a very fancy LCD display where a deep clean cycle button pops up and then you just follow the instructions to start the cleaning process. When you put your machine through this cycle it'll give all the parts of the machine exposed to water the deep cleaning one probably hopes to put their whole home through — at some point, maybe.

It has this thing called "breeze mode" which uses unique algorithms to vary the airflow and mimic a cooling, refreshing breeze — like you're outside even when you can't be.

Elena Garcia, Dyson

The Dyson Pure Humidify + Cool is designed with something called, "Jet Axis Control technology" — basically there are two jets, that are independently controlled, on each side of the air amplifier to provide direct cooling, oscillation mode, backward airflow mode, and the new breeze mode.

So what is this breeze mode I won't shut up about and why should anyone possibly care? Well for one, in a time when going outside is literally dangerous feeling a cool breeze is so refreshing. And for two, the technology behind creating this is amazing. The team at Dyson collected over 40 million data points from eight locations on Dyson’s Malmesbury Research and Development campus then they wrote an algorithm to mimic natural airflow patterns using the machine’s oscillating barrels. FORTY MILLION. I don't even know what data points are but that seems amazing.

It works with Dyson's Link App which you can use as a remote for the device (although there is also a physical remote) and a monitor to check air conditions around you.

Elena Garcia

One of the first things we did when we set up the purifier was to download the app and start fiddling with all the settings. Immediately it told us what the air conditions outside were, how we compared inside, and then tracked it monitored as it all improved.

Honestly, the peace of mind that comes with this app is worth all the pennies I have.

And of course, it has all the bells and whistles one comes to expect from a Dyson product — sleep timers, a magnetic remote, sensors that seem to detect everything, LCD screen, a sleek design...you know, Dyson stuff.

Elena Garcia

You can program the sleep timer (on the fancy LCD screen or through the app) to turn off after pre-set intervals, between 30 minutes and eight hours. There is also a cool night mode feature that'll monitor, purify, humidify, and cool the air using the quietest settings and a dimmed display.

The fans oscillate between 0, 45, and 90 degrees or you can just put it to "breeze mode." It also has a backwards airflow that diverts the air through the back of the machine to purify and humidify, without cooling you.

I don't want to be dramatic but I really think this thing is a cherry-flavored lifesaver and even my husband, who wouldn't spend a penny on anything if he could, said, "Wow. I really feel the difference."

Elena Garcia

If you knew him, you'd know that type of endorsement does not come easily.

Seriously, take some time and explore all the cool features and then pick up your own Dyson Pure Humidify + Cool — available at Dyson, Best Buy, and Nordstrom for $799.99.

Dyson