Having taken on wheelbarrows, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and fans, James Dyson now aims to turn another domestic appliance into a must-have object: the fan heater.

Dyson's new product, bluntly called Hot, uses technologies first developed for its Air Multiplier, released in May 2010, to generate a fast flow of air without moving parts – but adds a number of the company's special touches, such as heating delivered by special ceramic stones, a swivel base, and a thermostat that stops the heater once the ambient temperature reaches a certain level.

Besides its coolly curved design, which echoes the work of Apple's British-born chief designer Jonathan Ive, it also comes with Dyson's other standard feature: a recession-busting price tag of £270. That makes it more expensive than all but one portable heater available on Amazon's site, where devices start at below £10 for a simple blow heater.

But Sir James, an adviser to the Conservative party on improving engineering and exports, defended the price, saying that "in hard times, people want something that will last, rather than something cheap that they will have to throw away after a short time. We're appealing to somebody who wants to keep the product and have it provide pleasure over the years".

The Dyson Hot does have a number of features that will appeal to the average householder, and especially parents: you cannot burn yourself on it (because none of the exposed parts gets hot), it will cut out if knocked over, the fan system blows hot air further through a room than conventional heaters, and it can also work to cool rooms in summer – as it can be set to heat a room to anywhere between 1 and 37C. And for those who don't want to cross the room to press its buttons, there is a remote control.

It also has a feature that Dyson himself insisted on: it doesn't heat the air as other fans do, by blowing it over electrically heated coils. That, says Dyson, means "a horrible burning smell". The solution Dyson's engineers found: pass the air flowing inside the housing over 20 ceramic stones – made, the company says, of "a sintered compound". (The sintering means that the stones are compressed to a solid; barium titanate is also used in capacitors in electrical circuits, and in stone form as the heating element in hair straighteners.)

But while the price might look high, Dyson has succeeded repeatedly in persuading people to buy his products: in August the company reported profits up 8% to £206m on revenues up 15% to £770m, and it leads the vacuum market in Britain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland and Spain.

Dyson says that it took 22 engineers including experts in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics more than three years to develop the Air Multiplier technology for use in a heater. Air is sucked in at the bottom and sides and then forced through the "multiplier" system. That also recruits air from the surrounding room as the airflow passes through to help heat it.

Dyson warned though that Chinese copies of patented technologies posed a risk to western companies' profits. At the IFA show in Berlin earlier this month the company had to obtain an injunction against a Chinese company that was demonstrating a fan system copied from the Air Multiplier design.

"The solution to this would be for the Chinese government to pass our patents in a timely manner," said Dyson. "Which they aren't doing. We should have recourse to the law and the courts there should uphold intellectual property rights. If they don't prevent rip-offs then that will stop product development. If it can be ripped off, then it won't be worth developing anything; the copiers haven't had the development costs or taken the risks in producing the finished product. It's very important that the courts uphold intellectual property."

Dyson says that the Dyson Hot has 170 patents and more than 270 pending patent applications relating to 21 different technical aspects of the Hot product.