Dyson Airblade Tap with hand dryer - now for home use

A pricey design statement for your kitchen or bathroom

It's a tap. It costs £1,000 plus VAT. Before you look away, let me tell you this isn't some super-grand fashion designer who's charging so much. It's not covered in Swarovski crystals. But it's pretty cool.

This is the just-announced tap and hand dryer from Dyson. The company, as you'll doubtless know, has made a highly effective hand dryer designed to scrape the water off your hands in double-quick time after you've washed them. It currently sits in the classiest of public loos (the Eden Project in Cornwall, for instance, won a national Loo of the Year Award for its 245 rainwater harvesting toilets and state-of-the-art Dyson dryers).

The new Dyson Airblade Tap combines this technology with a tap. The inbuilt air dryers which blow cold air at 450 miles per hour.

But this tap is at home in private as in public bathrooms or kitchens. Okay, it's a luxury, as most people will already have a neat bit of hand-drying kit known as a towel, which works quite well already. But if you want a fast, hygienic alternative, this is a great idea.

If you're halfway through doing the washing up when your phone rings, say, the speedy Dyson with its jets of air that shoot from the tap's wings will dry your hands faster, almost, than you can say, "Can somebody get that?"

The jets aren't heated but the pressure makes the air feel pleasingly warm.

For companies it makes good financial sense. Dyson claims that the cost of one paper towel is the same as the energy the tap uses to clean 15 pairs of hands.

That may not be so important in a home environment but, hey, it's a pretty emphatic design statement.

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