In addition to the following models, we have reviewed and dismissed hundreds of purifiers since 2013 based on their specs, features (or lack thereof), livability, and price. Some well-known brands that have never made our cut include Alen, Bissell, IQAir, Rabbit Air, and TruSens, generally based on their elevated up-front and running costs relative to those of our picks.
We have also removed from this list many since-discontinued models we tested.
The Blueair Blue Pure 311 Auto and 211+ are former also-great and upgrade picks. They’re excellent, and if you own one of them, there’s no need to replace them. The 311i Max and 211i Max that now hold these spots are slightly higher performing and have improved energy efficiency and liveability features, but the older models are truly excellent in their own right.
The Blueair Blue Pure 411i Max, a small-space purifier, is physically similar to but less capable than the also-great 311i Max. Given the minor difference in price, we think the 311i Max is the better buy, since it will excel in both bedroom-size rooms and large living areas. The older Blue Air 411 machines (the 411, 411 Auto, and 411+) are former small-space picks, but they are more expensive than the similarly performing current pick, the Blue Pure 511. They’re incredibly energy efficient but not as capable as our current small-space pick, the Blueair Blue Pure 511.
The Clorox Medium Room is a former budget pick. It’s an excellent performer with features we like, including a display shutoff. But the Blueair Blue Pure 511 is smaller, quieter, less expensive, and just as effective.
The Oransi Airmend Small Room (and the similar medium- and large-room models) have a clever design, resembling a compact box fax. Oransi designed them to meet the need for a small, portable purifier in cramped spaces like urban apartments. The Small Room was an excellent performer in our testing, but we think all the Airmends have a dealbreaking limitation: Lacking built-in buttons, they can only be operated via a tiny remote control. Little bigger than a domino, it is easy for even a responsible adult to misplace, and it’s an irresistible curiosity for toddlers and pets.
We tested the Coway Airmega Icon purifier in April 2020. It’s an interesting machine, straddling the line between appliance and furniture, and it incorporates a second function: It has a built-in, 20-watt wireless device charger. Though it is an excellent performer, we’ve concluded that a standalone (and far less expensive) purifier and a separate wireless charger are more practical for most homes.
The Mila air purifier became a special-case pick in 2020, as a truly smart purifier that was also a great performer. But since then, decent smart functionality has become commonplace in the purifier category. And after our long-term tester’s Mila inexplicably died, we discovered that her experience was not unique; one Reddit user experienced six failures. Mila’s response—“There are ~300 customers like you around the world that had 3+ failures. We call you our triple crowners and we wear that badge with shame”—helped convince us to pull them as a pick.
The Levoit Core 300, a former budget pick, is far less energy efficient than the current pick, the Blueair BluePure 511.
The Oransi Mod+ is an impressive purifier meant for large spaces. It’s exceptional at capturing particles—on a par with our large-space pick, the Blue Pure 211i Max—and competitively priced, but it lacks some of the livability features we value. It’s louder than the 211i Max, consumes considerably more electricity, and lacks smart capability.
The Winix 9800 is a solid purifier meant for large spaces. Basically an oversize version of our also-great pick from Winix, the 5500-2, it’s a terrific performer but lacks an important usability feature: Its display only goes dark when it’s on its lowest fan setting, so if you don’t want to sleep in the glow of multiple bright LEDs, you have to give up any meaningful overnight air cleaning.
The T810 is yet another impressive purifier from Winix, closely resembling the Blueair Blue Pure 311i Max in its form, performance, and sleep-friendly display shutoff. It’s slightly louder, however, and considerably less energy efficient.
The Dreo Macro Max S is a high-performing purifier with a major flaw: an enormous, bright air-quality indicator lamp that shuts itself off only in night mode, in which the fan is locked on its lowest, least effective setting. The lamp can be shut off at other fan speeds via the app, but, as with virtually all smart purifier apps, this one has many reports of connectivity issues. A manual shutoff option would be an improvement.
Blueair says its DustMagnet machines “powerfully attract airborne dust particles like a magnet before they settle on floors and surfaces.” But those claims refer to a certain size range of particles, from 0.5 to 3.0 micron—smaller than the human eye can see—so you’d have no way of knowing. In our testing with a professional particle counter, the Blueair DustMagnet 5440i performed no better than the much less expensive Coway Mighty.
Levoit’s Core 600S is a powerful machine designed for use in spaces up to about 700 square feet, at four air changes per hour, and it performed very well in our tests. However, on its medium-high and high speeds, it produced a persistent rattle that we could not ignore nor fix by repositioning the machine and confirming that the filter was properly seated.
The Honeywell InSight HPA5300B, a large-space model, likely performs well, but after measuring its electricity demands, we dismissed it. It’s an absolute power hog, drawing 33, 60, 94, and 117 watts on its four (low to turbo) speeds, respectively.
Honeywell’s HPA300 performed well in our tests but was also extremely loud, topping out at 62 decibels on its highest setting and measuring 53 decibels on the higher of its two medium speeds. It’s large and visually intrusive, too: a black tower that’s almost 2 feet tall, 18 inches wide, and 10 inches deep.
The Coway Airmega 150 is the first small-space machine from that company. It’s sharp-looking, with a clean rectangular form and a muted, matte finish available in several colors. But at its typical price of $190, it’s too pricey for a machine made for spaces no larger than a bedroom.
The Coway Airmega 250 is the larger, more powerful sibling of the Coway Airmega 150. It’s equally attractive, but it’s only slightly more powerful than our top pick, the Coway Airmega AP-1512HH Mighty, yet it costs $200 more.
The Coway Airmega 240, a former pick for special cases, performs on a par with the top pick Coway Mighty and has a sleek design that our staff universally loved. But with more companies paying attention to their purifiers’ appearance, it’s no longer unique in combining form and function at a reasonable price.
The IKEA Förnuftig is neither a true-HEPA purifier nor an especially powerful purifier, period. It’s designed to capture PM2.5—particles 2.5 microns in diameter and above, in contrast with the 0.3-micron HEPA standard. That means it’s optimized for larger airborne particles, such as pollen and mold spores, rather than for very fine particulates, like wildfire smoke (as HEPA filters are). We tested the Förnuftig in a 200-square-foot room, focusing on how well it removed 3-micron particles from the air. It disappointed, removing just 85.2% of 3-micron particles in 30 minutes on high and 73.6% in 30 minutes on medium. Its performance on 0.3-micron particles was, as expected, worse: 64.5% removed on high and 53.5% on medium. Compared with other small-space purifiers we’ve tested in the same space, that’s very poor.
We tested the tower-style Coway AP-1216L in 2017. Despite its decent-to-solid performance, we don’t recommend it. The small footprint of 10 by 8 inches belies the fact that it’s 32 inches tall—the height of a kitchen counter—and so it takes up a huge amount of visual space. You’d never forget that you have a purifier in the room.
The AirSoap uses washable, electrically charged plates to capture airborne particulates. Our top pick Coway Mighty performed far better in our tests. AirSoap’s claim that it will save you “thousands” in the cost of replacement filters is ridiculous—you’d have to replace the filter on the Coway Mighty 20 times to reach even $1,000, which means you’d have to run it for two decades.
The Aeris Aair 3-in-1 Pro performs similarly on particulates to our pick for large spaces, the Blueair Blue Pure 211i Max, and it contains a large VOC filter composed of 2.2 pounds of activated carbon and alumina, which should make it far better at capturing VOCs. But it’s expensive, the filters last only six months, and replacements cost about $200.
Air Doctor markets its trademarked UltraHEPA filters as capable of removing “99.99% of particles as small as 0.003 microns—that’s 100 times smaller than the HEPA standard!” Which is factually true, but not unique to their filters. All HEPA filters capture virtually all particles that fall below the 0.3-micron HEPA standard; the standard is set at 0.3 micron precisely because that’s the most difficult particle size to capture.Air Doctor sells four models, the 1000, 2000, 3500, and 5500, which deliver our recommended four air changes per hour in rooms of about 285, 305, 630, and 1,043 square feet, respectively. They cost two to three times as much as our picks for medium and large rooms, while providing no appreciable performance gains.
We’ve tested many Dyson purifiers over the years, most recently (2019) the Pure Cool TP04 and Pure Hot+Cool HP04. Neither model measured up well against our top pick, the Coway Mighty. We have also found no evidence that the fan function on Dyson purifiers makes them superior to other purifiers in the distribution of filtered air throughout a room. In fact, our years of testing have shown that any appropriately sized purifier will deliver filtered air rapidly into the farthest corner of a room.
The Medify MA-40 performs similarly to the top-pick Coway AP-1512HH Mighty, but it’s much louder, at 52 decibels (above our 50-decibel definition of “quiet”) on its medium setting and 42 on low. The Coway measured 39 decibels and 31 decibels (nearly inaudible), respectively.
The huge and exceptionally powerful Medify MA-112 is surprisingly easy on the ears, registering as “quiet” on its low, low-medium, and high-medium speeds (39, 42, and 47 decibels). But at 28 inches tall and 15 inches wide, it’s best suited to large commercial or public spaces—like casinos, which Medify says use the MA-112 to counter the effects of cigarette smoke.
The GermGuardian AC5900WCA was a star performer in our 2019 test, but we also found it to be much louder than the top-pick Coway Mighty, measuring 47 decibels versus 39, on its quiet/medium setting. And the quality of the sound was rough and whooshy, versus the Mighty’s steady white noise. It’s far more expensive to maintain, as well.
The Levoit LV-H133 is another competitor to the Coway Mighty. But it’s more expensive up-front as well as over the course of five years of upkeep. And its taller form and higher noise output make it visually and audibly intrusive.
The Levoit Vista 200 is a small-space machine, and it’s one of the best-selling purifiers on Amazon. However, it’s much weaker in its CADR specs than our small-space pick, the Blueair BluePure 511.
A budget pick contender, the Levoit LV-H132 performed poorly in our tests, reducing particulates in our 200-square-foot test room by just 60% on high.
Our previous top picks among large-space purifiers, the Coway Airmega 400 and Coway Airmega 300, are impressive performers. The same is true of the Coway Airmega 400S, a smart version of the 400. But the Blue Pure 211i Max, our equally capable current pick, comes out on top on price: It typically sells for several hundred dollars less.
Winix’s HR900 Ultimate Pet Air Purifier has lower specs than our less expensive top pick from Coway.
The Hathaspace Smart True HEPA Air Purifier has solid reviews and typically costs a bit less than the top-pick Coway Mighty. For that price, though, you get a machine that’s barely a third as capable: The Hathaspace purifier can produce, at most, two air changes per hour in a 350-square-foot room, whereas the Mighty purifier can deliver 5.7.
The GermGuardian AC4825 has been around for years and is, up front, cheap. But because of its higher energy consumption, it costs more to maintain than many more-capable purifiers, and it’s a tall, garish device that won’t blend into any decor outside of an Alien set.
In addition to the above models, we looked at and dismissed multiple purifiers from the growing crowd of knockoff brands. It’s plainly a Duff Dry situation, and there’s no reason to doubt that these suspiciously similar knockoffs would perform all that differently from the originals. But we place a premium on long-standing companies with a record of customer service—and these pop-up brands lack both attributes. Rather than address them individually, we turned them into a poem, since their names (and this isn’t an exhaustive list) are quite lyrical:
Sumgott, Koios, UNbeaten, Zibrone;
Afloia, Aviano, Mooka, Keenstone;
Partu, Geniani, KeenPure, Hauea;
Cisno, Druiap, iTvanila, Secura.
This article was edited by Harry Sawyers.
