Which Purifier is Best?

Of course, cost is a big factor for everyone. But many make the mistake of confusing initial purchase price with long term value. Many cheaper products have higher filter and maintenance costs, lowering their long term cost/performance ratio.

A common trick in department store bargain air purifiers is to put inadequate or leaky prefilters ahead of the main filter, allowing it to clog repeatedly.

The "cheap" purifier is really a loss leader for the overpriced filters. If annual filter replacement costs exceed the initial purchase price, somebody got robbed.

I have read so many consumer reviews describing a series of purification purchases, each one unsatisfactory in some respect.

I think that the average service life of many brands is surprisingly short. Of course there is no reliable public data on product life, just my subjective impression from reading.

Again, the point is: get the big picture, which includes long term performance and cost evaluation. In air purifiers, lowest priced is usually not the best solution.

Purifier Size

A common sales ploy is "room size rating." Almost universally, consumers are led to under-installair purification devices. These room ratings are based on continuous top-speed operation, which is impractical from a noise standpoint.

I advocate over-installing: air purifying capacity to rapidly clean the room, and then maintain a break-even status on lower speeds until a new episode of pollution occurs.

Clean air delivery rates, air volume numbers, and air changes per hour supplied by vendors should be significantly deflated.

Vendors routinely overstate the effective cleaning area of a machine because the area is calculated at the machine's high fan speed.

Multiple Technologies

The single most common mistake made by purifier manufacturers is inadequate prefiltering stages.

Above, we saw a possible motive for intentionally doing this, but many just overlook it.

Real filtering, especially chemical filtering, reduces airflow.

I consider a true HEPA filter, or equivalent filtration capability, the central component of every real air purifier.

A compelling replacement for the HEPA has yet to emerge. Electrostatic technology has maintenance and efficiency loss issues unresolved. Emerging technologies like ozone-free ionic, photocatalytic, and hydroxyl radical oxidation still need a filter-based system to support them.

Electronics and Automation

I used air purifiers for almost 30 years before spending 100 days studying for this website build.

The single thing I came to appreciate most is sensor-driven real-time response to real world conditions.

Manually controlled machines cannot deliver optimum air purity because they rely on humans to recognize episodic peaks in pollutant levels, and then take action ("turn it up, I can't breathe...turn it down, I can't hear"). In themost obvious case, this is impossible during sleep.

Automatic operation, turning the machine to idle speed when air purity is acceptable, is the biggest cost reduction strategy possible.

In the future, gas and dust sensor driven automatic operation will be required for manufacturer survival. Some air purifiers rated well now are vulnerable because they still use manual, mechanical switches as their main human interface.

Maintenance

As a kid, I loved to build realistic working models; cars, planes, kites, trains, rockets, the gamut. Just buying a toy was no fun, I wanted to build it and feel the pride when it won a race or contest.

I built my home from scratch, doing 100% of the work and using 80% recycled materials.

But guess what?

I hate air purifier maintenance!

Routine prefilter vacuuming and washouts are soooo boring.

Before you buy electrostatic units, make sure their collector plates really fit in the dishwasher.

Ask yourself: what is my tolerance for an additional routine chore?

One machine, which has sold over 5 million copies, creates so much ozone that steel parts inside rustin a few months (rust is oxidation). Does the machine you are considering have chronic maintenance issues?

I call this the "hidden maintenance iceberg" ahead of the air purifier Titanic.

Engineering vs. Marketing

Lastly, consider the relative inputs of product development and product marketing into the price you are asked to pay for air purification.

Everybody has seen the clever beer commercials, costing in the millions for a 30 second Super bowl spot. Did you know the price of many top brands of beer includes up to 70% advertising?

How much did the celebrity appearances and infomercial blitzes add to the price of the purifier? At Air-Purifier-Power quality engineering is always rated above expert marketing.

This "bias" is evident in the list below, with air purifier manufacturers rated in three broad categories.

Top tier; Best