By Mercia Tapping President, AllergyBuyersClub.com
There are now literally hundreds of air purifiers for the home on the market and we have reviewed many of them over the last 10 years. We do not claim to have tested them all as we only test the ones whose specifications look promising, but we feel we have sifted through the mundane and come up with a list of air cleaners that we can be proud to sell and stand behind. We do believe that we offer the best of the best home air purifiers available. Our ratings are a compilation of several factors, and since we believe there is no perfect product, we try and give our customers an honest assessment of the pluses and minuses of each air purifier as we see it.Our top ratings cannot be compromised, even when manufacturers lobby us with financial incentives. We treasure our integrity, but we do sit down with manufacturers to preview prototypes and give suggestions on how they can improve their designs.We use advanced measuring instruments to measure air filter particle efficiency, gas removal effectiveness, and any signs of ozone. We rate air purifier performance using before and after air quality levels, and periodic time interval measurements of air quality in a closed room over a 24 hour period. We send machines home with our staff to test out in real life - challenging environments. All our staff uses our equipment, not just for testing but for extended use in their own homes. With a staff of nearly 40 people we have plenty of nit picking feedback about long term reliability and other factors which we know are important for home air purifier users. We have added some new air purifiers in the last year, but for those who just like the bottom line, nothing in our estimation has dethroned IQAir air purifiers from their overall top-dog position, although there are some very worthy new entrants for specialized applications or needs.
We do favor air purifiers with HEPA air filters for allergen removal and for specialized applications like odor and gas control, carbon filters are the essential ingredient of chemical air purifiers.
If you are not a person who relishes details you can just skip ahead to our conclusions in this article where we give you some buying recommendations for home air purifiers.
Factors We Consider When Rating and Comparing Air Purifiers.
- SAFETY FIRST - NO OZONE - CHILD SAFE DESIGNS
- EFFICIENCY OF HEPA FILTERS
- GAS AND ODOR REMOVAL,CHEMICAL AND TESTING
- PREFILTERS
- QUALITY OF CASING AND MONITORING CONTROLS AND MANUFACTURE, BELLS AND WHISTLES.
- NOISE LEVEL
- STYLE POINTS, CONSUMER FRIENDLINESS AND EASE OF USE IN MOVING OR CHANGING FILTERS
- ROOM COVERAGE, CADR, AIR CHANGES PER HOUR.
- RELIABILITY,RETURN RATE,WARRANTY PERIOD,STABILITY AND REPUTATION OF MANUFACTURER
- VALUE FOR MONEY,UPFRONT COSTS,REPLACEMENT COSTS AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION
- CONCLUSIONS
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1. SAFETY FIRST - NO OZONE - CHILD SAFE DESIGNS
One of the first things we pre-screen for is ozone gas, which is toxic and is often a by-product of some air purifiers. Let me go on record as saying, you can use an ozonator if you are trying to get rid of fire or smoke odors and you leave the house and open the windows on your return; then ozone has its place. I have used an ozonator with moderate success as a landlord for getting rid of smoke odors after departing tenants, but I close up the house and do not enter it for several days.
I found that a steam cleaner is really my tool of choice for this kind of clean up problem, I also had the misfortune of using an ozone machine supplied by a hotel to get rid of smoke odor in my supposedly non smoking hotel room. We used the machine for at least 6 hours daily for a week in a closed room and then opened the windows on our return every day - at the end of a week the room still smelled badly.In the meantime, California has banned the sale completely of all ozone emitting air purifiers and EPA has its so called “safe levels”. Our contention is that if something is poisonous, why subject yourself to even a little bit of poison? Since ozone has now got a bad rap, it emerges under all sorts of guises with a dizzying number of pseudonyms designed to trap the unwary consumer. However, if your air purifier emits a “clean smell” such as those put out by Sharper Image or Eco Quest in past years, chances are you are smelling ozone. Ozone gives me a headache and I can feel quite sick around it. So we routinely test our air purifiers for any discernable ozone emission, because we believe that consumers have better choices than having to tolerate a toxic gas in however small doses. This is why we do not sell electrostatic precipitators- they produce ozone.
We also look at whether an air purifier is UL listed for potential fire hazards- particularly important when my home owners use air purifiers on a 24 hour constant use basis, and whether in our opinion a small child could easily access a fan and do themselves an injury.
2. EFFICIENCY OF HEPA FILTERS
I admit we are predisposed to HEPA air purifiers and think they are the gold standard for allergen removal and the best overall choice for a home air purifier. The efficiency of a HEPA filter as we define it is the effectiveness of the HEPA filter in use in the machine [instead of outside of the machine!].This efficiency rating is the percentage of the particulates at .3 microns removed by the machine in one pass through its HEPA filter. The particulates below .3 microns are the really dangerous lung penetrating ones but manufacturers hardly ever measure or talk about them. We consider anything over 90% efficiency at .3 microns to be “very good plus”, and the few air purifiers that get close to 100% efficiency get our 5 star “Excellent” rating. Of course you can have a very good machine which might clock in at a little less than 90% efficiency and its number of air changes per hour are high that so it easily makes up for that deficiency in filter efficiency, in real life situations pretty fast.
Most Blueair air purifiers fall into the latter category.
Usually a stacked design makes for less leakage and a good efficiency rating. For that reason, tower designs do not usually work well as highly efficient systems, as the design is prone to leakage. There are also some poorly, unevenly manufactured HEPA filters which are either smaller, have paper pleating that is uneven, or other factors leading to either a poorer performance or more frequent replacements. The moral of the story here is not all air purifiers with HEPA filters are created equal.
The HEPA filter of excellence is by IQAir! Nothing even gets close because of its documented testing by an independent lab of particulates down to the .1 micron level.
However, just in terms of the quality of the actual HEPA filter, the NQ Clarifier, Allerair and Our HEPA Air Purifiers for larger spaces do a superb job. For smaller spaces the Tiger ,the Hygia and PlasmaWave air purifiers all passed our efficiency tests with flying colors.
3.GAS AND ODOR REMOVAL,CHEMICAL AND TESTING
We test our chemical air purifiers by putting some noxious strong vapors such as nail polish in an enclosed environment in front of our air filters, and we measure with some very sophisticated equipment what comes out the other end- if anything. Nothing beats many pounds of high grade granular carbon. Coconut shell carbon is the best grade carbon you can get and air filters with really decent separate carbon filters both add to the cost, size and weight of the machine.Cheap and mostly cosmetic carbon filters can be found in “carbon mesh” filters. Lightweight and odor removing advertised air purifiers should be considered suspect. The cost of manufacture is also reduced if the carbon is combined with the HEPA filter and my peeve here is this will cause you to replace the HEPA filter too early such is the case with AustinAir ; which is in other respects, a very worthy machine.
Chemical air filters will filter out dangerous chemicals from household cleaners, new carpets and a surprising number of VOCs found in the average home. The cost of manufacture is also reduced when the carbon is mixed with zeolite which also reduces odors but not as well as pure carbon. Austin Air mixes their carbon with zeolite in some of their machines. The IQAir GC Series, IQAir HealthPro Plus, AllerAir and NQ Clarifier figure among our best air purifiers for heavy duty odor and gas removal as they use pure high grade carbon and Austin Air gets the prize for pet odor removal with their specialty Austin Air Pet Machine.4. PREFILTERS
Some air purifiers do not have any pre-filters, others have a permanent pre-filter to catch only huge dust particles, others combine a pre-filter with a poor-excuse for a carbon filter which does nothing for odors. Others have more robust pre-filters such as AllerAir and NQ Clarifier which vary in effectiveness and easy of changing them out. The point of having a pre-filter is it protects the life of your HEPA filter, and reduces your cost of replacement filters over the long term.
IQAir wins the award hands down for the quality of their pre-filters, which are a real filter as opposed to some fabric or textile like cotton batting. The pre-filters from IQAir are better at filtering than most other manufacturers HEPA filters.
5. QUALITY OF CASING AND MONITORING CONTROLS AND MANUFACTURE, BELLS AND WHISTLES.
We look at the overall quality of the casing for the air purifier and it easy to seewhen a unit is cheaply made- knobs or castors come off at the drop of a hat, the design is visibly not air tight, or the unit reeks of cheap plastic. We are looking for durability. One added feature we do like is monitoring lights which tell you when it is time for replacement filters.
We think you do not want to change filters too early for monitory reasons, or too late for health reasons. A doctor friend of my husband’s recently complained that a gift we had given him 2 years previously was not working and he was sneezing again. Hello; how about changing the dust laden pre- filter [he only had to open the unit to see the dust]. A nice little filter change reminder light on that particular machine would have given him a nudge for this essential piece of routine maintenance.
There is another energy saving feature I rather like, and it is air purifiers which automatically monitor the allergens in a room and ratchet down if they sense the room is clean. That seems eminently sensible to me.
Other “extras” such as titanium dioxide /photo catalytic air cleaning or ultra violet hold some appeal’ but it is hard to measure their additional contribution to the cleaning effectiveness of the overall machine, although there is some reason to think they do contribute at least some modicum of extra cleaning power.
6. NOISE LEVEL
Noise is to some extent a matter of perception because especially for city folks a little white noise is preferable and some folks find it soothing and comforting. If you are prepared to tolerate some noise you can get an air purifier which is less expensive, as the manufacturer is using a cheaper and noisier fan. The fans in larger scale air purifiers offer the benefit of putting them on a low fan speed to maintain the clean air levels in a room, so that they are essentially in “quiet” or “eco saver” mode, but still cover a decent amount of square footage.
7. STYLE POINTS, CONSUMER FRIENDLINESS AND EASE OF USE IN MOVING OR CHANGING FILTERS
We look at the details. Do the filters slip into place easily; does the machine open and click close without a struggle? Can the filters be replaced easily by a unexpirenced user without an additional body, turning the machine upside down and using an screw driver? The latter is my pet peeve. At least IQAir does it without a screw driver- it does not take more than 10 to 15 minutes to change their filters, but it does require a bit of intelligence. Austin Air, Allerair and NQ Clarifier are all heavy units needing screw drivers and either youth or a man of the house to help out. Since my man is always busy with a myriad of other things, I confess that the Blueair has always maintained its appeal with a 30 second filter change with no screwdrivers and no fuss. Newer units like Plasmawave air purifiers and Hygia air cleaners for smaller rooms and our large area HEPA purifier also have very easy filtering change systems. While in theory, style should not matter with something that is helping your health, nevertheless if you are aesthetically conscious and your allergies are not too severe, then models like PlasmaWave air purifiers and Hygia air purifiers will appeal. All the big heavy duty carbon filtering, chemical air purifiers such as IQAir Purifiers, AustinAir, Allerair or NQ Clarifier do not win style points- While in theory, style should not matter with something that is helping your health, nevertheless if you are aesthetically conscious and your allergies are not too severe, then models like PlasmaWave air purifiers and Hygia air purifiers will appeal. All the big heavy duty carbon filtering, chemical air purifiers such as IQAir Purifiers, AustinAir, Allerair or NQ Clarifier do not win style points- they are all large boxy units and not terribly attractive, but they do the job as advertised.Newer designed air purifiers such as the PlasmaWave air purifier or the Hygia air purifier have found a way to have a tightly designed HEPA Air purifier for allergen removal without using screw drivers. These are highly recommended for smaller rooms and where gas and odor removal is not the driving issue.8. ROOM COVERAGE, CADR, AIR CHANGES PER HOUR.
In our opinion, one needs 4 to 6 air changes per hour for an allergy sufferer to get reasonably fast relief, especially when the rate of recontamination is factored in from resident cats, opening doors to the outside pollen laden world, or where mold or dust mites are proliferating like rabbits. No air purifier can cope with homes where a large number of multiple cats are in residence. Less is better. This year’s record is someone with near 90 cats running about their home!
It is particularly annoying to see manufacturers overstate their square footage capability basing it on 2 air changes per hour. So we often quote two square footage coverage numbers- one for “clean air” and the other more realistic one for allergy sufferers. That way we avoid conflict with manufacturers who think we are being too hard on them, and who know only too well that if people think an air purifier covers a larger area it will sell better.
CADR- clean air delivery rate is the AHAM rating of square footage covered which is a multiple of air changes per hour x by a machine’s efficiency. It is an imperfect system, and boycotted by some of the best air purifiers on the market principally because it does not measure gas and odor removal effectiveness and measure the smaller lung penetrating particles which are the ones that really do you harm. The other thing that AHAM not do is publish CADRs for different fan speeds- it is always for high speed, and I defy you to find any user who keeps their air purifier on high speed except for occasional quick cleaning bursts; so the real room coverage in reality is always smaller than what AHAM or manufacturer’s put in their specifications.
However, let me say this- I think AHAM ratings are better than nothing in an unregulated industry, and I look forward to their improving their testing procedures so that some of the top brands can get more fairly tested. AHAM in the long run is the best bet for telling the truth about realistic room coverage, and is better than nothing. Consumer Reports bases their reports on AHAM ratings which is why some of the top brands do not do so well in their annual reviews.
The air purifiers with the highest CADR and have subjected themselves to this testing include BlueAir and our new Premium large area air purifier, and there is no doubt in my mind that they cover more square footage than any other brands.
Air changes simply refers to the number of times the air volume in a room cycles through a machine. Clearly the air will cycle through much faster if it is aided by a fan rather than being a passive system which relies on the natural air movement in a room created by duct heating systems, opening doors and people moving around.
A passive fan-free system such as the AirFree Sterilizer claims that it has 2 air changes an hour in moderate size rooms. I still find their testing lab results in this regard difficult to believe, but assume they were relying on rooms with ducted heating or cooling systems. This is not to say that the AirFree Sterilizer does not have its place but not in a situation where a constant source of recontamination polluting the air. This is why I favor air purifiers with fans because their air changes per hour will be more than machines with no filters.
Air purifiers with fans are considerably more expensive, and in the top of the line air purifiers such as the BlueAir Eco 10, the fan alone can cost a manufacturer several hundred dollars.
9. RELIABILITY, RETURN RATE, WARRANTY PERIOD, STABILITY AND REPUTATION OF MANUFACTURER
As one of the largest air purifier distributors in the USA, AllergyBuyersClub.com is the fortunate position of measuring returns and complaints by customers, and we track the number of returns by reason code on an annual basis. On rare occasions, if we see a machine is not living up to its promise, it gets bounced out of our web site pretty smartly- our reputation depends on happy customers, and we do not feel good about selling anything less than a “good” product with low returns. This pruning used to happen more frequently in our earlier years, but our top rated products now all have a very high satisfaction rating.
Mostly, when an air purifier is returned, we have found that people wanted 5 star performance at a 3 star price. Cheaper air purifiers are typically made in China, and are not priced so that it makes sense to repair them StateSide- they are unfortunately a throwaway items. I much prefer a higher performing (and higher priced) air purifier that I can have repaired even if I have been using it for 7 to 10 years. That way I am not contributing to landfills.
Of course, we get our fair share of lunatic returns. Like the person who complained of strange odor (the dog was lifting its leg on it) or the person who complained that the air purifier did not remove the odor of 6 months worth of dirty clothing and rotting food debris. This is why we code our returns.
It takes a lot for us to stake our reputation on a new manufacturer simply because we have seen new ventures go belly up and our customers left with no way to buy replacement filters. However, if a new machine is well enough made and performs so well over a period of a few months, it would be unfair to not to offer it to our customers, so while we screen carefully we do try and look out for new advances in the air purification industry.
The warranty period of a machine is very telling. The best air purifiers are warranted for 5 to 10 years. That longer warranty period tells you that the manufacturer stands ready to back up their product.
10. VALUE FOR MONEY, UPFRONT COSTS, REPLACEMENT COSTS AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION
Energy consumption is becoming more of an issue, as this country is becoming more conscious about purchasing green products. It is easy to be energy thrifty if the air purifier does not have a fan. The real trick is how to do it with a fan and at high speed. From that perspective, the Energy Star rated BlueAir Eco 10 does it better than any home air purifier on the market with only 10 watts at high speed for a room coverage of over 300 square feet. Since many air purifiers are 8 to10 times more consumptive of energy, this can be a huge savings over the life of the air purifier.
There are manufacturers who do not charge you so much for the initial purchase of the air purifier but their profit comes from the replacement filters which seem to have a higher replacement recommended frequency rate than higher priced machines, whose filters can last for several years and cost you less in the long run. I consider $150 annual cost of replacement air purifier filters quite acceptable if it means an air purifier that keeps me healthy. What are not acceptable are those manufacturers who recommend a frequency for replacing their filters which is sooner than necessary.
11. OUR CONCLUSIONS
While manufacturers like IQAir, AustinAir, BlueAir, Allerair and NQ Clarifier still lead the HEPA air purifier pack for those who are serious about allergen, as well as VOC and gas removal, nevertheless there are some others which should not be ignored for specialized applications. The Airfree Sterilizer is perfect for allergen removal where instant results are not so important, and it has both the advantage of a low price point and does not need any filters. It works particularly well in basements for controlling mold, and is very thrifty with your energy bill.
New in the last year are two compact, efficient air purifiers which work well in bedrooms or smaller living rooms are nicely styled, well designed and using the latest technologies such as the PlasmaWave and Hygia air purifiers.
Several newer air purifiers which did garner a 5 star rating from us for allergen, (but not gas and VOC) removal were the Pure Sleep Air System and the Premium Large Area HEPA Air Purifier. The Pure Sleep Air System provides 100% (and we do mean that) pure air for people while they are sleeping. It forms a clean air bubble right in the area where people are sleeping. We have been advocating the need for such a system for years, and it is exciting to see a product which achieved its results in 12 seconds flat!
Perfect for asthma sufferers or those with severely compromised immune systems. Our Premium Large Area HEPA air purifier is simply the most effective large area machine we have seen as it covers 700 square without going to a whole house air purifier system. When it comes to Whole House Air Purification systems, we have declared the IQAir Perfect 16 our category winner.And yes, in case you are in doubt, the IQAir HealthPro Plus is still our overall winner in the home air purifier department and like the energizer bunny that Swiss made best of class air purifier… keeps on going and going….
allergen free and healthy home - but how to choose one that really works? The AllergyBuyersClub.com picky testing team approves only the best performing HEPA air purifiers and then provides you with our full ratings and reviews including pluses and minuses for each air filter model. A HEPA filter will remove 99.97% of all particulates (dust, pet hair, pollen, etc.) that are .3 microns are larger.
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