Let’s address the elephant in the room: the Dyson tax is real. If you’re looking for the best air purifier and your main priority is price, you have plenty of great non-Dyson options to consider. But, if the prestige of that name badge is too alluring to ignore, the Dyson hushjet purifier compact justifies the premium price tag.
Designed for smaller rooms, bedrooms and home offices up to 100 square metres, this compact air purifier crams a whole lot of filtering power into a cylinder small enough to trip over. Rather than blowing across the room like Dyson’s purifying fans, the hushjet inhales 70 litres of air per second through its 360-degree base before jetting the clean air straight upwards towards the ceiling, volcano-style.
To find out if it’s actually worth the investment, I’ve been testing it in my own home, pitting its filters against everything from springtime pollen, burnt toast and enough hairspray to supply a 1980’s West End musical.
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How I tested
I set the Dyson hushjet up in my home office – a room that gets stuffy by mid-afternoon and overlooks an inner city road – and used it as my primary air purifier (yes, I’ve got more than one) for a month. I paid close attention to how quickly it reacted to changes in air quality, such as when cooking in the adjacent kitchen or opening a window on a high-pollen day.
I also tested it overnight in the bedroom to assess the “hush” part of the name, paying attention to noise levels, display brightness and how seamlessly the Dyson app integrated into my daily routine.
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Dyson hushjet purifier compact
Dimensions: 47cm x 23cm
Weight: 3.15kg
Filter type: 60-degree electrostatic HEPA filter / activated carbon filter
Filter life: Up to 5 years
Smart compatibility: Dyson app, Alexa, Google Assistant
Why we love it
- Whisper quiet
- Compact design
- Responsive auto mode
Take note
- No cooling effect
Design and setup
The hushjet is a striking piece of industrial design, especially when compared to the bleakly utilitarian, white-goods styling of most air purifiers. Standing at 47cm tall and 23cm wide, it’s just about compact enough to look alright on a desk or bedside table, but still enough of a unit that it’s best suited to the floor. Available in white/silver or a sleek black/teal, it feels well-built and reassuringly sturdy at 3.15kg.
Dyson has given a lot of thought to what the hushjet looks like from above, the angle most people will be viewing it from. Air is drawn through the 360-degree base and fired vertically out of a semi-transparent, star-shaped, finned nozzle.
It looks great, like the business-end of a Rolls Royce jet engine, but the up-firing format does change the utility of the machine. While powerful enough to keep fresh air moving around the room, this isn’t a purifying, sideways-firing fan like other Dyson models, so there’s no cooling benefit here. Instead, launching the clean air straight upwards helps to properly circulate the air in the room, ensuring the purifier isn’t repeatedly trying to scrub the same batch of air around it.
Setup is frictionless. You plug it in, download the MyDyson app, and it connects to your wifi in seconds. Maintenance is equally simple. The transparent nozzle twists off with a simple anticlockwise click for easy dusting, and the main outer housing slides off to reveal the filter system inside.
Performance and air quality
When it comes to improving the air quality, the hushjet is a powerhouse. The quiet compressor draws in up to 70 litres of air per second, pulling it through two layers of filtering: an outer 360-degree electrostatic HEPA filter and an inner activated carbon filter. Combined, they claim to capture 99.97 per cent of particles as small as 0.3 microns. That means it catches fine dust, pollen, pet dander and traffic pollution, while the carbon layer is particularly effective at neutralising odours.
The hushjet performs as well as any decent purifier with a sensor. The aroma of fried onions that regularly wafts into my office from my kitchen was noticeably reduced. When I’d forgotten to run the dishwasher overnight and was met with a stale guff of stewing plates in the morning, the purifier ramped up into high gear and tackled the stench in a few minutes before resuming its quiet operation.
The stated lifespan of the filter is a whopping five years, though this is based on running the purifier on the lowest setting during the day. Based on a few weeks with the hushjet – entering hayfever season, running it overnight, placed near my kitchen and next to a busy road – I estimate the filter will last closer to a year.
Dyson filters can be expensive to replace, but if you don’t expect to stress the hushjet too much with a round-the-clock barrage of dust and pollution, those hardy filters could offer good value over time.
Smart features and noise levels
Dyson is exceptionally good at making very quiet fans, so it’s no surprise that the “hush” part of the name is justified. In sleep mode, the purifier is quiet enough that you might wonder if it’s actually doing anything at all, and the small front-facing LCD screen switches off completely in dark rooms. It’s effectively silent on the lowest setting, making it the best air purifier I’ve tested for light sleepers. Even when cranked up to maximum, the fans only muster a whooshing, unobtrusive white noise.
The smartest way to use the hushjet is to simply leave it on auto mode and let the purifier figure things out. The sensors continuously monitor the room for PM2.5 and PM10 levels, as well as nitrogen dioxide, tree and grass pollens. If you spray hairspray or open a window near road traffic, the hushjet senses the spike in pollutants, ramps up its fan speed to clear the air and then settles back down into a quiet idle.
You can track all of this real-time and historical data via the app, if that sort of thing excites you. The app shows you the outdoor air quality too, which is useful now that warmer weather has us cracking windows again.
Buy now £349, Currys.co.uk
Should I buy the Dyson hushjet purifier compact HJ10?
The Dyson hushjet is a smaller, quieter, and more practical air purifier for homes where space is at a premium. While it won’t double as a desk fan to keep you cool during a heatwave like other Dyson purifiers, it packs a lot of performance into its compact design, and the up-firing nozzle means it can be placed on a desk without blowing air in your face.
Factor in the long-lasting filter – for light use, at least – and the hushjet starts to justify its £349.99 asking price. If you suffer from allergies, live near a busy road or want a purifier to run overnight in the bedroom – and you want something slicker than a generic white cuboid – Dyson’s compact purifier ticks all the right boxes.
How I tested the Dyson hushjet
Over the course of a few weeks, the Dyson hushjet enjoyed a grand tour of my flat. I tested the air purifier in my living room, office, kitchen and bedroom to see how it performed against everyday pollution.
Why you can trust IndyBest reviews
As IndyBest’s tech critic, Steve Hogarty has spent years testing and reviewing the latest smart home gadgets, from laptops to robot vacuum cleaners, cutting through the marketing jargon to tell you what a product is actually like to live with.
By testing devices in a real home rather than a pristine testing lab, he can accurately measure a gadget’s true performance, ongoing maintenance costs and overall value for money, ensuring you get honest, unbiased advice.
Want more Dyson tech? Check out my review of the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI robot vacuum cleaner
