A few weeks ago I got a Dyson Air Multiplier (AM01) for my desk at work. My brother Rob asked me about the power consumption, and I got a chance to measure it. However, since I couldn’t find any real data about it online I figured I’d fix that and write it here rather than in email…
Measured using a Kill-a-watt at 120.5V:
- Lowest setting: 2-3W
- Medium setting1: 13-14W
- Highest setting: 31W
- Oscillation enabled: +2W
Not bad actually!
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1 Since the Dyson is infinitely adjustable, I had to guess at a “medium” position by feel. It’s adjustable in about 1W increments all the way from the lowest to the highest setting.
Jeremy Cole 
The one with the heater element in it caused my Electric Bill to go through the roof. We are talking about an average bill of $60 per month went to $250. I put it inside my bedroom that has always been cold. It kept it nice and toasty but my wife kept it running during the day too. But it’s way too expensive. I’m looking for other options now and I’m bringing the Dyson into work so my boss gets the bills instead of me.. ;)
Alex:
I should think that this has nothing to do with the Dyson per se. The heater model (AM05) is a 1500 watt appliance, so some simple math will tell you that if you ran it continuously for a 30 day month at the current PG&E rates (since you seem to be in the Bay Area) it will cost you anywhere from $142 per month (at the lowest cost $0.13230/kWh) to $387 per month (at the highest cost $0.35916/kWh). It would cost $211 per month at the “average” rate of $0.19604/kWh.
So it seems like you actually just learned a math lesson about space heaters, which are all about 1500 watts. ;-)
I may be misunderstanding but Alex said there was an increase of $190 (from 60 to 250) per month and you indicate and average of $211 per mth to run
it, so Alex might be right there (??)
The point was that _any heater of a similar wattage_ will cost the same to run. Alex’s cost problem had nothing to do with it being a Dyson heater.
Dyson’s website says nothing about power consumption, so it’s really nice to see you have this posted. Can you get a AM02 and add that to this page? I’m only interested in the fan motor itself without oscillation or the AM05 heater. I’ve been wondering how useful the fan base would be for a shop dust collector. Thanks!
Thanks for the data. However, I could not make a grasp of how acceptable is the air delivered with respect to each setting. Could you illustrate, perhaps using a piece of paper (preferably via recording), the wind strength for each setting?
Low power consumption, another reason why I want one.
I purchased an used AM-01 for experimenting with. The motor that runs the oscillation mode is burnt out, but the main motor for the fan works just fine. My unit was also missing the upper air manifold, so I don’t get to try out the multiplication effect. But when connected to some light-weight aluminum ducting, this seems to be a lot quieter than any other blower I tried. So I tor the base unit apart to see what’s wrong with the oscillating motor, and to see what Dyson is doing inside there. Lots of engineering has gone into this thing! I can see why these fans cost so much, Dyson has spent a lot of effort on getting the fan to run quieter. I see the fan motor itself is absolutely clean, no dust has gotten into it even after however many hours of usege it would take to wear out an oscillating motor! The fan motor is air-cooled and uses a small portion of the main airflow. This cooling air is run through an internal filter and there’s a screen of holes just before that filter that I suspect might also act as a damping device to help muffle any noise coming off of the main rotor. The main air intake, where room air is pulled into the unit should have been designed for cleaning. I would like to have seen a tray you could pull out with a reusable flat foam filter like what any typical cyclone vacuum cleaner would use. But I suspect Dyson is a stubborn place to work at, and common sense will always take second place to a very limited design criteria. I found thew entire air passage system to have a coating of fine dust with some fine pet hair accumulated at the beginning. Only the motor itself had adequate filtering, and that would have been helped by all the pre-filtering that takes place. The outer screen of holes where room air first enters, is a filter of sorts. And if the Dyson paperwork doesn’t say so, I would recommend wiping those holes with a damp rag while the unit is turned off so that dust doesn’t get pulled inwards any more than necessary. It’s really too bad Dyson couldn’t include a better filtering system. I’ll wrap a foam filter around the outside of the fan housing, using K&N filter oil. I can buy bulk filter foam online and cut it down to fit. A 19 inch long strip about 2 inches wide should do it just fine, just hotglue the ends together
I hooked my AM05 up to my Kill a Watt EZ P03, which actually measures REAL cost of the device. I live in Plano, Texas and my Kwh is .106 (10.6 cents). I have a gas heater and electric AC.
For this test, I ran the fan at level 5 with the oscillating turned off.
I ran the AM05 at to COOL and the “monthly” cost was only about $2.50 a month!
Now then I switch it to HEAT and the cost blew up (pun) to around 100/month!!! (It was still counting up but at this point I stopped the test as it was already uneconomical to run. This equates to about .14/hour and 3.50/day. Not too bad when you put it in this perspective.
Suffice it to say it is much cheaper and more comfortable to run the gas heat in my entire 3,900 square foot house then it is to use it as a space heater! This works almost exactly like using a hair dryer to heat your room. Not a good idea.
Conclusion…This is a decent unit for safety and for blowing cool air (there is no cooler, it just recirculates) and perhaps for spot use cases of heating. But not recommended if you have a gas heater except for short point spots.
Tom,
You do not need a Kill-a-Watt or any other device to figure out how much it would cost to use a space heater continuously for a month. The device is about 1,500 watts. If you simply do the math:
1.5 (kW) * .106 ($/kWh) * 30 (days/month) * 24 (hours/day) = 114.48 ($/mo)
So you should expect at $0.106/kWh to pay about $114.48 per month to run the device.
Regards,
Jeremy
The energy used doesn’t fluctuate based on fan or oscillating? And who knew the “heat” was so expensive to the “cool”.
That’s a high-side estimate based on the assumption that the heater is set to run full out continuously without any temperature control. In normal useage, the heater’s thermostat will cycle the unit off periodically. This means that the heater could potentially only be running for half the time during a months use. The exact number of hours total spent using power will depend on the size of room, climate, quality of insulation and temp settings used. The most practical way to get a close estimate of power consumption is to measure the actual wattage consumed. So using a Kill-O-Watt is really a good idea, but those results wont compare to anyone else if they do not also measure the actual wattage plus all the other variables. The unit also has an oscillating mode, that is powered by a second motor in the very bottom of the machine. Using that mode in addition to heating will add a few more watts, and in the OP it’s stated that it was an additional 2 watts actually measured. Not a big difference, but it’s another reason to not worry too much about anyone elses numbers as you wont know how much of the time they had the oscillation mode running.
I think that the reason Mr Jeremy’s brother asked about the power consumption might be interesting. I could imagine if you were to also measure how much air is actually being moved across a room using the Dyson AM01 versus wattage, and then make the same set of measurements with something like a Vornado 660. I think there’s some question about how much air you can feel hitting your face versus dollars spent getting that air to move. Does the Dyson approach use less power compared to CFM & velocity? I would expect to see some losses due to Dyson routing low-flow high-pressure air through a duct before introducing that to the room as high-flow low-pressure air. Friction of air molecules along duct walls, bends & 90 degree changes in airflow direction, energy consumed to move one cubic foot of air to a much higher energy flow state than the Vornado does (think about MPG increase when you drive faster than 55, there’s a transition zone where twice as fast uses more than twice the energy) The main practical advantages of the Dyson is that you can use one in a much more crowded office space as the counterspace used will be smaller, plus the fan will not blow a stack of paper that is sitting right next to the fan because the air is exiting from a lot higher up. If used on the floor, the Dyson will have better reach because of it’s higher exit height. The Vornado does not work as well when placed on the floor. And the noise level for the amount of air being moved is another advantage of the Dyson.
love to hear the exact details from Dyson as they build this thing,but,,,,,,hide the details of the consumption. That in itself is enough to put people off !!!!
Thank you. How does that relate to a regular fan ?
I’ve a couple of fans and they use about 40 watt in the highest setting.
thank you. reading the comments and based on my limited understanding, suggest that the fan is good for cooling but not heating.
It is going to be -5 here tonight. I close all the bedroom doors and just heat my living room area with this bladeless dyson heater.. I have it set at 65 and it is great. I assume that is about half of what it is capable of heating at 1500 watts. So I am using about 750 watts I like the fact that the floors are warm as my place is hardwood floors over concrete that used to be ice cold in winter running my gas furnace as heat came out in ceiling vents. Floors just never got warm.
. I shut down dyson at night as I like cool 60 degree sleeping and have window open summer and winter. I used to use an electric fireplace in the living room and it ran me about 30 bucks a month set on med but heat did not come out the bottom and did not heat the floors. So far I am happy and I assume dyson is using about same usage about 7-8 cents an hour, but my floors are much warmer. I just light the fireplace on light setting for holiday ambience and have the dyson for heat..