How have you faired with portable air purifiers, both good and bad? How noisy and/or functional is/are the one(s) you’ve got?
For the record, we just ordered a MOOKA HKB320F for a decent price…I hope, and it should arrive tomorrow morning.
I’m pretty happy with our two Winix units; one bought from Costco, one via Amazon.
I clean their prefilters monthly and they capture a lot of stuff, and we have no pets. But they seem to need to be run on 3/4 or full speed to really process a lot of air. On 3/4 their sound is detectable; at 4/4 it’s quite loud, in an air rush sort of way.
Coincidentally, just today ProjectFarm published a review of air purifiers.
I just finished watching the video. Knowing I made a solid choice helped me breathe easier.
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A technician once told me that one problem with a lot of these air purifiers is that once you turn them off, the filters just release a lot of the bad stuff right back into the air again. I’m not sure whether to believe that or not (since the activated-charcoal or HEPA filter ought to use static cling or something to hold onto stuff,) but it’s what he said.
Thanks! That’s good to know. He summarized the results according to their filtration performance:
I’m not sure how to interpret the results though. What does it mean that there are 8 purifiers all in 1st place for the 2-minute test? That they all performed identically, but then the 9-13th places are… much worse…? And where did places 2-8th go? I’m also not sure how to read the total particle count reduction column (after how long?), and whether the smoke column is using the standard filter (some have special smoke-specific filters).
I would think that these are fundamentally just medium-sized fans pulling air through a filter medium, and their different performances are a mix of their power usage (the Winix uses more power than many, for example). It’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison since some of these are meant for smaller rooms or less-dirty rooms.
This is a longwinded way to wonder… could some of the weaker units last longer between filter changes, since they pull through less air? Like I wonder, if you’re in a not-terribly-dirty/smoky room, would a 5-15 CFM model maybe better than the Winix, which only goes down to 24? If the room gets “clean enough” after a day or tow, having it at 24 CFM forever might just be a waste of power as it’s already filtering the clean-enough air over and over again.
Not sure. I wish the methodology were clearer here, and they also tested effectiveness over the longer term (months of use, not just a few minutes). And how expensive/difficult filter changes are.
Anecdotally, I’ve had a pair of Blue 411s, a manual one and an automatic one (with a built-in air quality sensor that modulates the filtration speed). They’re both whisper-quiet (inaudible, really) at low, tolerable at medium, and noisy at high.
They are ranked pretty low down that table, but I’ve had these for many years (nearly a decade, I think) and they’ve worked very well both day-to-day with the cat and a dusty house, and also during wildfire season (with special smoke filters). The difference outside vs inside is dramatic even on the smokiest days. But a part of that is just having a well-sealed house.
One downside is that the filters are not so widely available in brick and mortar stores, and changing the pre-filter (it’s a cloth thing that you’re supposed to wash) is a messy, annoying process that takes a few minutes.
If noise isn’t an issue, the DIY HVAC filter box setup, popularized during covid, seems to be the best filtration performance for the buck: Corsi-Rosenthal Box Review - RTINGS.com
For sure some of it gets sloughed off when you change the filters, but you can visibly see the remaining dust (a thick layer of it) on/in in the filter medium.
If you’re worried about that, you could also just bring them outside to change the filters — something you can’t do with the furnace filter with your home HVAC system.
If you watch the video you’ll see that’s pretty much exactly what he found. A bunch of them work very well, and a few do not.
My big Blueair one is sort of like that with external washable filter. I have to be very careful pulling it off, and flip it inside out, or it dumps a bunch of dust back into the house. The inner HEPA and charcoal filters are not like that at all, though. When I change those they are cleaner than a furnace filter, and don’t make my air quality meter spike.
I can understand that, but then why aren’t the rest of them 2-6th place instead of 9-13th?
I think it must be like in the Olympics, when two competitors tie for gold, the next in line gets the bronze, not a silver.
Really? I had no idea, lol.
We have the Levoit 200S. Our vet suggested we get it because one of our cats was having coughing fits. I like it so far. It was pretty noisy to start out, but now I don’t even notice it. I replaced the filter a few days ago and it was brimming with stuff, so it seems like it’s doing its job. The cat is coughing a lot less, so it was worth it if it’s helping her.
I have had a Winix unit with the three-stage (pre, HEPA, and carbon) filter system for about 8 years. It also has the ionization capability, along with optical sensing for automatic operation. I ran it mostly in a 20’ x 25’ room at a medium setting. Air quality did improve, especially if we ran it 24/7. We got it because we have two big dogs and we live in NC (pollen is a problem for several months). I thought it did a good job….
Until I started using a Eufy robot vacuum every night. It runs regularly through about 1/2 of the house and uses a (supposedly) HEPA filter. The robot vacuum picks up more dust and fur every night than my air cleaner picks up in a month. It’s astonishing. And the robot vacuum noticeably decreased the dust that settles on everything between cleanings…much more than the air cleaner. The only takeaway i have is that most fur and dust must go to the floor first before it goes anywhere else in the house.
We stopped using the Winix unit three years ago because it was a bit loud for my wife and we did much better by just using the robot vac daily. (And the Winix filters were both expensive and difficult to change, especially the pre-filters.)
Well, it came in early this morning, so I set it up easy peasy. It seems to be very efficient and very quiet, and one of the cats has his claws out trying to capture the clean air coming out the top.
I bet it’d make a nice cat toy if you added some streamers to the vent.
And a not-so-nice vet bill not long after, alas…
The screen filters on my PC pick up more dusty fuzz than my army of Levoits.