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- Fresh, clean air. You need it, but the environment doesn’t always provide it.
- If you’ve suffered long enough with sinus problems, allergies, or headaches due to pollutants in the air, it’s time for an air purifier. Our top pick is the Coway Mighty Air Purifier.
You can go up to three weeks without eating. You’ll survive three to four days, on average, without fluids. But it only takes six minutes without air to damage your delicate brain, and survival beyond that is unlikely. The air you breathe is the most pressing life necessity, so why not take as many breaths as possible of pure, clean air?
To accomplish that, you’ll likely need an air purifier. Far too many of us live in areas with polluted outdoor air, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the air inside our homes can be even dirtier.
Common pollutants inside your home can include molds and fungi spores, bacteria and viruses, pollen, cigarette smoke, volatile organic compounds (VOCs emitted from carpeting, paint, and other construction materials), dust and pet dander, and fumes from air fresheners and other cleaning supplies.
Air purifiers remove some or most of those pollutants from your indoor air. They work by drawing room air in and through a filter or combination of filters, then blowing out fresh, clean air.
A good air purifier removes allergens, dust, gases, and other pollutants from the room air, leaving behind clean air for your lung’s benefit. There are a lot of air purifiers on the market, though, and that’s why we did the hard work for you. We’ve done our research, and gathered up the eight air purifiers we think do the best job of cleaning your air.
Here are the best air purifiers you can buy in 2019:
- Best air purifier overall: Coway Mighty Air Purifier
- Best air purifier for allergies: Dyson Pure Cool Air Purifier Fan
- Best air purifier for larger rooms: Blueair Blue Pure 211+ Air Purifier
- Best non-electric air purifier: Morihata International Chikuno Cube
- Best advanced air purifer: Molekule Air Purfier
- Best heating air purifier: Dyson Pure Hot+Cool
Updated on 03/19/2019 by Lulu Chang: Updated prices, added a new pick, and updated formatting.
Read on in the slides below to check out our top picks.
SEE ALSO: The best humidifiers you can buy
The best air purifier overall
Why you'll love it: Highly effective against indoor air pollution and reasonably attractive to boot, the Coway Mighty Air Purifier knows when your air is in serious need of cleaning.
We thought it couldn’t get any better than the original Coway Mighty Air Purifier, but as it turns out, the best can still be beat — and by its younger sibling, no less. The new air purifier is smaller and more powerful than the earlier version. The Coway Airmega 200M has a four-stage filtration system that's capable of capturing 99.97% of particles in the air.
The purifier has a pre-filter, an odor filter, a true HEPA filter, and a bipolar ionizer inside that work in tandem to rid your surroundings of allergens and reduce odors. The air purifier comes with an air quality indicator that does more than tell you how your machine is doing. Rather, this feature continually monitors the air quality of your home, and automatically adjusts the fan speed and operation as necessary to help you make the most out of your purifier.
When no indoor air pollution has been detected for 30 minutes, the Coway Airmega 200 will just turn itself off to save energy. Of course, if you’d rather control the fans manually, that’s fine as well. The purifier includes three fan speeds to help you adjust air output based on your own needs and preferences. You can also set a timer to schedule one, four, or eight hours of continual operation.
To ensure that you’re always getting the most out of this system, the 200 has a filter indicator that alerts you when you need filter changes. The Coway Airmega 200 is well-suited for pet owners, who have to contend with pet dander and odors in their homes, but it's also great for smokers looking to reduce the amount of second-hand smoke in their indoor environments.
Whereas the original version was good for rooms up to 350 square feet, this new version is a bit more powerful and is capable of cleaning spaces up to 361 square feet. While that’s not a huge difference in and of itself, the new Coway has the added benefit of being smaller than older options, which means it’s less intrusive and even better suited for compact spaces. — Lulu Chang
The Wirecutter named the previous version as the best air purifier, praising not only its superior performance but also its reasonable price both at initial purchase and over the years as filters need replacement.
Pros: Compact, highly effective, automatic detection and power saving, four types of filtration
Cons: Slightly more expensive than the last version
Buy the Coway Airmega 200 at Walmart for $269
Buy the Coway AP-1512HH Mighty Air Purifier (previous version) on Amazon for $199.99 to $244.98
The best air purifier for allergies
Why you'll love it: With the smarts to analyze your air before it gets to work, the Dyson Pure Cool will make your allergies disappear.
If allergy season has you living your worst life, then fear not: Dyson's Pure Cool Air Purifier is here to save the day. It’s capable of actually calculating the amount of pollutants in your home, and then automatically adjusting itself to filter them out. Because let’s be honest — you literally can’t do that yourself.
While other air purifiers try to capture most allergens and pollutants, the Dyson Pure Cool ups the ante by removing up to 99.97% of the stuff that’s making you sneeze and your eyes water. As a result, you’ll likely notice considerably fewer symptoms after letting this purifier do its job for awhile — I certainly did, and so did my colleague Mara Leighton.
Thanks to the 350-degree oscillation of the Pure Cool, purified air won’t be relegated to a single corner of your room. Rather, you’ll get practically comprehensive filtration, which likely contributes to its 99.97% cleansing rate. For easier control, the purifier connects to both the Dyson Link app as well as Amazon Alexa, so you can tell the machine what to do either with the tap of an app or with the sound of your voice.
When it’s time for you to go to sleep, the night-time mode ensures that the purifier is quieter, and its LCD screen is dimmed.
Not only is the Pure Cool particularly effective, but it’s also extremely well-designed. This is certainly one air purifier that you won’t be inclined to hide from your guests. — Lulu Chang
Pros: Automatically adjusts to the level of pollutants in your home, great design, 10 fan speeds for variable volume
Cons: At $450, it’s quite expensive
Buy the Dyson Pure Cool Air Purifier on Best Buy for $449.99
The best air purifier for large rooms
Why you'll love it: If you need an air purifier for a large room, the Blueair Blue Pure 211+ Air Purifier can’t be beat.
Suitable for rooms up to 540 square feet, the Blueair Blue Pure 211+ Air Purifier is all about performance. It draws air in from every side for quick and efficient turnover of room air. The process happens five times per hour. It’s super energy-efficient, as well, using no more electricity than a lightbulb.
An activated carbon filter removes dust, odors, VOCs, gases, and other lung irritants, while the particle filter captures just about anything likely to cause allergy or asthma symptoms. Plus, you get a choice of two washable pre-filters that slip over the entire outside of the device while adding a bit of style. You can choose from a blue or dark gray color, both are in the box. The pre-filter captures larger particles, such as pet hair and larger airborne particles.
Consumer Reports gives the Blueair Blue Pure 211+ Air Purifier its highest rating, citing its excellent performance at removing dust, smoke, and pollen from room air. Owners of the device mostly praise its effective and quiet performance, although a few outliers say it’s noisy.
Pros: Particularly suited for allergy or asthma sufferers, good for large rooms, just one button to control the three speeds
Cons: A few owners complained it is noisy even on the low setting
Buy the Blueair Blue Pure 211+ Air Purifier on Amazon for $299.99
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