Is your indoor air quality up to standard? Good air purifiers really work

There are many kinds of air purifiers in the market, and the quality is also different. But the best onescan improve the typical indoor air quality and make your life more comfortable.

With the outbreak of COVIDpandemic, more and more people begin to attach importance to indoor air quality: everyone hopes that the aircanbe cleaner and safer than outdoors. Therefore, the air purifier has caught people's attention again. After all, its main role is to eliminate the dust, particles and toxic gases in the air, and maintain the indoor air quality at a healthy level.

But air purifier canreally produce the higher quality air as advertised? Some experts have tested most of the air purifiers and found that their actual working effect is not pretty good: the air quality has little change. And many types of air purifiers will mistakenly produce higher levels of ozone, which is harmful to health. In 2003, the Consumer Reportsclaimed that the air purifier was a hoax, and even worsened some respiratory diseases. Sharper Image thought the magazine was libeling its star product Ionic Breeze and filed an appeal, but lost the lawsuit. From then on, air purifiers were no longer popular, and the company went out of business.

But the EPA recently reported that the indoor air quality is much worse than the outdoor air quality, and some air pollutants are even five times higher than the outdoor air. We must pay attention to the indoor air quality, because most of our time will be spent indoors, so the air content of ozone, pet fur, pesticides and other harmful substances need to be controlled. Clean air not only enables us to live and work normally, but also benefits our health.

At the same time, with the progress of science, harmful organic matter is also seriously exceeded. Trichloroethylene, chloroform and other volatile organic compounds will do harm to the development of children and the recovery of patients. No one wants to be surrounded by these toxic substances.

Not only Sharper Image's products have been questioned, but Molekule has also been accused of false propaganda: their products may not work at all. This makes more purifier manufacturers start to study better products, and it has made obvious progress since 2003.

So does the air purifier work effectively now? After many tests by experts, including the EPA, High-Efficiency Particulate Air can indeed filter out pollutants and microorganisms in the air, whichmeans the current technology is enough to support air purifiers to improve indoor air quality without side effects. But we want to remind you that no matter how good the air purifier is, it can only reduce the pollutants in the air, but cannot completely eliminate indoor air pollution. For your health, you still need to take protective measures even you got an air purifier.

We evaluated many air purifiers according to the manufacturer's specifications, mainly focusing on whether the device supports wireless connection and app control of thesmart device, so we did not conduct ascientific test on the pollution reduction of each purifier.

Best air purifier for large rooms

OxyPure is designed for large rooms. It weighs 27 pounds and is two feet tall: this huge shape is designed to accommodate the powerful interior equipment. Its Clean Air Delivery Rate is between 332 and 369, representing a very high purification efficiency. It also has four filters working at the same time, which means it can scrub clean air quickly. Frying fish in the kitchen may produce a lot of fumes and harmful gases, but OxyPure can make the indoor air fresh and healthy again in a few minutes. But OxyPure also has a small problem, that is, its App can only simply set its working state. Because there is no scheduling system, you can't set its intelligent working state, and it can't generate pollutant monitoring view to let you know the change of indoor air. But in terms of air purification, it's really the strongest.

Powerful but cheap air purifier for small room

For small rooms, the Coway Airmega is the most cost-effective air purifier. It is designed to be very small, small in size and weight, but it is equipped with a HEPA H13 filter, which makes it clean air powerfully. By the way, its price is also very affordable, almost less than one third of the NuWave OxyPure. And it has a separate unit for deodorant, absorbing the odor in the room at the same time. All in all, it is never late to buy a filter with CADR ratings of 138 to 219 for a small room. But, at that price, do not expect anything from its smart features, no app is developed to control it.

Key operational feature for air purifiers

In our commentary, we have evaluated the smart features of different air purifiers. In the next part, we will test the key operational features of the air purifier to make it more convenient for you while choosing. At the same time, we have summarized buyers’ guide of several air quality detectors. If you want to know the real-time air quality at home, this summary will be very helpful. The air purifier can only play an effective role in a certain size of closed environment, so when testing indoor air quality, you need to deploy the equipment in one room and test in turn.

What to look for in an air purifier

The type of the filter: Although we have been introducing HEPA filter, and it is indeed the most commonly used filter, not all filters are of this type. For example, some purifiers use carbon filters to remove odor better. What’s more, the performance of different HEPA filters is also different. You can roughly know the filtering capacity of the filter screen by looking at the following letters and numbers. Generally speaking, the higher the grade of HEPA, the better the function of the air purifier.

Service life of filter: All filters have time limit for effective operation. So you not only need to pay attention to the service life of the filter, but also need to inquire about the cost of replacing it. At the same time, some purifiers that can be controlled by an app can display the usage of the filter, so that you can better understand when you need to replace the filter.

The noise: The air purifier needs to suck in air before it can produce clean air, so this process will inevitably produce some noise. If you want the air purifier to continue to produce healthy and clean air for you while sleeping, you need to select those with "night mode", which will only produce very small sound.

The CADR: Clean Air Delivery Rate represents the total amount of clean air made in unit time. It has a series of indicators, which are set by Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, and can respectively express the cleaning ability of different pollutants, such as smoke, pollen and dust.

More than that, CADR can also be used to estimate its effective working area. By calculation, for an 8-foot-high room, the effective working area of the air purifier is 150% of CADR, so you won't be cheated by the rhetoric of the salesman and buy an inappropriate one. You also need to look carefully at CADR units, which may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some are measured in cubic feet per minute, while others can be measured in cubic meters per hour. However, according to the simple unit calculation, you can also get the size of the effective working area.

Auxiliary function: Some advanced air purifier can detect various pollutants and display the pollutant level on the app, which helps you adjust the indoor state better than a “good/fair/poor” air quality rating.