Breathe Easy—We Found the Best Air Purifiers
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The Best Overall
IQ Air Atem X
Best for Small Rooms
Coway Airmega 200M
The Most Stylish
Ikea Förnuftig and Starkvind
An Affordable Option
Honeywell HEPA InSight HPA5200B
Welcome to the future, where clean air is a luxury. Thanks to pandemics and wildfires, air purifiers have become the gotta-have-it home appliance. Buildings let in a lot of particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, and vaporous chemicals. Indoor plastics, furniture, paint, and flooring off-gas noxious fumes too.
Since your home might be your workplace, playground, meditation studio, dine-in restaurant, and movie theater, you want to ensure that the air you’re breathing for most of the day is clean. These are our top air purifiers. All of these purifiers provided significant anecdotal benefits, from stopping persistent coughs and allergy symptoms to helping us wake up with clearer sinuses and less-raspy throats. Not sure if you need an air purifier or something else? We have a guide to all the devices that can help improve your indoor air quality. For more home tips, take a peek at our other guides, including the Best Robot Vacuums and the Best Mesh Wi-Fi Routers.
I haven’t lived without air purifiers since I started covering air quality back in 2019. These air purifiers were tested in my 130-plus-year-old Brooklyn apartment in a building currently undergoing construction. I use a gas stove for cooking. There were two cats, a dog, and two people during the entire testing period. I do not have central air, nor an HVAC with MERV filters. There is no over-stove exhaust fan to remove fumes to the outside. All of this is to say, my home is excellent air purifier laboratory.
Updated July 2024: We’ve added Air Doctor 5500i Smart Purifier, Homedics Smart Air Purifier T200, Homedics Large Room Tower Air Purifier T43, Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan, Coway Airmega 250, Rabbit Air BioGS 2.0, and Dyson Cool Gen 1 TP10, plus updated links and prices.
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Photograph: Lisa Wood Shapiro
The Best Overall
IQ Air Atem X
The more air purifiers that I test, the more I think they should be viewed as a lifetime investment. If you have the means, the Atem X (9/10, WIRED Recommends) truly is the best investment when it comes to a HEPA filter. Aside from its sleek design, there’s an option for a 10-year warranty (with registration and filter subscription), which means you’ll have access to parts and repairs for a decade. It’s quiet and has custom settings, a built-in sensor, and a dashboard phone app, and it can be set flush against a wall. I use the term “air purifier math” to consider how many air purifiers you might burn through in the next decade. One, two, maybe three? This is why the Atem X is a wise investment, even at its big ticket price. The one drawback is that the Atem X doesn’t have a carbon filter to remove gases.
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Photograph: Coway
Best for Small Rooms
Coway Airmega 200M
For sheer simplicity and affordability, the Airmega 200M will do the job for most people’s lives, houses, and budgets. The compact, attractive device easily fits into a corner of my bedroom and is effective for spaces up to 361 square feet. It saves energy with an included air-quality monitor that turns the machine off when no pollution is detected and automatically increases the fan speed if it detects particles. When my dog plopped down in her bed, or when I cooked bacon with the bedroom door open, the Airmega 200M roared to life. You’ll probably want to turn off the AQ monitor’s bright light at night, though. —Adrienne So
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Photograph: Lisa Wood Shapiro
The Most Stylish
Ikea Förnuftig and Starkvind
Ikea’s Förnuftig and Starkvind air purifiers hit the American market in 2021. They are stylish and relatively inexpensive. Both have the option to add on a carbon filter for gases such as benzene. The Starkind can be purchased either on its own or built into a wooden side table. It’s worth noting that the Starkind took me an hour to assemble. While both are CARB-certified, meaning they passed the rigorous standards of the California Air Resources Board, neither air purifier has a HEPA filter. Thinking I had an early version made for media, I went to my local Ikea. I bought a Förnuftig, and its manual listed the filter as HEPA. It’s not.
The question remains: If you’re buying an air purifier, why not buy a HEPA? The briefcase-sized Förnuftig is too small to clean a regular-size room at its lowest setting, and the fan is too loud at its highest. It also doesn’t have a built-in air-quality sensor. But I might consider the Förnuftig for its looks and the fact that it can be mounted on the wall. The larger and more powerful Starkvind has a built-in sensor and is compatible with Ikea’s smart home hub, the Dirigera.
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Photograph: Honeywell
An Affordable Option
Honeywell HEPA InSight HPA5200B
This Honeywell is rated for rooms up to 360 square feet, which is on par with the other large-room air purifiers we tested. It’s also lightweight and easy to pick up and move around with its built-in handle. Inside, it packs two HEPA-grade filters and an activated carbon prefilter for trapping volatile organic compounds such as cooking odors. When air quality dipped inside my apartment, the InSight quickly ramped up its fan and sucked up the odors or invisible particulates. For around $200, you get a strong-performing purifier with an automatic set-it-and-forget-it mode, plus you can tote it from room to room. —Matt Jancer
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Photograph: Lisa Wood Shapiro
Best Purifier for Formaldehyde
Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool Formeldahyde
Dyson’s Humidify+Cool Formaldehyde reminds me of those 3-in-1 appliances that are an amalgam of a toaster, coffee maker, and egg cooker all in one. But if you’re going for an air purifier that removes gases, then I would opt for one that removes formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. My review unit was never able to oscillate, but it’s supposed to. (I tried troubleshooting through the manual, but the more features an item has, the more that can go wrong.) It has a two-year warranty, which seems short. This model also came with three packets of humidifier descaler, which is a plus, because buying citric acid powder isn’t always easy to find in the store. As Dyson’s marketing claims, it has a unique algorithm to capture and destroy formaldehyde at the molecular level that is its most impressive feature.
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Photograph: Lisa Wood Shapiro
Best Purifier With Ionizer
AirDoctor Smart 2000i
The Air Doctor 2000i has an electronic ionizer, which charges particles to make them easier to capture. While ionizers produce ozone, the amount is so small that they are still CARB-certified. I generally try to avoid ozone generators in my home. The Air Doctor, however, also has HEPA and carbon gas air filters. The smaller Air Doctor has a sensor and a light on the control panel that shines green for good air, yellow for moderate, and red for bad air. At night, I turned on Sleep Mode, but for the Air Doctor, that just turned off its display light, as I later learned when I woke up at 1:40 am to the Air Doctor blasting at the highest setting. If you turn it to its most powerful setting but need to switch it to Sleep Mode to get a good night’s sleep, it might not clean your bedroom as effectively at night. Still, the Air Doctor is an excellent choice for the other rooms in my home.
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Photograph: Levoit
A Great Smart Purifier
Levoit Core 300S
The Levoit 300S cycles the air five times per hour in spaces up to 219 square feet, so it’s great for bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens. It’s marketed as a tabletop air purifier, but at almost 9 inches across, it’s on the larger side, so I keep it on my living room floor. It’s easy to carry around from room to room, though. It also packs a prefilter, an activated carbon filter, and a filter that captures 99.99 percent of bacteria and mold. On top are clearly labeled touch controls and an indicator light that changes color depending on the air quality.
Using the VeSync companion app, you can check the air quality indoors and tinker with settings. When I was cooking salmon in my tiny studio (smoke and odor filling up the space), the app listed the air quality at 209 and labeled it as “bad.” I switched the fan to high and the quality was back down to 74 (“good”) within 15 minutes. You can also set it to automatic, which will adjust the fan speed accordingly based on the air quality. It was super useful amid the spread of smoke in New York City due to the Canadian wildfires. I’ve been constantly monitoring the air quality inside my apartment via the app, which gave me some peace of mind as we waited for the smoke to dissipate.
We do note here that due to a recent challenge by competitor Dyson, VeSync has recently and voluntarily removed the HEPA claims from its advertising. However, the purifier still works in our testing.—Brenda Stolyar
★ Alternative: We’re also fans of the Bissell 320 Max ($309), which has a prefilter, an activated carbon filter, and an H13 HEPA filter. And it works with the Bissell app for monitoring. Both the digital display and app will tell you what the air quality status is too. But with the ability to cycle air 4.8 times per hour in a 366-square-foot room, it covers more surface area than Levoit’s. It’s also more aesthetically pleasing, with wooden feet and a place to wrap any extra cord.
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Photograph: Air Doctor Pro
Best Overall for PM 2.5 and Gases
Smart 5500i
The Air Doctor 5500i is the latest purifier from the Air Doctor line and is the second tower model I’ve used. I’ve used IQAir’s standard GC MultiGas model for years. Because of their power, tower models tend to be loud at their highest settings, so I was pleasantly surprised by the 5500i’s quiet hum. It captures both fine particulates with its HEPA filters and gases with its dual action/carbon volatile organic compound (VOC) trap filters. The 5500i can exchange the air four times an hour in a 1,000-square-foot space, around the size of my Brooklyn apartment. And the purifier has an alert to let me know when it is time to change the filter.
It’s the quietest and largest Air Doctor air purifier yet. It has a built-in sensor that has kept up with my cooking, turning its air quality indicator light red and automatically adjusting the fan speed to the highest setting. This also happens when construction in my building goes into overdrive. Yet it is quieter than the smaller Air Doctor 2000, the same model that once woke me up in the middle of the night. The 5500i caps at 50 decibels, quieter than a household refrigerator. It weighs 33 pounds, and I needed help getting the shipping box up the three flights of stairs to my apartment. Moving it around my apartment only took a slight nudge of the hand, as it has hidden casters that let it glide easily on my hardwood floor. It connects to the AirDoctor app and can be controlled remotely. And with Air Doctor’s thousand-dollar price tag, the disappointing one-year warranty seems short for the investment. While IQAir’s GC Multigas costs $350 more than the 5500i, it offers a 10-year warranty option. As much as I liked Air Doctor’s performance, I might buy the more expensive and comparable IQAir model for the warranty alone. Air purifiers are long-term investments.
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Photograph: Amazon
Quietest Air Purifier
Blueair Pure 411
There’s an Ikea-like simplicity to the Pure 411, aesthetically and mechanically. To change the filter, you unscrew the fan component from the air filter and then pull the washable fabric prefilter sock off the filter. There’s a one-touch control on the top: Tap once for low power, again for medium, again for high, and again for off. That’s it. No smartphone app, no display, no smart mode. It can cycle the air in a 161-square-foot room five times per hour. I slept with the Pure 411 just 2 feet away from my head, and I couldn’t hear a thing when it was on low. Its quietness and narrow footprint make it ideal for small bedrooms. —Matt Jancer
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Photograph: Amazon
A Stylish Fan/Purifier Combo
Blueair Pure Fan Auto
The Pure Fan Auto looks more like a little piece of art than an air purifier. We like other Blueair products, and this one adds cool air to its purifying capabilities—it cycles air five times an hour in a 326-square-foot room. The fan is not powerful enough to cool down a sweltering room on its own, but it feels quite nice if you’re sitting in front of it. It hardly makes a sound, but if you’re a light sleeper, Night mode turns the fan to its lowest setting and shuts off the air quality indicator light. —Medea Giordano
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Photograph: Lisa Wood Shapiro
Another Option for Tiny, Tiny Rooms
Morento Smart Purifier
The Morento has four settings. It has a sensor and a PM 2.5 screen display, and it’s compatible with Google Assistant and Alexa. It has a sleep mode as well, where the control panel light is turned off and the purifier runs at the lowest fan speed. As far as air purifiers go, the Morento is moderately priced but lacks a carbon filter to rid your air of gases. Still, it is too weak on its lowest setting to clean my New York City bedroom, which makes “sleep modes” not really effective, but it’s a solid pick for sleep in a very tiny room.
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Photograph: Clorox
A Tabletop Air Purifier
Clorox Tabletop True HEPA Air Purifier
This air purifier from Clorox isn’t the prettiest, but it makes for an excellent desk or nightstand companion. I’ve been using it as the latter—thanks to the built-in adjustable nightlight and whisper-quiet setting, it doesn’t disrupt my sleep. It has three speeds (low, medium, and high) and an optional timer with three settings (two hours, four hours, and eight hours). It’s easy to operate with responsive touch controls.
Given its compact size, the Tabletop is best for small spaces. The 360-degree HEPA filter cleans rooms up to five times per hour when placed in an 80-square-foot room and two times an hour in a room up to 200-square feet. It also captures 99.97 percent of particles as small as 0.1 microns, while the prefilter captures larger particles. When it’s time to replace the filter, you’ll see the Check Filter Light alert glow red. Clorox has a version that connects to Alexa, which lets you use your existing Alexa speaker to turn the purifier on or off, change settings, or check the filter life. —Brenda Stolyar
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Photograph: Rabbit Air
Best for Blending in With the Room
BioGS 2.0
The Rabbit Air is a sleek, disappears-in-a-room air purifier that punches above its weight. Its low price makes it one of the better investments, especially with its five-year warranty. It has both a HEPA filter to trap dust, pollen, and that dangerous invisible PM 2.5 along with an activated charcoal carbon filter to capture VOCs and odors. It also has a negative ion generator that basically gives air molecules a static charge, making them easier to capture.
The Bio GS 2.0 is able to clean 550 square feet at two air exchanges per hour and 275 square feet at four air exchanges per hour. I could clean my entire 1,000-square-foot apartment with two Rabbit Air Bio GS 2.0s, and as the air purifiers are under $400 each, they’re some of the more affordable options on the market. The Rabbit’s built-in sensors adjust fan speeds, and the unit’s control panel illuminates in low-light settings. It also has a remote. I was disappointed that the Bio GS 2.0 isn’t compatible with the Rabbit Air app, nor can it work with Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant like other Rabbit Air models. Sill, because of its cost, quiet operation, ability, and style, this is one of my favorite air purifiers.
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Photograph: Amazon
If You Like an Industrial Vibe
Coway Airmega 250
Any air purifier in my home needs to look good. I’ve used an older Coway model for years that now looks a bit too plasticky and glossy, but I’ve had my eye on Coway’s newer designs for some time. Truly, I am a sucker for the clean, matte industrial aesthetic. The Airmega 250 has a decently large footprint, but it’s rated to clean a 930-square-foot room twice an hour. That’s why I put it smack dab in the middle of the first floor of my home to clean the air in my kitchen and living room.
Every time we cook, the Smart mode automatically detects unhealthy particles in the air and ratchets up the fan’s power. It also recently did this when I had someone patch some drywall in my mudroom. (This mode works with the help of a PM10 and PM2.5 particle sensor.) The fan at its highest setting isn’t that loud—I measured it at 60 decibels standing right in front of it. There’s a Sleep mode if you want it silent. You get the usual controls, like timer functionality and replacement indicators for the filter.
Speaking of, the Airmega 250 uses a true HEPA filter that needs to be replaced once every six to 12 months. This, combined with the washable prefilter that you should be keeping clean every two weeks and the activated carbon filter, allows the air purifier to remove 99.999 percent of ultrafine particles down to 0.01 microns, or so Coway says. It’s super easy to remove these filters to clean and swap them out. The whole system is roughly 21 pounds, so you can move it around fairly easily. Coway offers a three-year warranty. The Coway AirMega 250S is the same model but with Wi-Fi functionality, so you can control it via an app and see more details. The last thing I need is another app, but maybe you don’t mind. —Julian Chokkattu
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Photograph: Homedics
An Option for Scented Air
HoMedics Smart Air Purifier T200
I was skeptical when I opened the box for Homedics Smart Air Purifier T200. How could an air purifier have a tray for essential oils? I wanted to see if using it would impact my indoor air quality. I put the air purifier in the same room as my IQAir’s Visual Pro monitor. Would using five drops—as per the Homedics instructions—of geranium essential oils negatively impact my indoor air? I was relieved to see my quality improve as I ran the purifier—that’s exactly what an air purifier should do. One issue is that I have a dog and two cats, and essential oils can be a danger to pets. As the Homedics user manual suggests, when using essential oils in the Homedics Smart Air Purifier T200, it should be in a well-ventilated space. This manufacturer warning can be impossible for some homes or if the outdoor quality is bad, and while I liked the novelty of turning my sons’ bedroom into geranium-scented space, I didn’t leave it on long as I was concerned about the impact on my pets’ health.
The Homedics Smart Air Purifier T200 sells for $250 and has a three-year warranty and a compatible app, and it links to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. It’s also loud at its highest setting—60 decibels—around the same as a sewing machine. It has a UV-C light that has shown the ability to deactivate viruses and bacteria in studies, along with HEPA and an activated carbon odor filter for VOCs. It can clean a 324-square-foot room. I liked the cylinder design and the wooden legs, and it’s an excellent option for those who love sweet-smelling good air.
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Photograph: Coway
A Wireless Charger and Air Purifier Combo
Coway Airmega IconS
Coway continues to make some of the prettier air purifiers, as you might have noticed in this guide, and that continues with the Airmega IconS. It looks like an end table, and so I keep it right next to my couch. The star of the show is the Qi wireless charging pad, so when I sit down, I just plop my phone right on the purifier to let it recharge. Any phone with wireless charging support should work, though you may need to take your phone case off.
Like all Coway purifiers, it’s powerful—it cleans the air in spaces up to 649 square feet—easy to control, and simple to clean. This version is Wi-Fi enabled and voice-controlled. —Medea Giordano
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Photograph: Dyson
Best for Those Who Also Need a Fan
Dyson Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1
This is my fourth Dyson purifier, and I continue to have a love/hate with them. I admire the design and built-in air quality sensor, but there always seems to be something I don’t like with each model. Sometimes I’m not able to get a replacement remote, as Dyson moves on to new models at breakneck speed, and I’ve never really used the magnetic spot atop the filter to rest the remote. This time I was surprised that the Cool Gen1 wasn’t Dyson app compatible. I had to use the remote to adjust the fan speed. On the plus side, I do like the way the fan works, but this isn’t an oscillating fan in the traditional sense. Instead, the Cool Gen 1 TP10 has air blow out of the sides of the long upright oval, and it shifts direction, aiming the cool air back and forth in a room.
The Cool Gen is one of the cheaper air purifiers from Dyson. It has a two-year warranty and not only captures dust, pollen, and fine particulates, but also cleans the air of volatile organic compounds that can emanate from aerosol cleaners and other sources. The Cool Gen1 cleans a 110-square-foot room, about the size of a home office or small bedroom.
★ Alternative: Like the Cool Gen, the Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan ($300) offers 99.97 percent HEPA filtration and an air quality sensor. It also has control capability through a remote, the Dreo app, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa. It’s the fan I use in my 11-year-old’s bedroom, as I like that the fan and purifier can operate independently of each other. The 12-month warranty isn’t as great as Dyson’s, but at $130 less, the Dreo is definitely worth a look. —Kat Merck
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Photograph: Wynd
Best for Travel
Wynd Plus
About the size of a water bottle, the Wynd Plus is one of the smallest air purifiers on the market. It’s not a HEPA filter, but it can clean all particles greater than 0.3 microns, which includes auto emissions and most wood smoke, in about a three-foot span. It also comes with its own air-quality sensor, a microfiber traveling bag, and a small kickstand to prop it upright.
It is truly dystopian to say that this might be a useful item to keep in your go bag if you live on the West Coast. I usually bring it in the car if my family and I have to travel through wildfire smoke. It’s easy to set up on the nightstand next to my two kids, and it fits perfectly in a cupholder if you have to evacuate by car. —Adrienne So
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Photograph: Coway
Honorable Mentions
More Good Air Purifiers
We’ve tested a lot of air purifiers. Here are a few we like that aren’t as noteworthy as the picks above.
Coway Airmega 400S for $499: The Airmega 400 is rated to clean up to 1,560 square feet and cycles all the air in that space twice per hour. In a room half as big, its HEPA filters cycle the air four times per hour. From its touch controls to its color-coded air-quality monitor light ring, it’s intuitive to use. Changing filters is simple. Two sturdy covers are held on magnetically and come free easily, and the two filters snap in and out without a fuss. I tested the 400S, which includes Wi-Fi that lets you control it from a smartphone app. But if you don’t need to control your purifier remotely, the cheaper 400 version is the way to go. —Matt Jancer
Smartmi Air Purifier for $180: This large air purifier has a 360-degree design, which means you shouldn’t keep it against a wall—it needs some space for the best results. It captures particulates smaller than 2.5 microns in size. I have it in my living room, which is next to my kitchen, and it always roars to life when we’re cooking (it gets pretty loud when the air quality is poor). It changes air 12 times in rooms up to 100 square feet and once in a 517 square-foot room. You can use the Mi Home app (iOS, Android) to see the air quality of the room, temperature, and humidity, as well as the filter’s remaining life. I usually left it on Auto, but there’s a manual mode to control speeds yourself, and a night mode to keep it quiet and turn off the touch display at the top. It supports Alexa and Google Assistant. —Julian Chokkattu
Smartmi P1 Air Purifier for $180: Weirdly, you need to use a different Smartmi app (iOS, Android) to set up and control the P1. It’s similar to the Smartmi above, even using an H13 HEPA filter, except it’s rated for smaller rooms from 180 to 320 square feet. This one adds HomeKit support on top of Google Assistant and Alexa, which is great if you have an iPhone, and it has a nice handle you can use to tote it from room to room. I have it in my office, and the sound is noticeable when there are more particulates than usual (like when my partner is baking cookies). —Julian Chokkattu
Coway Airmega Aim for $150: The Airmega Aim is advertised as an air purifier small enough to sit on your desk, but it’s much bigger than I anticipated—coming in at 18.5 by 19.7 by 8.03 inches. It’s fairly compact compared to others, though. It’s rated for rooms between 246 and 492 square feet. I kept it in my kitchen, where it did a nice job clearing out the odor that came from the bug repellent we had to spray for two weeks straight to repel an ant invasion. It also doubles as a fan, which auto-oscillates up to 80 degrees and tilts to 90 degrees. It’s not smart-connected, but you can control it using the included remote (up to 11 feet away) or via the built-in display and physical buttons. There’s also an air-quality indicator that scans the air in real time to let you know whether it’s good, moderate, or bad. You also set it on auto mode, which will adjust the speed based on the room’s air quality. —Brenda Stolyar
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Photograph: Amazon
One to Avoid
HoMedics Large Room Tower Air Purifier T43
I’m not a fan of the rounded shape of this glossy, tall air purifier. It looks like something you’d find in a doctor’s office. But my biggest gripe is that the fan is quite loud at the base setting, at nearly 50 decibels. You just always know it’s there. You can use the sleep mode to quiet it, but I didn’t want to sacrifice air cleaning speed. At the very least, it does seem to function fine. It claims to clean spaces up to 255 square feet, but it’s worth noting the company uses a HEPA-type filter, not a true HEPA filter that meets industry standards. —Julian Chokkattu
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Photograph: Amazon
How to Shop for an Air Purifier
Which Filter is Best?
How does a busy shopper find the right size purifier for a room they want to clean? The US Centers for Disease Control recommends that one should aim for five air exchanges per hour, in a metric known as the ACH. When looking at an air purifier, look at the cubic feet per minute in airflow at the lowest setting. When measuring the cubic footage of your room, you need the area of the room times the height. Imagine a one-foot cube of styrofoam. How many cubes could you fit into a room?
Anyone shopping for an air purifier also needs to look for two acronyms and terms. First, look for CARB certification, which means that the air purifier passed the rigorous standards of the California Air Resources Board. Next, check the filter type. Below, we break down the differences. Also, don’t forget to unwrap your filter! There’s a special kind of horror that comes with realizing you’ve been running your air purifier with a plastic-wrapped HEPA filter.
HEPA Filters: This is a high-efficiency particulate air filter that can remove at least 99.97 percent of dust, mold, pollen, bacteria, and airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns. It’s a great option for those who suffer from allergies or respiratory issues, since it can help to clear out airborne particles that can trigger symptoms—like sneezing, sore throat, difficulty breathing, coughing, and more. It’s worth noting, however, that HEPA filters don’t remove volatile organic compounds from the air the way activated carbon filters do. But these are typically paired with carbon filters.
Activated Carbon: Activated carbon filters (also known as activated charcoal) are highly effective because they are very porous and have a large surface area—allowing the filters to absorb gas pollutants, odors, and VOCs. They’re best for removing fumes, smoke, and chemicals from the air. But these filters have to be replaced more often depending on the environment. For example, if there’s a wildfire in your area and the air purifier is working more intensely than usual, it’s important to replace a saturated filter to avoid toxic gases from being released back into the air.
Washable Air Filters: A few of the air purifiers we’ve listed in this guide come with washable prefilters in addition to a HEPA and/or activated carbon filter—which is what you’ll typically find. These are the most cost-effective since you don’t have to buy new ones each time you need to replace a filter. Simply remove it, scrub it with soap and water, and let it dry.
UV-C Sanitizer Filters: Ultraviolet filters use UV light to kill viruses, parasites, mold spores, and bacteria. They can’t remove airborne particles, VOCs, or gas pollutants, so they’re only fully effective when combined with a HEPA filter. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, UV lights without proper lamp coatings have the potential to emit ozone. We recommend checking this list from the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers for air purifiers that have been shown to emit little to no ozone.
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Photograph: Amazon
How to Check Your Air Quality
A Note on Air Quality Monitors
Many large states and cities are required to report the local outdoor Air Quality Index, which was established by the EPA and measures the concentrations of major air pollutants, like ground ozone and carbon monoxide, that are regulated by the Clean Air Act. We like AirCare (iOS, Android), but your state or county may have even more localized apps.
To check if your indoor air quality stacks up, consumer monitors like the Temtop M10 ($93) and Airthings View Plus ($300) also measure carbon dioxide, temperature, and humidity, in addition to pollutants and particulate matter. The M10 measures formaldehyde too, a noxious chemical that off-gases from common household items, such as particleboard furniture and some foam mattresses. Need more information? Check out our complete guide to checking your air quality.
