Robot Roll Call

I cannot be 100% sure but I feel that I am one of the first, if not the first, person to review a hand dryer.

Now I realize that statement may seem odd, crazy even, but I must declare my love of the Dyson Air Blade.

If you are not familiar with this product I am sure you know the company’s name from their line of high end vacuum cleaners.

Imagine if you will, you’re in a public restroom and you have just completed you’re business now on to washing your hands.

This is always a point of contention for me, do the facilities have paper towels, a hand drier or those wall mounted rolls of thin cotton cloth that feed into itself (which on a side note you do not see much of any longer). Paper towels while they are sanitary are not eco friendly, sometimes the previous occupant has even dripped water all over the paper, particularly if said towels are stacked on a surface in the lavatory. The towels do the job and quickly I might add but they make a mess and like I mentioned above they are not eco-friendly. Next we have the old school hand dryer, a fixture in restrooms since forever, they are loud and very slow to actually assist in drying ones hands. Plus they take a huge amount of power to run the motor and heating element. Usually they take two cycles to even get your hands from wet to moist. Additionally they tend to be the victim of vandalism, as a kid I can remember the restaurant which my mother was employed had a hand dryer in the men’s washroom. If you can recall the driers had instructions listed on the face of the machine, such as

1. Push Button
2. Rub hands vigorously under warm air
3. Stops automatically.

The hand dryer at Harry’s restaurant had been defaced to read

1. Push Butt
2. Rubs hands vigorously under arm
3. Stop auto at ally.

In my years I have seen many variations of this list and even more changes via scratches with a knife or some variety of blunt instrument (as shown above). For some reason this alteration in public facilities has haunted me to this day, but I digress. The final option is the roll of cloth which feeds into itself, which was my previous favorite as it was quick and easy like the paper towels but minus the waste. However sometimes the roll was not replaced but rather just flipped and you found yourself attempting to dry your hands with a damp and germ infested piece of nasty.

This brings me to the Dyson Air Blade, a complete rethinking of how a hand dryer operates and how one interacts with a hand dryer.

Number one it does not have a blower mounted to the face of the machine rather it is in the shape of the letter U, the plastic face allows one to insert their hands into the top opening. This in turn activates a sensor which turns the machine on, no button to push for operation, the air flows from both sides of the U. All you do is insert your hands until they are completely inside the U and you slowly pull your hands up. The air is forced out of two very thin openings which act like a blade and a blower, kind of like the air blowers at the car wash. The pressure is significantly higher than the standard hand drier but in no way it is painful or dangerous. The whole process take about 15 seconds from wet hands to dry sanitary hands. The best part is that this machine actually uses less power than the old hand driers since the air is forced through such a small opening the pressure does most of the work additionally the machine does not heat the air which means less energy usage. This is an amazing machine and I strongly encourage you to ask your employer to install these in place of any other type of hand drying apparatuses. Take a moment to see the rad flash movie of the machine in action at Dyson’s web site.