Are Bladeless Fans a Scam?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 27 жов 2023
- I measure how much power and wind speed is generated from a bladeless fan vs a regular fan.
Shop the Action Lab Science Gear here: theactionlab.com/
Checkout my experiment book: amzn.to/2Wf07x1
Twitter: / theactionlabman
Facebook: / theactionlabofficial
Instagram: / therealactionlab
Snap: / 426771378288640
Tik Tok: / theactionlabshorts - Наука та технологія
Yes, volumetric flow rate would have been better to measure, but there is no really good easy way to do that. I just chose fans that had very similar cross-sectional area. So the cross-sectional area of the bladeless fan, including the entrainment hole, was similar to the yellow normal fan area. In fact the yellow fan was slightly bigger. So that means it moved more air faster than the bladeless. Not a perfect test, but it was pretty easy to see, just being in the room that the normal fan using the same watts moved more air faster than the bladeless.
Perhaps I could make some experiments in a wind tunnel to properly measure the efficiency, perhaps I can even made it my master degree, thanks for the idea! Hah
This was my first thought, but you quickly addressed the relative cross sectional flows sufficiently to satisfy my notions of a fair test. Here, we are not looking for precise volumetric data, only evidence that the air slits consume potential air flow energy that is not recovered, let alone multiplied, in the net air flow output. The difference is glaring enough to spoil the scam.
For flow measurement, you can direct the fan flow inside a 0.25 cubic meter bag, with the borders of the bag being air-tight, and with a pressure sensor inside the bag. There is a formula that gives you the flow, as the pressure is the integral of the flow...
You can time how long it takes for the fan to fill a trash bag of known volume. Used this method in a lab to test computer fans at university.
It's a bit crude admittedly, but it's very straightforward.
I also recommend measuring flow speed at distance increments off the centerline of the fans so as to get a profile. This can also help to give a crude estimate of volume flow rate if you like doing mathy integral stuff.
AvE tested the Dyson blow drier compared to a cheap one by timing how long it takes to fill a trash bag. ThEn ThIS hapPeNdeD!
Dyson also built a giant sphere around a star so I wouldn't underestimate his abilities.
Underrated comment right here
What a great piece of humor! Bro, the stand up scene is waiting for You (acuataly not)
Ringworld awaits us.
I like dyson onions and tomatoes for chili.
He also devised a way to push a space ship with atomic bombs, so there's no telling what he's capable of.
I'll be honest. That bag filling trick blew my mind more than it should have
My ex boyfriend would fill a bag like you wouldn't believe 😜🤣🤣🤣
I had seen this in Street Genius, on Nat Geo
There's also a vid of a professor filling a super long plastic bag with one single breath and it blows my mind.
Ditto😅😂
More than blowing directly through the nose canal?
Finding a fan blade in a bladeless fan is like finding battery in a perpetual motion machine
or finding a combustion engine in an electric car
@@DacalLPElectric Diesel Trains be like
You do know that actually have blades cause. How do they move air around? And they just tucked away underneath the blades shroud/ front panel.
How about finding a steam engine in a nuclear power plant?
TO EVERYONE IN THIS CHAT:
*THE JUDGEMENT OF GOD IS DRAWING NIGH.*
REPENT TODAY AND GIVE YOUR LIFE TO JESUS TO ESCAPE ETERNAL DAMNATION!!!
The "bladeless" Dyson fan is what I call a Rube Goldberg fan. It accomplishes air movement in a way that is a lot more complicated (and expensive) than it needs to be.
haha, that's funny. I think Dyson's selling point is continuous and smooth air flow against jagged flow of bladed fans; quite an impressive design tbh
@@juxtapos1034 Dyson is a dity British scammer! There is no jagged air flow from normal fans...
@@pratoarancione7646 The air! It cuts me like a knife!
@@pratoarancione7646How is he a scammer?
It's more of a form over function thing I suppose 😅
I thought people liked bladeless fans because the stream of air was more pleasant than the beating fins of a traditional fan. I never understood why it was exponentially more expensive just for that small benefit tho.
The stream of air will be negligent unless you are directly in front of the fan. A lot of companies claim regular fans "chop" air is not correct.
Honestly, their form-factor/aesthetic is the biggest benefit. They work nicely as a bedside fan, or something similar.
They are also a bit safer for small children. I can remember getting my fingers smacked by fan blades, thankfully not cut they weren't metal blades.
I’m sure they also have filters in them since they’re taking air in through a smaller area. Can’t really filter air with a regular fan.
@@krsanth-4142 Yes but as an child you learned to not stick your fingers into fast moving spinny things that was relatively harmless, so as an adult you know not to do that. Where as someone who doesn't do that maybe loses a finger as an adult because they don't have that level of fear imprinted into their brain. So an argument of safety may not take into the long term safety of the person 🤣🤣
Dyson's marketing has always given me a great chuckle. He has been brilliant at promoting clever design as "revolutionary science". lol.
loved how he boiled it down to "you're cooler now!"
It's a lot of hot air 😎
That revolutionary cyclone technology, man. No one in the history of humans ever thought to use a funnel anywhere in the dust collection world before Charles Dyson did. No dust collection system ever mastered those cyclones. Lol
Thank God he caused competition to get rid of expensive bags though
@@RandomBogey he was the only one who saw those funnels and brought it into home vacuums though.
Ty for not making this video 20+ mins, and history of fans. Just straight to the point 👍
Exactly
😂
A friend of mine bought one of the large floor standing Dyson fans. First thing I noticed was how loud it was compared to the amount of wind it produced
Yeah I regret buying it. Cheap fan is about the same loudness butt wind is strong & nicer.
@@alwaysdisputin9930Butt wind!
Dyson - loud, inefficient, expensive
Same for vacuum cleaners
I have a Dyson desk fan I use to sleep (gift), it’s very quiet and I like the airflow it produces. I have used fans to sleep for decades, Dyson is the best.
@@ThisismetmanI have a Dyson desk fan (not a knock-off) and it's only quiet at lower speeds. I have computer fans that produce more noticeable, directed air flow at similar sound levels (if not quieter). For speeds that actually move significant amounts of air, Dyson fans are just as loud and not that great. The only nice thing about them is they are easy to clean and those with an air filter catch dust without gunking up the internal fan. They're just insanely expensive for what they do.
The only way to get around the noise issues is by increasing the size. DC ceiling fans are by far the best way to accomplish this in a place like a bedroom.
Bladeless fans are like perpetual motion devices. They seem magic at first glance, but it's all just a deception.
The only loophole to thermodynamics is to start with an infinite amount of available energy. Then a perpetual machine merely becomes a converter of that energy.
Well it’s not a deception as no one’s buying these to get more power or efficiency they just look cool
Everyone knows they’re loud and not great but they still look cool plus for people with children they are safer which is another big reason for people to get these
The hardest part of making a perpetual motion device is finding where to hide the battery
It's just a gimmick.
@@AlphoricI wonder how people grew up before the 80's without losing their fingers to fans.
You could have measured the thrust that the fan generates to estimate its absolute performance. With anemometer you'll have to integrate the airspeed over the entire cross-section of the airstream.
You're right. I believe the aim was to simulate a person sitting at a typical distance from a fan. But he should've been a tiny bit more precise with his language.
Even so thee ordinary fan won hands down.
@@rogerphelps9939 ... fan-blades down :)
I criticized the measurement approach and not the measurement result.
I would appreciate if a fan was placed on a raft, floating in a basin and a dynamometer was used to measure a horizontal thrust of the fan.
I still don't think there will be great difference.
dyson has always been a 'sales gimmick' high pressure sales if you ever visited a store that had them like costco@@rogerphelps9939
I'm not sure if anyone else brought this up, but in order to test the wattage used by the first bladed fan in your experiment, you want to put the wattmeter between the variac's output and the fan. This way, you are not also reading the power consumed by the variac itself.
A variac is a passive device. They're just autotransformers with an adjustable tap. The amount of extra resistance and thus wattage is negligible.
@@Uejji Inductors are extremely lossy. You think transformers are ideal? They are the lossiest thing ever invented. Don't think so? Put an ammeter on the primary and leave the secondary open circuit, watch how much energy goes down the drain, doing NOTHING.
@@douggale5962the transformer probably only wastes about 1 watt bro
The wattmeter may not work when the voltage drops below a certain amount.
@@Uejji So you're claiming transformers are close to 100% efficient? Transformers consume power, and when you're only talking about measuring a few watts (and the difference between two fans may be in the milliwats for the same output) the power they consume is not negligible. Do the experiment yourself - put a power meter pre & post variac.
There actually are truly bladeless fans called ionic fans, but they can only move a very small amount of air by comparison. Sharper Image had one for sale years ago.
Ionic Breeze Commercials. Sweet nostalgia
How silent were they ?
Ionic wind fascinates me.
@@CodeBonYTYep! They put it in that tiny plexiglass cubicle full of smoke and it clears it up quickly, but apparently in actual rooms it doesn't do so well. Still an interesting idea though, and would probably work well in a confined space like a car.
I can't say I have ever taken one of these apart, but just looking at it I am pretty sure there is a small fan blade inside that tower. Just because it is silent does not mean it does not have a fan blade, the Airmax fans in my RV are completely silent at the lowest speed.
@robertdaymouse3784 ionic is truly bladeless that's also why they barely move any air. These have a belt style blade system that goes the circumference of the ring and has a slit for the air to move out. The intake is in the base.
For efficiency you should compare volume of air per second, as speed can be increased by flowing air though a smaller gap
This means that it might be more inefficient?
He said the bladeless gave a smaller airfield as well so total volume would almost certainly be far lower instead of just measuring max airflow in a specific spot.
True, but he showed more air speed AND a larger area, so it's a double win. No comparison really needed.
@@kindlin For various reasons, there's nothing conclusive in these tests about the general concepts.
u need nothing but common sense
I always thought a bladeless window fan would be cool. I don't know if the geometry scales, but being able to still let in light and see outside would be pretty cool.
Putting one all around a window might be interesting. Open the window, turn on the fan.
yeah that would be an interesting idea, be able to get the extra airflow from having a window fan without losing the ability to see out that part of the window
Couldn't you just build like a bay window with the slit running around the window and a fan of some kind mounted below the window concealed in the wall blowing the air up? Seems like it should work the same way.
@@kkkrevolution3307 Or it could blow outwards.
Just put the Fan that sucks the air in one or two meters infront of the window. The frame Fan would be a cool integrated solution though
One of my big problem with bladeless fans is just like a regular fan, they will get dusty and dirty over time, but they are (most of the time) much harder to disassemble and clean then a regular fan (but this can really depend on the manufacturer). This is a big issue for me as fans can get dirty quickly and a dusty fan can affect airflow and impact the motor as dust can clog up the vents to the motor which can lead to motor overheating or failing (which is never good). And due to it being harder to disassemble, oiling the fan can become a more challenging job as every fan will need an oiling after a certain amount of use (again, depends on manufacturer).
A good fan motor doesn't need oiling, ever. It has maintenance free ball bearings just like a hard disk or the cooling fans in your computer. Or do you oil them as well? A quick application of a vacuum cleaner will free most fans of dust. (not sure if that's true of Dyson fans)
@@mikethespike7579 not a vacuum, use an air compressor to blow it out
Some fans I believe, use a replaceable/cleanable filter. Those fans pump air with higher pressure but lower volume, making a small filter feasible. The pressure being built by the "nozzle" restriction. That restriction in turn being due to accelerating the air velocity through the orifice, rather than because of surface friction.
@@mikethespike7579Modern Dyson fans make a big deal out of having good air filtration and charge for it.
You should use grease on fans, not simple oil.
I think a better test would be to trap the total airflow in a tube with a known cross sectional area so you could calculate the amount a liters per minute for each of the fans
no
@@garnishbabu7855yes
I agree. I was thinking of blowing at a huge 1000 liter bag and see how long it took to fill.
I have 2 leaf blowers. The one with lower airspeed has twice the cfm output
no
Yeah, these tests had a lot of holes. And not just in the middle of the bladeless fan. Theoretically the bladeless fan could move more air over all, but have the bladed fan register higher at the points he measured.
It also would have been good to have at least a brief explanation of why the tests he mentioned finding online said the bladeless fan was so much better. Bad methodology of their tests? Misrepresenting the data? Outright lies?
This explanation with the blowing up of the bag was so interesting, but almost so obvious that it made me feel dumb. Just something I wouldn't have been able to articulate.
That's the best part about this channel
One of those things that you just have to know the "trick" to it.
It's called Bernoulli's principle
actually you don't even have to blow air just move the bag little bit towards you and it fills itself 😉😉
It's a little misleading because the simple act of opening the bag up does a pretty big portion of the filling.
My concern was never power consumption or noise. Its always been about how the blades gather dust. By the looks of it the bladeless fan would be much more painful to clean because of the tighter spots where dust can gather. Not only will you have to clean the bladeless frame, but you will have to clean the actual blades on the motor at some point.
You can just use an air duster can. Like you would on keyboards or computer parts
Bladeless fans typically have a filter in the base that can be cleaned easily (the good ones anyway!)
my Dyson one has filters all around the base, and rubber sealing along the gaps. I only wipe down the outside lol & change the filter but that hasn't happened yet since I usually keep windows closed
@@j134679 you'd be wise it's open the windows at least once a day to flush it out. Otherwise the CO2 levels will build up quite quickly.
I've got several CO2 monitors so I should know
You should put the watt meter after the variac, this way excluding the losses in the variac.
The no-load losses of the variac are probably several watts.
very very good! exactly right! good catch!
The fan also uses an AC motor, which will be less efficient at lower voltages.
The only real advantage I perceive with them is safety, but that's a huge stretch with the weak ones. The larger, genuinely useful ones it becomes a factor, but even then, fan grills make normal fan designs pretty safe, so it's only covering the 0.1% cases, so 99.9% of the time, a normal fan's not going to cause any problem. Though a finer grill on a traditional design would cover that 0.1% whilst still providing greater air flow and pressure.
I have that! I have a bladed fan, a huge diameter one with metal blades. This thing is a BEAST and I'm pretty sure if you put a finger in it it can cause harm - and that's why its grill is almost a net.
The airflow will also be smoother with a bladeless fan
As a kid I would stick my fingers into fan blades. So bladeless fans are something I'm planning on having purely for child safety.
@@rrteppo Darwin prays otherwise 😝
Safety for young, unwitting children is the biggest factor in the use of these fans. That and neck fans would be pretty useless for many ladies (and some guys) if they were traditional fans - all that hair would be a big hazard when using them!
I always wondered if those fans were a scam. Not only are they not better than a regular fan, they're a lot more expensive. I use old computer fans for a lot of things where I need to move air in a small area like soldering.
Dyson probably spends a huge amount of money on marketing of their overpriced products.
Luckily they don't chop up oxygen molecules when used in Korea, so that's one benefit 😝
Yup some old computer fans and a 12V wall wort is all we need!
I use a 6 AA (9V) battery plug I made in a matter of minutes that I can use with my Noctua computers fans to make them portable. It has been absolutely amazing with computer fans to dry out tiny collection of moisture damage in corners/walls, to cool down laptops/tablets and even used it once as a portable fan in train cabin.
A Noctua fan can run non-stop almost a week with just one charge and so silent that you can't even hear if it is on or not @@PigeonLaughter01
@@atomic_wait what?
Well, so much for that Dyson sponsorship you were hoping for.
Hey there's still Dyson vacuum cleaners
Maybe the most common lie in product marketing boils down to: "This products uses less energy than it really does."
I always thought the benefit was the slim profile you get a lot of air movement with a very very small footprint. Secondly, a benefit I figured was also the safety with children/pets
Thats actually the main benefit and you also can hide this fans better in the environment. People like to lie themself
@@catman64k It's the aesthetic tho. You don't actually get a smaller footprint. You'd get the same by buying a smaller fan.
We were in the market for one because we keep finding our normal tower fans are effectively impossible to completely clean even when taken apart. With a bladeless, there are just fewer small slots to clean but the tradeoff is that it's objectively worse at being a fan
@@meowmiaumiauw Tho don't the insides get dirty as well, it sucks all the air into the fan area and then out.
I suppose long as it's not dirty in the open it's fine, and not like it matters.
it's still easier to clean than multiple blades stacked on top of eachother
Exposing Big Air. The hero we need.
The only real benefit to the dyson fans is that they're air purifiers as well, one device that does both. Or the more expensive ones can also function as heaters or humidifiers. Convenient to have one device to do multiple things, but it's a jack of all trades, master of none. The $100 Vornado fan I got is really good at moving air around a room. Even the $50 one does really well. Even box fans do pretty good, though they might be better for moving air from one room to another, rather than circulating air around a room.
The big box fans are good at what they do, but noisy AF.
The best small fans I've seen are all from Vornado. They have fans as well as heaters which use the same technology. They work well, are solidly built, last forever, and aren't really loud except at the highest speed. Also, they can be purchased starting at $10. I use them exclusively when I need a heater or fan.
Sounds like a stellar review!
Have to say though, not a big fan of their brand name "vornado"...
It sounds to much like "vore"...
So vornade makes me think it would be some vore pr0n comic on DeviantArt...!
vintage lasko fans are also great
I've got one I use mostly for cooling down after exercise. It moves an insane amount of air even on the low setting. I've got a fairly small version, maybe 12" across the entire front face. No oscillation, just blowing my hair back like the old Maxell Cassette guy from the 1980s.
I can see 600 - 700 $ being very beneficial- for Dyson that is
damn it cost like good gaming videocard 🤣
@@sadfacereview3591For that amount you could buy a freaking Steam Deck which is a whole computer and you'll still have some money left to buy a cheap game or two on Steam. 😂🤣
I'd really like to see a measure of total volume of air moved, as opposed to the speed of the moving air. Even if we are losing speed after the fan, if we are circulating more air, we might be accomplishing the real goal of the fan, which is to keep the air in the area in circulation so heat doesn't stagnate around hot objects.
I do suspect that we are getting the same "air multiplication" on a normal fan by the air that was moved, pulling air around it as it moves, anyway though.
Seems like a much more difficult to control test though.
Very cool experiment as is, as usual! 🎉👍
Me after seeing him full a bag with one breath: "He's a wizard!" 😮
You hit the nail on the head at the end... its because they are cool, in a neat and interesting way. They may appeal to some also for being more safe (can't even see the fan) and quiet. Some are willing to pay for such things. Great break down and analysis, thanks.
The best part about blameless fans is that I don't think they allow small fingers to reach in and touch the blames
The best part about blameless fans is that they are never at fault.
@@michaelneuman4851lmao
@@michaelneuman4851😁
You cant blame him
Regular fans don't allow small fingers in there either, even if it did it wouldn't do physical damage.
Your results would’ve been more consistent if you put each fan in front of a makeshift wind tunnel such as a large section of fixed length PVC pipe to control for the direction and spread of the fan output. Not bad, though. The variac was a nice touch. :)
Yes that'd give us more accurate results if we only wanted to know the hard numbers in a vacuum. However, he's testing a commercial product used by people, so to recommend it or not it's better he tests it how we actually use fans (i.e. not at the opposite end of a PVC pipe). The fact that the air displacement of a rotary fan is in a much greater volume already makes it better for actual use, let alone it also being over 35% more efficient and much cheaper.
Imo, a bladeless fan is useful for people who want quiet fans and can afford that simple luxury.
This was a good consumer focused test. I understand people with comments about how to get more accurate results, but from the standpoint of a person who just wants to know how much air is (seemingly) getting moved around to help them cool off a little, and where they should be putting their money to do so, this was the prefect test.
No really because as he admits this could be completely different if the fan used is different. Watched a Chinese companies video showing how they made bladeless fans and they used a completely different fan in the base. I suppose I’m more interested in how the Dyson ones compare, I know they are very durable and look good but hate the price and have avoided buying one.
Maybe if he actually had used a dyson one and not a knock off, to see what the original and expensive design is worth. Furthermore he did not actually messure the noise at all and compare both of them in normal use because that is actually something that is bothering many people. This test is useless to me, especially as he did not meassure air volume moved. Ofc a fan directly blowing at something is going to do it with more power than one that has to change airflow direction. Pardon me while I facepalm away.
What this showed was that for one cheap, knock-off bladeless fan, the air speed was lower. That's it. It didn't tell us anything about the actual volume of air moved, or which was more effective at cooling a Room. And often knock-off products copy the look and general function, but don't work nearly as well.
Dude, I love your channel. Thanks for the great content 😊👍🏾.
To properly compare, it seems like you need to measure how much total air the fan is pushing, per watt. That is, flux/watt, or the net force imparted by the operation of the fan. Eg, as if one were using the fan to push a swamp boat.
He only needed to test the one fan model. with and without its cover. The other fan test was irrelevant.
Those measures will all be proportional to the air speed. He also mentioned that the bladed fan had a much wider dispersive area in a qualitative sense. So regardless the bladed fan still has a much greater flux.
Please do more product comparisons, I found this very informative
Additional factor at play would be the turn air takes before coming out the "bladeless" design. It's something ya deal with in PC case cooling. Every 90° angle air has to go takes a chunk out of airflow (aka performance).
Like the PC cases with glass in front of fans but slits to the sides.
Man, i was really needing this video
@actionlab , for measuring output you have to get the volume flow rate of air, not the velocity, thus basically integrate the v over whole frontal area. The volume flow rate itself will give a good vague idea of efficiency.
True. But he does mention that he had problem picking up the air movement for the bladeless fan, suggesting that the area is probably pretty small wrt the one from the yellow fan.
The bladeless fan has a much narrower stream of air. About the only thing efficient about those things is the marketing spend to get people to part with their money. Big unducted fans are still the best at moving large amounts of air.
I agree. Seems it’s necessary to measure the flow not just at one point on a reference surface, but at many, then add up the results. Maybe the flow field are similar at the distance on this experiment, though.
Yes the bag inflation demo was excellent! And learning that the “bladeless” fan isn’t bladeless was new to me. Is my Dyson vacuum cleaner also a bit “over-blown”?
It's obvious that you need a certain amount of energy to accelerate a given volume of air to a given speed. And it's obvious that blowing the air around at least two 90° corners and through grids causes friction and makes the process less efficient. Basically the friction is heating the air up -- not what you want on a warm day!
For how most people use fans a traditional fan works best. A column of air is useful for moving a distance while maintaining energy. The best demo for that would be a pinwheel. Take the motor out and place a pinwheel in front of it. Slowly move it away from the motor until it stops spinning. Replace the motor and do the same with the pinwheel. The pinwheel would continue rotating further with the motor in the housing as opposed to out of the housing. There are applications for that but not for most people just trying to keep a room or themselves cool.
I'm surprised Dyson hasn't been sued for using the word "bladeless", when there's clearly a blade inside the fan.
I can't find any official Dyson product descriptions that says "bladeless", everything refers to these as "air multiplying". I'm not sure if it's just a popular (but unofficial) term for them or if Dyson has changed their wording for exactly this reason.
I completely agree with you results but i think the test could have been better.
1. Cfm could have been measured using a large tube to create constant cross section area.
2. Dyson fans have much more "advanced fan tech". It would be interesting to see if they are actually more efficient, considering the crazy cost.
more efficient at lining their company coffers, no doubt.
fans also have an efficiency curve. a fan meant to run at a high wattage is way less efficient at a low wattage than the same principle fan designed for the low wattage both where run at. its like using a truck to do groceries and then comparing fuel economy to a compact car. yea, the truck is going to be less efficient at that. but if you ran both at max load than the amount of groceries per energy unit would probably favour the truck.
I found a brand new large bladeless Dyson and it's so great, I'll never go back to a big round dumb rotating fan. It also can blow hot air or cool, rotate and sleep timer. It's quiet and moves a surprising amount of air for the size
@@namele55777so true bestie 1:04
Dyson fans are a complete scam. Like all of their products. Massively overpriced.
The video and presentation is awesome! There is a bladeless air cleaner/fan called the "Ionic Breeze," it uses a low current high voltage, (low power, to move air electrostatically. They do not blow as much air as a bladed fan however. I have on my channel, a flying device called the Ion Propelled Vehicle, it can fly with an onboard power supply and no propellor blades at all. It's much lighter in weight than flying crafts with moving blades.
The thing with air ionisers though is they generate ozone which isn't very good for the lungs, and if you've ever used one for a long period of time you will notice the rubber soles of stored shoes turn to a sticky gooey horrible mess lol.
I didn't know that air ionizers do that to shoes. The crafts that are shown on my channel operate on very low wattage high voltage electricity. Since the energy is spread out over a large surface area and the energy level is too low to produce O3, it only produces small amounts of harmless ions, mostly negative ones. I have not noticed any problems with it like the ones you are referring to.
@@bigbasil1908
As a fan collector, normal fans are better as you can see the fan spinning and see the problems with the motor. Not only you can clean the blade and the grills. Is also easier to fix
One big advantage of the bladeless fan is its natural flow which feels much like a swift breeze, on the other hand the blade fans slice the air and throws air which is much more turbulent and does not feel natural. This thing was completely missed out in this video unfortunately. The bad part being dyson is selling it at an insane pricing.
If you want a swift breeze, just use a normal fan on the lowest setting. I have a Dyson fan and the only benefit it has over a traditional fan is that it is safe for children. On a hot day, I prefer a normal fan which is quieter and more powerful than the Dyson.
You need to map flow over an area, not just measure the peak velocity at 1 point.
bro has no clue what hes yapping about
@@unironicaluser1867 In this case I think he missed the mark but that's rare. I'd encourage you to watch some of his other content and I think you'll find he does in fact have a clue.
Why? whats the purpose of a desktop fan like this? It's to cool down a specific object like yourself. If it doesn't do that well and the other one does with the same power settings, he's proved his point quite well. He's not measuring the efficiency of whole house attic fans.
@@vaughnengler9436 He didn't miss the mark. He wasn't trying to measure a whole area, just the area you would normally use a desktop fan for.
He measured multiple points. It didn't reach the speed of the other one at any location, and he also remarked that the regular fan covered a larger area. So larger area with a stronger peak is enough, unless the bladeless is doing something crazy like hiding some stupidly strong peaks off center.
To me, what's _really_ interesting is the difference between an axial fan (like the two *non* "bladeless" fans you used) and a "squirrelcage" fan, like is buried in the "bladeless" fan's housing. The squirrelcage is a LOT quieter. I wonder if this is because each individual blade is much smaller than the blades on the "normal" fans, or because there are no blade-tip vortices? -or if because having the enclosure around it directs air through it, making it more efficient.
The subject for a future video?
I feel like this would be good for a Technology Connections video where it would get the deep dive it deserves :)
Excellent idea. Would really like to see that.
Assuming all else is the same (which it is definitely not, but I don't know enough to give an accurate judgement considering all the variables), putting a wall around blades does improve rotor efficiency (look up ducted rotors/ducted fans, there is tons of research on them) and makes them quieter. However, in my own personal experience, the difference in sound between traditional and "bladeless" fans is much larger than the difference between ducted vs non-ducted rotors. I imagine that having the fan fully encased in material allows them to block out a good amount of the sound, either directly through having material in the way, or some clever acoustical engineering.
@sakethvegunta5086 probably there was a big difference in power consumption as well, bigger and befier fans will use more energy and make more noise due to air turbulence
and you're right about ducted fans vs unducted, there's a difference in noise and airflow. PC fans are way better ducted than not
I can't say for sure, but at least in PC hardware, these blowerstyle fans or squirrelcage fans, such as those used in some graphics cards, are generally much louder than the normal variety. They are used in server applications because they can be built with a lower profile than a normal fan-heatsink combination, which is important when building a large data center, for example. The reason they are not used everywhere is the noise they produce. It's often a high-pitched, turbine-like noise because they still have to run pretty fast to cool the hardware, but in a data center that's often not a problem.
We expect that the air speed would be lower going through the slits. The Bernoulli principle is basically converting a small stream of fast-moving air into a bigger stream of slow-moving air. In principle, it could lead to a much larger air flow for the same energy, since kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity.
As you seemed to hint at after doing the first test, using a variac is not a good way to do the test, since it only drops the voltage, not the frequency. And when you drop the voltage well below its designed voltage rating, the rotor will not have enough power to follow the ac sine wave, and therefore it will be constantly out of phase and pull very high amperage for the amount of actual work it is doing. So it's not really a fair test that way. But this was a great demonstration of why.
This confirms my assessment of bladeless fans, pure marketing and prestige thing. I would have compared the performance with a scale that measures the recoil of the different types of fans.
Welcome to another episode of breaking myths regarding certain products
high af watching this dude measure air is so entertaining 😂 homie is really answering some questions with this banger hahaha
yoo same
You should test and see how many newtons of thrust the fans produce by seeing how much the fan pushes back against a force measuring apparatus.
I now remember thinking of this idea, when they first brought these fans out.
Of course, you could just use a sensitive digital scale, with the fan blowing up or down to make the measurement.
The anemometer he is using is just fine for that purpose. He just has to take a bunch of readings on a grid. Volumetric flow rate is the correct measure here.
It's funny that instead of just blowing into the anemometer, he twists it with his finger.
It's the same issue as with 'flying cars', moving air is loud and takes a lot of energy. The idea of moving air silently is nearly an oxymoron so moving a lot of air means making a lot of noise.
And the housing of a bladeless fan means plastic gets in the way of moving air, meaning it needs to make more noise to move the same amount of air as a fan that hasn't got plastic in the way.
Glad to see this video..did a focus group for Dyson when the product was still top secret and not released for public sale yet. I really wondered how good it could be ..esp for the huge price. PLEASE REVIEW a Dyson version, so we can finally put this to bed!
I've read on some forums that, besides safety factor for kids and pets, people buy bladeless fan because of the way air feels when it blows directly on to you. Supposedly air movement of bladeless fan feels more consistent, while air movement of regular fan with blades kinda feels like it slightly vibrates. Haven't had the opportunity too feel this for my self though.
I guess a more appropriate comparison would be to compare the air flow of both fans (air volume per unit of time). The way it was made is like comparing a truck and a car by their speeds and not taking into account their masses.
One other selling point of bladeless is safety for families with kids and/or pets.
that's why normal fans are covered by a cage
@@DenkyManner kids can still stick their fingers though it
I dunno about pets. Most people will never open the fan up to clean the insides, which would be filled with hair.
@@gregoryannicchiarico3570Can't think of any fan I've seen that has openings large enough for even little fingers. Fan makers aren't going to be careless and get sued. Those grills are pretty tight.
It seems counterintuitive to create a low pressure zone with a fan, to push air into a high pressure zone in the upper compartment, so the air can be forced through the slits to create a second low pressure zone.
Would be more interesting to see volume of air moved, or area of effect of the fan, maybe make a room into an air tunnel and use a fog machine or dry ice and see where the air is being thrown.
Hm, we are measuting wind *speed*, but we are not measuring the air volume it moves... Could it be the case that these "bladeless" fans move more air and by that You are more cooled than with the "regular" fans? I don't know if that's the case - just an idea, to compare maybe from this perspective as well
Volume/second = wind speed * intersection area
volume is proportional to speed
@@leonlai8270 sure, but we don't measure the full area where the air is moving, right? We measure the same slice which is the anemometer tube (constant)
Did you check the how much energy is wasted in the Variac? Mine gets noticeably warm when it is turned on, and when you are comparing low wattages, the Variac might be using more power than the fan itself.
If you had put the watt meter between the Variac and the fan, then any power wasted in it will not show on the meter but you had the Variac plugged into the watt meter.
This should be the same for each test at the same number of Watts.
yes I should have put the watt meter on the output of the variac, but this was an order of magnitude different, so the variac most likely wasn't the issue. Those types of AC fans are just very powerful.
@@TheActionLab If you have a minute, can you check what the difference is and let us know? If you run the Variac at 120V with the fan plugged in, and compare with the wattage meter placed BEFORE the Variac, and then AFTER the Variac. I am very curious to see what the difference is, and how much power the Variac uses. Also, what is the rated wattage of your fan at 120V?
Love the videos, and thanks in advance!
If efficiency is a selling point for Dyson fans then it's because Dyson have invested heavily in developing highly efficient small motor technology, not because of the air multiplier design. But regardless I think the main selling points are really quietness, safety, and simply looking good around the home. If air flow comes into it then it's about reduced turbulence rather than increased volumetric flow compared with a conventional fan.
Some of the bladeless fans also have a filter. Of course you can also use the filter without the bladeless pastic around it, but then it is louder. So the bladeless top works as a noise reduction.
Action lab you're videos are extremely great
Dyson doesn't sell bladeless fans anymore. It's all just air filters now. And in fan comparissons these regularly fail agains tratitional blade fans. In power consumption, moved air and loudness. I have a Dyson fan and this is indeed more quiet at similar intensities compared to others I had. Yes, traditional fans can get even stronger, but they are already louder.
"you seem way cooler now" I'm die 🤣
Also note that when an electric motor is fed increasing voltage starting with near zero, when it does start moving there will be a drop in current and power from what it is consuming until then, due to also starting generation of back emf
As far as I'm concerned, when there is a blade in the base, it is not a bladeless fan and therefor it is a scam by default. Where it could be useful for might be its noise profile.
There are no blades that can hurt you. Hence the name.
Technically it is possible to make a true bladeless fan using some cool technology. I saw a UA-cam video of a guy building one a while ago to blow out a match. I just don't think we're truly there yet.
@@Potatosayno I saw researchers who built a model plane with truly bladeless propulsion. So we could move the air in our homes with some high voltage and clever electrode placement. I wonder if it would have similar risks as an ionizer i.e. buildup of static electricity on objects and people in proximity of the device resulting in dead electronics
In conclussion, a bladeless fan dont make you fresh but make you cool. 😎
As do ALL fans. By reducing the partial pressure of the water vapor on the skin so it can evaporate faster. Evaporation equals refrigeration, cooling you.
This weekend I had the pleasure of using a bladeless hand dryer on a public toilet. The drying effect was very (too much) localised, but I also could enjoy all the "dust" on the floor being blown around in that small room.
As an electrical engineering student I can say I have heard about “bladeless” fans for almost as long as I can remember, I remember not being tricked about the engineering, of course it was to have some type of high powered fan or blower in the base to compensate for the lack of size in the head. The only marketing schemes that Dyson does is say “bladed fans deliver choppy air” really? It’s just a gimmick. Dyson should’ve made an affordable compressor based air conditioning unit that he’s would be more complex but would have been more useful and cost effective.
A sidenote about the Dyson's is that a lot of them also do air filtration. Not sure if that slows things down, too, but is definitely a factor when talking about those expensive ones.
The filtration does slow down flow, but doesn't raise the price by any multiple. Like Nike shoes, most of the price is to pay for the brand name and perceived quality, even if it's not tangible.
@@VoltisArtagreed
@@VoltisArt - With that concept, there shouldn't be much of a price difference between a Dyson TP01 & a TP09, right? 😆
Also, I do agree with you that the branding is definitely baked into the price, however I would argue that, unfortunately, there isn't any other brands (that I've been able to find) that offer all of the same features within a single product. It's like Dyson has put everything into one product, & somehow/for some reason, no one else is (or can or is willing) to make all of those same features available - again, unfortunately.
Those go for over $1k and the filter are supposed to be replaced every year for a hundred dollars before taxes. Lifetime supply isnt guaranteed either. You're vastly better off with an aluminum blade gym/shop fan and a separate air purifier. Some air purifiers use water instead of cloth filters. Or just buy an AC. You can properly clean your AC for under $20 a year.
@@Mike.Kachar So you admit they appear to have a niche seemingly monopolized, yet still wonder why prices don't make sense.
I'd go check out Matthias Wandel. He has a much better video going over how much better bladed fans work over the bladeless fans. It goes over air volume and how much air movement is gained by fan position as well.
5:33 i always pictured a blade like a chainsaw going around the edge of the fan lol
Man subscribed ❤ most genuine content ❤
Isn't there a difference between air speed and air volume that would potentially make one more efficient?
The "blade less" (with the actual fan hidden) is less effective when it comes to power usage. But the hidden fan type might have other benefits like less noise?
It can only be less efficient due to the principle of conservation of energy as energy is lost by the drag caused by the housing, an open fan does not have this parasitic loss. Air has mass and to move more of it at a greater velocity requires more energy, simple as. You never get something for nothing.
So the bladeless fan’s air gets slowed by the air it’s pulling through the back, but also having fast air pulls the slower air around it to increase volume (like with the bag). Why was the latter effect so much more pronounced with the bag, but not enough of an effect in the case of the bladeless fan?
Yes, proved and disproved in the same video. Something doesn’t add up here.
In the example with the bag, the restricting factor was the amount of air your lungs can hold. But with a regular fan and a bladeless fan, they have no air limit. So it is just whatever one can move air efficiently. And it is not more efficient to move air through tiny slits in order to suck on air, because you can just suck in air as normal through the back of the fan.
@@TheActionLab *_There should be a windblade fan, where the winds that laminarly flow the air are actually the blades of the fan itself, hahaha, imagine that! _* 🤣✌️👍
This is super cool, thank you for sharing!
my best desktop fan is a 120x35mm PC fan out of an old computer with the noctua AAS from thingyverse, I just attatched a usb cable to it and at 5 volts it's running perfectly fine, pretty quiet, good airflow and range and best of all, it will last for decades.
these fans are designed to alst for thousands of hours at 12V, but at 5V it is under much less load and will wear out much slower
One of the benefits of fans in my opinion is the noise! The white noise helps me sleep, so I don't want quieter blameless fans!
Same here. Can't fall asleep without mine's.
Did you know that the bladeless fans are louder, because they need more power, thus more movement and noise, to push air through the tiny holes.
white noise is nice thing. this is why i sleep near my computer that is running 24/7. it's like rain but that "never stops".
i also tried to play some white noise videos while wearing wired headphones while i was sleeping and it is nice too.
Then you might like the bladeless ones. They're actually quite loud. They try to squeeze a lot of through that slit and it makes way more sound than a normal fan that is is of comparable size. Also the comparably sized regular fan moves _a lot more_ air.
We had those larger Dyson fans at work and they proved out to be just total waste of money. They're nasty loud and really bad at giving you a cooling sensation. The fans we replaced them with were considerably smaller and thus also more practical in an office environment, they were also about 1/10th the price and waaay more effective.
I always figure if the bladeless fans were that much better we'd have seen them used in ducted system to entrain the airflow, but never heard of that being done. If they worked they'd be better for booster fans on dryer vents since the blades wouldn't be in the lint stream
Well, even if they were better it wouldn’t make sense for a ducts I don’t think. The whole point is to pull air from “around” the bladeless tunnel, and there is no “around” in a duct
Maybe nobody thought of it. That sounds like a good idea.
Thing is not about better. But about how much cheaper to make so it can be made more and quicker. Even if the no blade fan has better wind speed on top of the built in purifier, a no blade fan is likely at least 10 times the cost of a standard fan. By that time you can just buy 5 standard fan and get better result and still save money. I think it is meant for commercial usage not for industrial usage.
Thank you so much for making this. I've been saying this all along with Dyson products. I have not bought a single Dyson product, because I'm fully aware of the laws of physics.
Good experiment. Seems to me that instead of taking out the blower, you also could put same size pipe for output measure on the whole output, thus eliminating the comparison of "one directed stream" vs "a propeller dispersing out to sides" argument. But not being an expert on fluid dynamics, I might have overlooked some aspects.
Just another idea, your argument is solid, just it does not get clear at start.
I like such type of videos. Simple, easy to understand and IMHO approvable by Bill Nye :D
main benefit of the bladeless fan is that it has less of a chance to hurt you.
the moving part is well hidden.
also, some of them incorporate an air filter, since it's much easier to add to a bladeless fan than to a normal one
There is the safety aspect of bladeless fans but I think the main reason people purchase is because they look cooler.
You can add safety netting to regular fans or just keep them out of each for toddlers.
Just buy an AC.
I’m a huge FAN of this channel.
I'd love to see this test re-done with the Dyson one. The blade shapes are different, similar moreso to an aeroplane wing which improves the volume of airflow and is less restrictive to air entering from the surroundings at the blade portion.
The addition of the top cover changes the direction of the air flow, and energy will always be lost. No matter how aerodynamic Dyson makes the top cover, it cannot magically generate more power than what was put into the motors.
That also means a bladeless fan with the bladeless top cover will always have worse airflow than a traditional fan with the same motor and power.
At that point, it's just a comparison of bladeless top cover designs. It's not science anymore, but engineering. Science already tells us that bladeless fans will always have worse airflow. But the reality is that people don't buy fans only based on airflow measurements.
@FreshSmog Thank you for that. So to reiterate, I'd like to see this test re-done with a Dyson fan out of pure interest. I'm not a scientist, I just like seeing cool tech in action.
true. dyson expensive because build by precision. to have total advantage of using bladeless fan on precisely push air around it. alot of cheap / clone one just gimmick. try get a real one.
@@huzainisahmawiThe real one is a gimmick. Try getting a normal fan. It's more efficient and better for environment. Lost efficiency turn in to heat or noise.
For (somewhat) exotic technologies like the "bladeless fan" it's rather bad idea to use knockoff products. Often these are made to be more lookalike then match the actual performance of the original product as they did no R&D. I'm not saying that Dyson would do much better, but it's a bad test design.
Same problem often applies to well established technologies too. Basically once a product is public it's a race to the bottom on costs.
Normal fans also 'multiply' the air tho, like he proved with him blowing air from his mouth, which works more like a normal fan.
@@Utrilus point was that he's actually testing a specific product that may or may not represent the technology correctly. He has shown no effort to ensure that the product represent the technology. Therefore it's just a test of a product, It may or may not be representative of the technology, but it for sure is a badly designed test.
Bladeless fans are great when you have small kids around.
Thanks for a great video as always 😊
Regular fans also have covers. Kids are easy to teach as well.
The only reason why I would buy one of those, other than me liking to burn money, would be to have a fan that would be a lot easier to clean up while also being relatively safer for kids who saw me dismounting a traditional one to clean the blades and would want to try doing the same.
Ahahahah, really nice video mate, and the joke at the end was top notch
Thank you for walking us through the entire process. I find the tall bladeless fans work better for me as they spread the air like I want it: more air on my entire body since it has my shape (I'm not a sphere haha). For the round ones I need to be further away for the same effect.
Some others have pointed this out, but the volume of air displaced per second (or whatever flux units you want) seems more relevant if you're measuring how well it can function as a cooling device. Both fans may entrain air, but you can't just assume that the degree of entrainment is equivalent. The "bladeless fan" entrains air both at its intake in the base and at the output ring which may more than make up for the marginally lower peak air speed when the fan was taken out of its housing
Im currently working on a project to build a wind tunnel to visualize the flow of air around objects, may I ask, what method did you use for the smoke at the beginning of the video?
The benefit comes from the unbroken continual flow the turbine creates unlike a fan meaning you need less airflow to get the same effect of cooling because of this, the reason the housing is used is to redirect the air in a manner where it's dispersed evenly a loss in flow in unavoidable when you add more internal volume to the system by adding a housing to push air around before it's dispersed. Why is this so hard for people to get?