Breathe Easy—We Found the Best Air Purifiers
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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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