What's the best air purifier?
What's the best air purifier? This is an extremely tough question to answer. There are a couple of bigger companies that make good brands - Oreck, Honeywell, and Sharper Image are all generally at the top of people's lists. However, finding the best brand is about finding out what features you want. Air purifiers are so diverse and have so many different technologies they use to purify the air that it can be a very personalized and subjective decision as to which one is best. You will often find that the same brand gets complaints about how horrible it is alongside praises about how it's the best machine ever invented.
You can, however, go through a couple of important things that you'll want to know about when looking for the best air purifier for you. First, figure out what technology you'll want. There are a lot of different ones that you'll need to look into, but the basics are: HEPA - a high tech filter that costs a lot but is very effective. UV - a method used to kill germs, but doesn't clean dirt out of the air. Ozone - can mask bad smells, but potentially dangerous to people's health. Regular filters - less effective, but cheaper. Ionizers - get dirt and smells out of the air, but if they don't have a plate, it will get dust on your surfaces. You'll have to decide which one you want - and often, you'll find brands that contain more than one of these technologies. Second, figure out a price range. This is extremely important - you need to plan ahead. You will find that filter replacement gets pretty expensive, in the most extreme cases it can be as much as the air purifier itself initially cost you. Third, figure out whether you are going to have adequate coverage. Sometimes one air purifier won't do it - they don't all cover the same amount of space, and you need to make sure you get one that will cover
the area you're living in.
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