The best air purifier 2017

Which air purifier is best to buy? In stores, from the abundance of air purifiers, my eyes run up. You read reviews on the Internet and don’t understand - where is the truth and where is the order of the marketers. So we decided to put everything in its place: take a few household air purifiers and compare the purity of the air at the outlet of them.

It is unlikely that anyone will argue that dirty air is harmful to health. At home, the air can be even dirtier than outside. The pollen of plants accumulated over the years, wool, dust, fumes of household chemicals, in addition, the flakes of the skin of our pets and even the secretion of furniture, various bacteria, fungi - all this is added to the street air entering the house.

Air must be cleaned by an air cleaner. Should, but does it? Let's see how models of different brands cope with this and try to determine the best air purifier.

What air purifiers did we compare

We chose the most popular, technological and expensive air purifiers, wanting to find out which air purifier cleans the air best of all. In total, 8 top air purifiers of well-known brands took part in the research: Daikin, BORK, IQAir, Ballu, Tefal, Xiaomi, Philips and Panasonic.

As we found out the effectiveness of air purifiers

You can evaluate the effectiveness of air purification by measuring the amount of particles in the air that enters the device and checking what the “output” result is. All measurements were carried out in the same room using a laser professional counter of fine particles, which is able to record the number of suspended particles having a size of 0.3 microns.

The room is not small, so you can not be afraid that the difference in initial measurements and the operation of the tested devices will affect the result.

No sooner said than done: the initial indicator of the level of air pollution in our office is about 2 million fine particles, the size of which is from 0.3 microns, per 1 cubic meter. foot, or more than 70 million in one cubic meter (1 m3 = 35.314666721489 cubic feet). The value was recorded by a laser analyzer of suspended particles in the air - the game is fair.

It is important that the purity of the air flow coming from the air purifiers was measured during the operation of each model at maximum speed - there is a greater likelihood of the so-called slip through the pollution filters. We brought the analyzer to the distribution grid of purified air.

What as a result

All that remained was to compare the indicators for the residues of fine particles at the outlet of various air purifiers, which were recorded by the particle counter. And so, what happened:

• DaikinUruru MCK75JVM K - 55,000 fine particles per cubic meter foot (almost 2 million per cubic meter).
• BORK A803 AirEngine - about 44,700 particles having a size of 0.3 microns or more per cubic meter. foot of air (about 1.5 million per cubic meter).
• IQAir HealthPro 250 - 0 particles with a size of 0.3 microns per cubic foot.
• Ballu AP-155 - 24,000 particles per cubic foot (this means about 805,000 per cubic meter).
• TefalIntensePureAirPU4025 - about 18,000 per cubic foot (if we talk about a cubic meter - about 630,000 ).
• XiaomiMiAirPurifier 2 - about 15,000 particles of size from 0.3 microns in one cube. foot of air - and this is 518,000 particles per cubic meter.
• Philips AC3256 / 10 - approximately 12,000 particles per cubic meter . foot, which means about 420,000 particles per 1 cubic meter.
• Panasonic F-VXH70 - 8700 particles per cubic meter ft (or 304,500 per cubic meter).

All air purifiers made the air cleaner - they did it, but IQAir was the only one that could completely remove fine dust that was harmful to health from the air completely

Why air purifiers did different things

It's all about filters. On the one hand, their set in all air purifiers, except for Daikin, looks the same: preliminary, highly effective HEPA and coal.

What about Daikin? It has many different filters. Corrugated, which works in conjunction with a plasma ionizer (in this case, a positive charge is given to the impurities, and the filter attracts them), catechin, a filter with a titanium-containing mineral, which allows you to destroy odors, viruses and bacteria, as well as photocatalytic.

There is also a source of streamer charge, which generates the so-called fast electrons - they must neutralize formaldehyde molecules, as well as other harmful chemicals.

But, as you can see, this “not frail” set, although it provided a reduction in air pollution, did not allow Daikin to break out into the lead. The most important minus of Daikin is the lack of a HEPA filter, which provides highly efficient mechanical cleaning of air. In our opinion, this is one of the main reasons for the insufficient air purification effect shown by the device.

Mechanical cleaning of air with HEPA filters is a prerequisite for the highest quality result.

In other air purifiers (BORK, Ballu, Tefal, Xiaomi, Philips and Panasonic) there is mechanical air purification from pollution, including using HEPA filters. But they could not achieve the perfect result, although Panasonic, for example, made the air really cleaner - a good result. And yet - 0 particle counter did not show. Why?

Firstly, the design of devices is often such that a small part of the air, getting inside, passes by the filters. It is simply not cleaned and mixes with purified air at the outlet - the meter shows contamination.

Secondly, in most household air purifiers, filters are thin and small, have a small working area, and this negatively affects both efficiency and their service life: in order to clean them thoroughly, they often have to be replaced.

About ionization and hydration

Many manufacturers provide air purifiers with various additional functions and options. For example, they integrate an ionizer, a humidifier (some of the comparison participants have these modes, for example, Daikin, Panasonic). But is it really useful for the main function - air purification?

Ionization. During operation of the ionizer, the air is saturated with charged particles (ions), they "catch" dust, which then settles faster on the floor, walls and other surfaces.

But the fact of the matter is that she does not disappear from the room, but settles, except for furniture and walls, also, for example, in the lungs of a person. And by the way, you just have to go near the dusty surface (not to mention hurt it) - and the fine dust is again in the air, we breathe it in again.

The benefits of air ionization are not obvious: the dust from the room does not disappear and can even further damage health

Humidification of air. Actually, this is a good thing. In our indoor climate, the air is often overdried. But for effective hydration it is better to buy a separate device - a humidifier.

And not only because the “additional” humidifiers often have a small capacity and a box for small volume water. This is not so bad.

The main thing is that due to the constant humidity inside the device, the cleaning properties of the main filters of the air cleaner may decrease. The same HEPA filters, for example, can absorb water.

Combining a purifier and a humidifier in one device is undesirable. Moisture adversely affects the performance of some air filters.

There is a winner

Has the best air purifier been identified? Our comparison showed that among the popular air purifiers of well-known brands sold in Russia, only IQAir (a little-known brand in Russia, but a recognized world leader in air purification), in particular the HealthPro 250 model, completely eliminates air from the most dangerous fine dust and other pollution from 0.3 microns in size (cleaning efficiency - more than 99.97%).

PS By the way, we measured the efficiency of cleaning particles, the size of which is from 0.3 microns. According to the manufacturer, IQAir air purifiers retain particles 100 times smaller - from 0.003 microns, with an efficiency of more than 99.5%.

The material used information from reviews and tests conducted by the Hi-Tech Mail.Ru project.

https://hi-tech.mail.ru/review/iqair-healthpro-250-air_cleaner/

https://hi-tech.mail.ru/review/air-cleaners-test2/