Review: Dyson HushJet Mini Cool fan

I love Dyson products. I love the founder less, but there’s no denying their products are well thought out and built. My Dyson cordless cleaner is the best vacuum cleaner I’ve ever owned.

So when they announced a handheld cooling fan, that was something I was certainly interested in. How could they re-think the simple portable fan?

But let’s look at the tech first.

Design

The fan makes use of the same bladeless fan technology that their full-sized brethren use, with the fan at the bottom, pushing air up through the top.

Having the blades at the bottom means that air is drawn from the bottom through vents all around. But that means you can’t cover them and guess how most people hold a portable fan? In the product image, further down this page, which is taken from their website, it shows them holding them exactly like this. I guess even their marketing can’t help but hold it like this, demonstrating that it’s a poor design choice.

The smooth, slim, tube-like design actually makes it quite cumbersome to hold too.

There’s a power button on the front along with a rocker, allowing you to increase or decrease the airflow. If you put it to the maximum and then holder the button down it goes into a “turbo” mode, increasing the airflow even further. A series of LED above shows the level, but also shows battery status too, albeit only one piece of information at a time. For the price I’d want something a bit better than this, I have to say – maybe a small screen showing both battery and airflow information.

Another design issue is the top of the fan, where the air is directed out. The Hushjet can direct air directly upwards or at 45% and nothing else. If it’s on your desk and you want it on your face, you may need to move it around to do so. Most other portable fans, because the fan is on the top, will have this so that it can angled however you want.

It’s recharged via USB-C. Accessories include a stand, so you can place this on your desk, as well as a neck-strap. I found the strap over-engineered for what it was and not immediately obvious how to use it. All of this comes in a well packaged box.

Performance

During this part of the review I’m going to be comparing the Dyson to a £20 DiveBlues fan, that you can purchase from Amazon.

First things first, performance. Very important for a fan. And, yes, I just happen to have proper tools for measuring noise levels and airflow, so it was time to use them.

The Dyson has 5 airflow levels plus a turbo option, with the DiveBlues having 5 levels. I’ll discount the Dyson’s turbo option during this testing as it’s not intended for long periods and simply compare the extreme settings for each (levels 1 and 5). I measured at a distance of 15cm, which seems fair for something intended for personal use.

• The Dyson had a Db level between 50 and 73, with airflow between 4.6 and 13 mph.
• The DiveBlues had a Db level between 68 and 86, with airflow between 8.5 and 14.5 mph.

The DiveBlues has a higher initial noise level because the starting flow is much higher. To get the Dyson to 8.5 mph, I had to move it to level 3, which gives a Db level of 70 dB, higher than the DiveBlues.

So, what can we tell from this? The Dyson will go much quieter, but only because it’s pushing less air. When you start comparing them directly, they’re much the same, with the DiveBlues often better when you balance noise and airflow. The important question here is.. what’s the superior technology of the Dyson giving us here? I’d expect less noise or greater airflow but it seems… average.

The other thing to consider too is how they sound. Both fans have distinctive “whines”, and I found the DiveBlues to be less intrusive, sounding less high pitched to my ears.

Can we talk about the colour?

There are 3 colour options available – a deep red, a dark blue and what Dyson called “stone”. Based on the images on the website, I went for the latter.

Here’s the image on their website (left), and my own (right)…

On their website they refer to the colour as stone/blush. My assumption would be that the main case, the paler colour was “stone”, with the pinker buttons and top as “blush”. I consider “blush” a very light pink.

Next to the product images are colour selector icons and the 2 colours shown for that look a little different still….

I grabbed the RGB colours of both of these images from their site and pushed them through AI to tell me what the colour values best represented…

For the product image (as above) it suggested the top was..

a muted, mid-toned terracotta or dusty rose. Not quite coral, not quite brown

It thought the body of the fan was…

a very pale, warm greige (grey-beige). The kind of colour you’d see on a high-end interior wall described as “antique white” or “pebble”.

For the colour selection icon it suggested the left-hand colour was…

A soft, warm blush or rose beige. Think “old rose” or a faded, powdery pink.

And the right-hand was described as…

This leans more into linen or pale cream territory. Very close to a classic off-white, but with a subtle warm undertone that stops it reading as pure white.

So, inconsistent but interesting that in both cases the main part of the fan is seen as an off-white.

What’s the issue here? Look, I don’t mind pink as a colour, but if I thought this was as pink as it obviously is, I’d have picked a different colour. Describing it as “stone”, to me, doesn’t make me think of pink and I believe the image on the website is not representative. The fact that the colour selection icon on their product page isn’t even consistent makes this worse.

But we know colours on a website don’t always represent products well, which is why you rely on descriptions. “Stone”, in my opinion, was a very poor choice.

Summary

The Dyson HushJet Mini is £100, 5 times the cost of the DiveBlues, a fan that comes in a much larger range of colours, has none of the design disadvantages of the Dyson and performs as well, if not better.

The Hushjet is powerful and relatively quiet, yes, but suffers from an iPhone-style “you’re holding it the wrong way” issue as well as being limited to 2 fixed angles of airflow. Coupled with the high price and basic features, I’m struggling to see how it’s worth the money being asked for.

Sorry, but this is one Dyson product to avoid.