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Keepin' it real fake: Dyson's Air Multiplier gets ripped off, multiplied a few more times
We never really understood the value proposition behind Dyson's (admittedly boisterous) Air Multiplier, but that's mostly due to the $300+ MSRP. Cut that back to right around $40, and you just might have us singing a different tune. Thanks to the wonders of KIRFing, Dyson's bladeless fan has seen itself duped and multiplied over in China, with a 10-inch version now selling for just $41.05 so long as you buy ten or more units. Abiko seems to the company hawking the knockoffs, with its version reportedly "indistinguishable from the original." So, what's it going to be? The real deal? Or the real deal? Update: Dyson requested that we add this comment, so we're more than happy to present you with it. "The Dyson Air Multiplier™ fans were launched in 2009 after four years of research and development. A team of specialist Dyson engineers have refined and patented the technology: illegal copies are of significantly inferior quality. Dyson rigorously defends its intellectual property and treats any infringement very seriously. Dyson is taking legal action against anyone who copies its technology."
Dyson's Air Multiplier is the overpriced bladeless fan you never asked for
We can't fault Dyson for chutzpah. After putting the company's spin on vacuum cleaners and then hand dryers, we probably should've guessed that a revolution in table fan engineering was next up. When we first saw an image of the Dyson Air Multiplier "bladeless fan" a few spurious theories popped into our heads as to how it works, but it didn't take long to figure it out: it has blades in it. It's just that these blades are inside the lower canister, rather similar to, dare we say it, how a vacuum cleaner is set up, with the air then routed through the ring up top. The benefits of this tech are that there are no nasty blades to get fingers caught up in, but also that there's no "buffeting" -- that on-off gush of air caused by fan blades unceremoniously chopping up the air into inelegant segments. Unfortunately, the downside of the Dyson method is that you can't make Darth Vader voices through the backside of the fan, and the whole assembly is closer in noise pollution to that of an actual vacuum cleaner than a regular table fan. And then there's the matter of price: $300 for the 10-inch model, $330 for the 12-inch, and neither of them offer nearly as much wind as a regular fan this size -- quite a steep entry fee for the gentle breezes that emanate out of this plastic wind tunnel. Full PR is after the break. %Gallery-75354%
