Everything you need to know about Dyson's range of connected devices
British company Dyson was founded on the huge success of its revolutionary vacuum cleaners way back in the 1990s, but over the years, it has quickly become a major player in the smart home world – as well as the beauty tech world believe it or not.
It has a smart robot vacuum cleaner of course, as you might expect. But there’s a lot more to Dyson when it comes to connected devices than you might initially realise. With a focus on wellness in the home, and with devices all connected via the MyDyson app, there are a range of air treatment devices, smart lights and more.
Read on for a guide to all of Dyson’s connected smart home tech.
Air treatment
The clue of what actually is on offer is in the name when it comes to Dyson’s huge range of connected air quality devices; Purifier Hot+Cool, Purifier Humidify+Cool, Purifier Cool, Purifier Big+Quiet… you get the idea.
There’s a huge range on offer, split into a number of categories from fans and heaters to purifying fans and heaters, as well as purifiers, and purifier humidifiers. Yes, we know, complicated. Choosing the right one for what you need in your home isn’t all that simple, though Dyson does have a quiz on its website that can help you choose what could be a right fit depending on what you do in your home and what you’re trying to achieve.
The newest in this range is the Dyson Purifier Big+Quiet Formaldehyde which is huge, but it’s pretty great too. Projecting air over 32 feet, it’s said to be the company’s most advanced purifier, removing pollutant particles, gases, odors and allergens. It will also destroy formaldehyde according to Dyson, and it will cool you too when you want that.
Through the MyDyson app, you can control your air quality wherever you are, set schedules and track pollution trends with personalized reports. There’s also an LCD display on the top and it comes with a remote, like the rest of the range.
Dyson’s air quality devices vary by region, as do their functionalities. It’s also not possible to control heat through the MyDyson app for the compatible devices in the US for example. We won’t list all the different air devices available here, but we have detailed the Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool below as this is the other newest option in the range that isn’t as large as the Big+Quiet.
The Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool is a three-in-one machine that humidifies, cools and purifies the air in your house. Packing a water tank to help keep rooms at an optimal humidification level, it is also able to kill 99.9% of bacteria, using a highly reflective PTFE tube through, with UV-C light. As water is pumped from the water tank, these UV-C light rays attack it, killing the bacteria. Silver woven into the fabric inside the 3D Air-mesh evaporator also prevents bacteria from growing.
Like other models in the family, there’s an LCD display, which shows a real-time assessment of the air quality in your home. Lasers inside fans measure the particles, and offer air quality readings. When it comes to purifying the air, all of Dyson’s Purifier range use a HEPA, carbon-activated, filter that traps in 99.95% of all microbes and dirt in your air.
Devices such as the Purifier Humidify+Cool and the Purifier Hot+Cool (which acts as a heater but has no humidifying skills) can sense VOCs from the likes of paint, new furniture and candles, and NO2 from car pollution.
If you don’t need heating or humidifying, the Dyson Purifier Cool purifies and cools air and, like its multi-skilled siblings, and can also be set not to blow cold air by diffusing air rather than projecting, which is a must-have for winter purifying.
Pricing is as follows:
- Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool: £650 | $1000
- Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool: £600 | $750
- Dyson Purifier Cool: £450 | $650
- Dyson Purifier Big+Quiet: £880 | $1000
Smart lighting
Born out of Jake Dyson’s (James Dyson’s son) smart lighting division, the Dyson Solarcycle Morph lights are focused on personal lighting and both the desk lamp and the floor lamp are not only concerned with the time of day and the activity they are supposed to be lighting, but they can also adapt to your age.
Like their predecessors – of which there were a couple in both the Lightcycle and Lightcycle Morph – the Solarcycle Morph is designed to improve visual acuity and provide the right light for the time of day. Built-in GPS-powered algorithms will mimic the local daylight of wherever you are in the world, with you being able to set your home city in the MyDyson companion app.
The three warm and three cool LEDs on board offer a temperature range of 2700 to 6500 Kelvin, and feature a unique cooling method inside the main arm of the lamp to prevent overheating. Dyson says these LEDs will be good for 60 years. They also have a USB-C port so you can charge your tech from them too – though this is more handy in the desk version.
Through the MyDyson app, you can control various settings for the Solarcycle Morph lights, from your age, to the movement and auto-brightness sensors. You can also turn the lights on or off, as well as choose between various modes including Synchronised, Study, Relax, Precision or Custom. There’s also various control on the lights themselves, as you would expect.
They both have radical designs, based around a polycarbonate composite stem and an optical head that can be rotated 360 degrees. The Morph part of the name comes from the fact that it can morph into an ambient light, with a warm glow, coming from the stem when mounted.
Here’s the pricing:
- Dyson Solarcycle Morph desk: £500 | $650
- Dyson Solarcycle Morph floor: £650 | $850
Robot vacuum cleaners
The original Dyson robot vacuum cleaner – the Dyson 360 Eye – arrived way back in 2014 and while its height was problematic for getting under sofas, it was still considered one of best in the business thanks to that famous motor and the company’s vacuum heritage. It was replaced by the Dyson 360 Heuristic in 2019, but the latest model is the Dyson 360 Vis Nav.
The 360 Vis Nav looks quite bit different to many of its rivals in this ever-expanding tech genre thanks to its bright bluey purple colour and while it doesn’t offer a self-emptying base, or a mop functionality, it offers a very premium striking design. It’s very powerful too. The Dyson Hyperdymium motor spins at up to 110,000rpm, which Dyson claims is six times the suction power of any other robot vacuum.
It’s not the quietest we’ve ever tested, but the power is most certainly there. So much so that you can feel the breeze on your legs from the motor spinning if this robot is cleaning nearby. There’s a full-width brush bar for edge-to-edge cleaning, while an extending side duct automatically redirects suction to capture dust right up to the wall.
Perhaps most importantly of all though, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav has a 360-degree vision system that analyses its surroundings and creates a map of your home, and there are a ring of LEDs for night vision too. You’ll be able to see the map the robot creates in the MyDyson app, and you also get a colourful dust map too with the app showing each room and detailed levels of dust from low dust (purple) to high dust (white).
You can of course set schedules through the MyDyson app for the 360 Vis Nav, as well as a see the recommended cleaning schedule and based on an interview The Ambient did with Dyson’s Product Manager for Intelligent Machines Paul Keast, new features could be coming in the future that make this robot even smarter. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav is also compatible with both Alexa and Google Assistant.
The Dyson 360 Vis Nav costs £1,250 | $1,200
Cordless vacuum cleaners
Cordless vacuum cleaners aren’t smart you might be thinking, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. But it’s not technically true of the Dyson Gen5detect anymore as there’s a new add-on accessory available called Dyson CleanTrace that makes this vacuum cleaner smarter than your average.
Dyson has a range of cordless vacuum cleaners from the Dyson v8 to the Dyson V15 detect. You can register any of those models in the MyDyson app for your warranty details, but the Dyson Gen5detect offers something a little extra. CleanTrace is both a smartphone clamp – engineered by Dyson – and an AR software feature through the MyDyson app that allows you to see where you’ve cleaned.
We’ve tried it in action, which you can read all about in our separate feature, but in a nutshell, you attach your phone it the handle of your Dyson Gen5detect and it will show you in real-time in purple where you have cleaner so you don’t miss any spots. Sadly it’s only the Gen5detect that is compatible at the moment, so it doesn’t work with the Dyson v15, Dyson Submarine, or the new Dyson WashG1. You never know what will come down the line though.
The Dyson Gen5detect costs £750 | $950
The MyDyson app
The MyDyson app gives you access to live status of your Dyson connected machines, with a full screen dedicated to each model, which you can easily swipe through or tap on to explore your options.
For example, with the 360 Vis Nav you are able to see the battery status of your robot, create schedules, see maps of previous cleans, see the dust levels for each room, and you can also remotely start a clean from your smartphone of course.
With the air purifiers you can replicate what you can do with the remote control – so pretty much control any aspect of its operation; fan speed, temperature, wind direction and so on. You’ll also get nice breakdowns of the current air quality inside your house – and the app also uses location data to present you with the air quality outside of your home as well. Our favourite is the fact you can control the direction from the app though – it’s very helpful when you’re lying in bed and you need to just tweak that angle without having to get up.
For the lighting, we mentioned you can adjust the various settings, pop in your age and set your location so the color temperature and brightness adjusts based on where you are in the world.
We haven’t mentioned the Dyson Zone headphones in this feature, but they too connect to the MyDyson app, offering a number of features there too.
