Most articles on this subject open by comparing a twenty pound fan to a seven hundred pound Dyson. That comparison is rigged, so this one will not make it.
Dyson's cheapest fan at John Lewis is the HushJet Mini at £99. Our quietest tower fan is £89.99. Those are close enough that anyone claiming a twenty-times saving is comparing a desk fan to a machine that also purifies the air and heats the room.
So here is the narrower, more useful question: where is the gap actually large, and where is Dyson not really charging much of a premium at all?
Where the gap is real, and where it is not
Two things drive Dyson's fan prices, and only one of them is about moving air.
The first is the bladeless design, which is genuinely good engineering: nothing to trap fingers, nothing awkward to clean, and a smoother airflow than a caged blade. You pay for it. A Dyson Cool CF1 desk fan is £249. A desk fan that does the same job of pointing moving air at you is £12.99. That gap is real and it is enormous.
The second is that most of Dyson's tower-shaped machines are not fans. They are purifiers or heaters that also blow air, priced from £399 to £699. Comparing those to a fan is comparing a different product, which is the trick this article is trying not to play. If you want purified air, that is a separate conversation and a cheap fan is not part of it.
What Dyson does not currently sell at John Lewis is a plain, fan-only tower at a mid price. That is the gap the units below sit in.
Our picks
Warmco USB Desk Fan with Touch Control: £12.99
Runs off USB, so it needs to stay plugged in. Against a £249 Dyson desk fan this is the comparison that makes the premium look hardest to justify, because on a desk you are two feet away and raw air projection stops mattering.
Verdict: For a desk, this is most of what you actually need.
Warmco D3 Portable Rechargeable Desk Fan, 10000mAh: £34.99
The same idea with a battery, rated at 15 to 24 hours depending on speed. Useful where there is no socket, which is the one thing no mains Dyson does at any price.
Verdict: Buy this one if the fan needs to move around.
Levoit 20dB Silent Tower Fan: £89.99
Rated at 20dB, which is the number worth caring about in a bedroom. A fan you turn off because it is annoying cools nothing.
Verdict: The pick for a bedroom, and priced within a tenner of Dyson's cheapest fan.
Levoit 20dB Quiet Pedestal Fan, 1451CFM: £119.99
1451CFM, remote, 12 speeds, oscillation, a 12 hour timer, adjustable height. Airflow at this level is where a cheap fan stops being a compromise, because moving a lot of air is the part that does not require clever engineering.
Verdict: The most fan for the money here.
Warmco N3 Portable Neck Fan: £29.99
Not a Dyson alternative at all, and included because Dyson makes nothing like it. Worn rather than placed, for commutes and travel.
Verdict: A different product for a different problem.
How they compare
| Type | Cools | Purifies | Heats | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warmco USB desk | Desk, mains | Yes | No | No | £12.99 |
| Warmco D3 | Desk, battery | Yes | No | No | £34.99 |
| Levoit tower | Tower | Yes | No | No | £89.99 |
| Levoit pedestal | Pedestal | Yes | No | No | £119.99 |
| Dyson HushJet Mini | Small, mains | Yes | No | No | £99 |
| Dyson Cool CF1 | Desk | Yes | No | No | £249 |
| Dyson Purifier Cool PC1 | Tower | Yes | Yes | No | £449 |
| Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool HP2 | Tower | Yes | Yes | Yes | £699.99 |
Read down the Dyson rows before deciding the brand is a rip-off. The £699 machine is three products. The £99 one is a fan, and it is priced like a fan.
Frequently asked
Is a bladeless fan actually better? For safety and cleaning, yes, clearly. For cooling, it is a different feel rather than a straightforwardly better one. Nobody should spend two hundred pounds expecting to feel twice as cool.
Why is the Dyson desk fan £249 when their smallest is £99? Because they are different sizes doing different jobs, which is the same reason our range runs from £12.99 to £119.99. Size and airflow drive fan prices far more than brand does.
Does a cheap fan cool a room? No fan cools a room. Fans move air across skin, which makes you feel cooler while the room temperature stays put or rises slightly. This is true of a £12.99 fan and a £699 one alike, and worth knowing before spending either amount.
What about noise? This is where cheap fans genuinely can be bad, and it is why both Levoit units above are picked on their 20dB rating rather than their airflow. Check the decibel figure before the price.
Should I just buy the Dyson? If you want the bladeless design and the build, buy it. At £99 for the HushJet the premium is small enough that talking you out of it would be silly.
How we priced this
Our own prices are read live from the retailer as this page loads, so they are current rather than whatever they were when this was written.
The Dyson figures are John Lewis's listed prices on the date above, taken from their Dyson fan listings rather than from an RRP or an older article. We deliberately did not use the AM07 tower fan, which several comparison sites still quote. John Lewis lists it as no longer available and unlikely to be restocked. Its remaining prices are clearance prices that mean nothing.
We have not tested these against each other, and we have not measured anyone's airflow. The verifiable parts are the prices, the manufacturers' own claims, and which Dyson machines are fans rather than purifiers or heaters wearing a fan's shape. That last distinction does more work here than any measurement would.
The bottom line
If you want a desk fan, the gap is enormous and the cheap one wins easily.
If you want a quiet bedroom tower, the Levoit does that job at a price Dyson does not currently compete at with a plain fan.
And if the real want is purified or heated air, no fan on this page substitutes for that, at any price. Everything else we watch for the home sits under Home & Kitchen.