Quiet, efficient, & smart. Buy this, breathe easy.
I can't say enough good things about this air purifier. I have bought four of them so far, some for home, some for gifts. While it might sound like an odd gift choice, I live in the Pacific Northwest, where having a good air filter for wildfire smoke (and bad air from smog, chimneys) has become a necessity. It's also great at removing indoor pollution sources, such as from cooking. Performance: First, it does what it's supposed to. I have a couple PM2.5 sensors that I use to monitor air quality and they show a healthy AQI value of "zero" around this purifier. It has a sensor built in to detect air quality changes, and it automatically increases speed when the quality goes down. Quiet: Most of the time you won't notice that it's running. In auto mode (when the air is clean), it's tough to hear it even when you're right next to it. It's not going to disturb you while you sleep. It's also not going to be a "white noise generator" either, it's completely silent. The only time I notice it is when it kicks on to medium or high speed because it's caught a whiff of something bad, which is actually reassuring. Many times I don't notice that the air inside the house has gone bad, and by the time I do, I've been breathing it for a while. When this is running, the air is always good! Smarts: It's pretty clear this purifier was designed by a team of people who really thought the product through. The big things and the little things all work very well. - You can completely ignore this after you've plugged it in. It asks nothing from you, it just does its job, cleaning your air. - It's quiet because it has a big fan. Bigger fans turn slower to move the same amount of air as a small fan, and slower fans are quieter. - It's energy efficient, absurdly so. In auto mode when the fan is on low speed, it uses around 2 watts - about $2.50 per year. By comparison, your USB phone charger probably uses more power than that when your phone _isn't_ plugged in. It's so efficient that I don't mind leaving it on all the time, because it's not going to increase my electricity bill. (also, unplug your USB chargers when you're not using them!) - It has a "sleep" mode to run the fans as quiet as possible (which dims but does not turn off the lights) - It has a "just turn off the lights" button (which doesn't run the fans in quiet mode but does turn off the lights) - It has a timer feature, you press a button and it'll stay on for 2, 4, or 8 hours. - You can manually set the fan to one of 3 speeds as well - You don't need the timer _or_ the fan speed feature, because auto mode will take care of everything and you can just leave it on all the time. - The case itself is smart - the cover is magnetic, so there are no fiddly plastic tabs or screws needed to access the filter. A gentle pull is all you need to remove the cover... - ...which you'll want to do so you can periodically clean the pre-filter. The pre-filter is attached by velcro, so you easily remove it to wash it out. - It doesn't include gimmicky features like adding in "essential oils" (which would just re-pollute your air) or "active ionization" (which just re-pollutes your air). However, a unit with a non-ionizing UV-C light for disinfection would be a nice feature for public places, restaurants, classrooms, etc. - It remembers its settings when it's been unplugged. When you plug it back in, it'll still work the same way it did before. - And finally, and most importantly, my favorite feature: THIS PURIFIER DOES NOT BEEP That's right! There are NO 100 dB, ear piercing BEEEEEEEEEEEEP noises that play whenever you press a button. In fact, there are no beeps or chimes or chirps of any kind whatsover. I have no idea why so many manufacturers are obsessed with adding a buzzer to every single possible user interaction. I have yet to find a case where I thought to myself, "Yeah, I really would've liked to have been deafened when I pressed that button, just in case I forgot that I pressed the button right after I pressed it." Problems: I've returned and replaced two of these because they've had fan noise - a kind of clicking noise associated with the fan. It wasn't loud but it was super obnoxious and not the kind of thing you'd want to try to sleep next to. Hopefully this is a supply issue that Homevana will deal with. The filters are too expensive, currently about $40. There might be off-brand filters that are the same size, when it comes time to replace the filters I'll update the review. The whole thing is too expensive. I was able to buy most of them here with coupons at around $60, which I think is a pretty reasonable price, but I wouldn't pay more than $80-90 or so. I realize that most of the other purifiers here are priced in the $100-150 range (or WAY more than that if you go with a name brand). So it's not that it's over-priced compared to it's competition, I just think air purifiers in general should be priced for what they are - a fan in a box with a filter. But at least with this one you're getting an expensive product that's also a high quality product. My bottom line: I wouldn't buy anything else. Get a couple of these for your house (hopefully on sale), and enjoy life with clean air. Read more