Hands on with Dyson's Hot new fan heater

James Dyson and his team of engineering boffins have been hard at it again, turning boring, inefficient household items into impossibly desirable must-have gadgets. The product of their recent efforts is the new AM04 Dyson Hot fan heater.

For anyone following the progress of Dyson products, the Hot will come as no real surprise, succeeding the large-size air multiplier fans launched this time last year. The Hot adds a ceramic heating element to the blade-less, air-pushing magic and heating the air temperature in a room as it passes up from the base and circulates within the "loop amplifier" (or, as we like to call it, the oval bit).

We've had a couple of days now to test the Dyson Hot and, though it tends to make things unpleasantly warm on these hot, spring days, we have been impressed with how quickly it managed to heat the rooms we've set it up in so far.

The Dyson Hot will launch in parts of the northern hemisphere before Christmas this year, with an Australian launch planned for closer to when it makes sense to launch a heater: winter next year.

Like the standard cold-only fan models, the new Dyson Hot comes with a funky little remote. No more interrupting CSI to get up and turn the heater down.

Inside the Loop Amplifier is a ceramic heating element, which reaches up to 200 degrees Celsius, but Dyson cleverly keeps the outside of the Loop cool enough to touch by circulating cool air within it. You don't want to touch the silver part inside, though, as it gets very hot indeed.

Interestingly, this 200-degree temperature happens to be just under the burning point of dust (230 degrees Celsius, according to Dyson). This means that even at its highest setting, the heater doesn't produce that burning smell commonly associated with floor heaters.

As you might expect, the Hot fan heater can also just blow cool air. If you set the temperature setting to zero, the heating element will stay off. Any setting above zero and the Hot will attempt to correct the room temperature to the one you set, up to 37 degrees Celsius.

In this way, the Hot acts like a little air-conditioning unit. If the room temperature is 10 degrees and you set the Hot to 23 degrees, it will continue to heat the room until it senses that it has reached your chosen ambient temperature. At this point it shuts off and waits until the temperature drops before kicking in again.

Though it really doesn't need to tilt to heat a room evenly, this is just to blow warm air directly at you, which is quite pleasant, by the way.

Whether the Insane Clown Posse can "rap" their heads around this or not, Dyson's remote has a tiny magnet inside it, so that you never have to lose it when you're finished using it.