The Best Home Air Purifiers Of 2023 (For Every Budget)
As dystopian as it sounds, pure and fresh air has become a luxury in even the most well-developed countries. However, it's not just industrialization that has worsened the air quality, but also natural disasters — both natural and man-made — that keep degrading the AQI. The result is a sharp rise in health issues, inflated medical bills, and deteriorating quality of life.
With little reprieve in sight, air purifiers have become a household necessity, addressing long-term pollution and occasional woes like pollen influx and occurrences like wildfires.
Picking up an air purifier is no easy task, especially when there is such a huge variety across different price brackets, employing varied techniques, offering diverse coverage capacity, and noise levels to choose from. The requirements might vary, but in general, HEPA filters are considered the gold standard for air purifiers. With these factors in mind, the following is a list of the best air purifiers across different price brackets and specifications to suit your needs.
Levoit Core 300
If your budget can't exceed the $100 mark, the Levoit Core 300 is as good as it gets. This affordable air purifier looks more like a cylindrical speaker, and in a good way. Despite its small footprint, it can effectively cover an area of around 220 square feet, while its noise level ranges between 24-50 decibels; which is less than a whisper at the low end, and slightly below a human conversation at its peak performance.
It offers a three-stage HEPA filter design: The outer layers shields against dust, lint, and hair, while the innermost activated carbon layer absorbs chemicals, fumes, and household odors to keep the air fresh. Sandwiched between them is the H13 HEPA layer, which is capable of capturing 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 micron in size, covering everything from dust and pollen, to microscopic allergens.
Other functionalities include fan filter control, timer, filter indicator, sleep mode, and timer scheduling. Another alternative in the same price bracket is the Zigma Aerio 300, which earned praise in our review for perks like a built-in UV-C sanitizer, quite operation, and some neat connected features.
Coway AirMega 200M
Coway's AirMega 200M is one of the most reliable air purifiers around the $200 price point. Armed with a 4-stage filtration system, this one is capable of cleaning a space covering 1,748 square-feet within an hour, but it is ideal for rooms of around 360 square-feet in area. There is also a color-coded air quality indicator to let you know the level of pollution in your immediate surroundings.
The outermost filtration layer blocks larger impurities like hair and dust, while the deodorization filter cleans off bad odors and other volatile chemicals. The anti-microbial HEPA filter is claimed to offer a 99.9% efficiency at blocking ultra-fine pollutants like bacteria, pollen, and viruses.
The AirMega 200M also offers a vital ionizer system that triggers an electrochemical reaction against ultrafine elements lingering in the air. You can control the airflow across three levels, schedule an operation timer, or put it into an eco mode to strike the right balance between filtering and energy efficiency.
Blueair Blue Pure 211+
In the $300+ territory, we have the Blueair Blue Pure 211+, which is ideal for larger rooms. It can completely recycle the air more than four times per hour in a closed space covering a 540 square-feet area. It offers a triple-layer filtration system that includes a washable large particle filter, a customized dual-layer silent HEPA filter, and an activated carbon sheet for volatile chemical removal.
This one has a 360-degree air intake design, while operational noise levels fall between 31 and 56 decibels, which is fairly standard. You get three levels of fan control, auto mode, and an inbuilt particle sensor. Plus, it adopts a one-button operation approach, so there is barely any technical learning curve here.
You can customize the look of the lower half by choosing between five pre-filter fabric sheets that go above the white mesh frame. Keeping wildfires in mind, Blueair separately sells SmokeBlock filters for the Blue Pure 211+ that target wildfire emissions such as toxic gases, smoke, smog, and burnt odor.
Rabbit Air Minus A2
The only item on this list that can also be mounted on a wall, the Minus A2 air purifier by Rabbit Air relies on the in-house BioGS HEPA filtration system that stands out, with a proprietary fiber layer to trap allergens and particles that are as small as 0.1 micron in size — with a 99% efficiency. Rabbit Air says, unlike rivals, its custom fabric filter doesn't allow bacteria and viruses to propagate over time.
The filtration activity on this $549.95 device can be customized depending on needs like odor, pet allergy, volatile toxins, and germ defense. It is suited for rooms as large as 700 square feet, but there is also a slightly higher-end Wi-Fi enabled model that can clean the air in a space covering roughly 815 square feet.
It employs a six-stage purification system, and even claims to tackle negative ions in the air that affect mental energy. This Alexa-enabled air purifier can be remotely controlled with a companion app, and operate within the 30 decibels noise range, which is quite impressive.
Dyson Purifier Cool TP07
The Dyson Purifier Cool TP07 looks unlike any air purifier out there, which fits with Dyson's previous out-of-this-world air purifier and other similar products. The whole $649.99 kit is outfitted with a HEPA (H13) filter that kicks into action once an array of integrated sensors sense the level of ambient pollution. Dyson says its slick purifier can block 0.3-micron particles with 99.97% efficiency, while the custom Air Multiplier tech pushes out up to 77 gallons of cleaned, cool air each second in the surroundings.
For even smaller 0.1 micron particles, Dyson touts an efficiency of 99.95% at cleaning them from the air. It also offers a neat backward airflow mode that sucks in the polluted air, but only pushes out the clean air without any cooling effect to save energy.
For higher savings, this Energy Star-approved air purifier also offers a dedicated night mode to intelligently adjust the purification pace with lower noise. The companion app allows control over the directional air flow, and it accepts voice commands via all the mainstream voice assistants offered by Google, Apple, and Amazon.
IQAir Atem X
From Swiss brand IQAir comes the Atem X air purifier, which resembles more of an art piece at $1,299, but it's powerful enough to cover a room as big as 1,650 square feet in just 30 minutes. It can cycle through eight fan speed controls, and operates as quietly as 32 decibels while cleaning a 330 square feet room twice each hour.
The embedded air quality sensors can continuously monitor the level of humidity, temperature, and more importantly, the concentration of harmful PM2.5 particles. Based on the sensor readings, it automatically adjusts the purification intensity and fan speed to save energy. There is a neat-looking, color-coded light indicator that creates a soft glow on the closest surface to indicate the level of air purity.
IQAir claims that the Energy Star-certified Atem X has been individually tested to block 99.99% of the viruses responsible for ailments such as H1N1 influenza, seasonal flu, and common cold, among others. Harmful bacteria and fungi strains such as E.coli and staphylococcus are neutralized with over 99% efficiency.