Best of What's New 2011

Home Tech

Dyson Hot

Safe, quick room heating

Home Tech 2 of 12

The Dyson Hot Dyson

Space heaters cause nearly 20,000 home fires in the U.S. every year. The Dyson Hot stays safe while heating rooms faster than any other heater. An insulating sheath separates the Hot’s ceramic heating elements from the device’s outer walls to keep them cooler. The increased safety doesn’t come at the expense of efficiency, though. Rather than letting hot air rise to the ceiling, the Hot pushes the air through a thin oval-shaped slit, creating a strong current that jets across the entire room. $400

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Tested

If you've seen his vacuum commercials, you know James Dyson loves nothing more than solving a deceptively simple engineering problem. Oh, how it delights him. But when his company introduced its nifty but ultimately confounding Air Multiplier fan last year, it solved a problem suffered by no one: the "uncomfortable buffeting" of air flowing from a common, bladed desktop fan. The engineering involved in shooting air forcefully and smoothly from the Multiplier's eye-catching ring was impressive, but its reason for being fell flat. As it turns out, all it takes to turn a good-looking but ultimately strange product into something legitimately, usefully innovative is the addition of hot air. The Dyson Hot—essentially an Air Multiplier fan with a heating element—is proof. Read more