Ranging from $69 for a basic filter to $119 for the premium option, this is a notable expense to be paid out and should be seriously considered before purchasing. Running this air purifier will cost less than you think, thanks to its Energy Star-rated efficiency – even if you leave it running on auto mode around the clock, as Alen recommends. During the day, with the purifier set to auto, it occasionally ramped up the fan speed to higher levels. This creates a lot of noise and can be distracting, especially if working or even watching TV or listening to music. Of course, this can easily be adjusted to suit the user and limited to lower speeds when needed. His apartment has become a de facto HouseFresh test lab where he pits the latest clean air technology against the perils of city center life.
When we switched on the Alen 45i at full power with the ionizer, it removed all particles in 33 minutes. When purchasing the Alen Breathsmart 45i, you are given a range of filters. Each filter offers a slightly different level of protection, mainly in relation to odors and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). With customizable designer panel colors, the BreatheSmart can be personalized to fit any room and compliment your decor for today or whenever your styles change.
Alen®’s BreatheSmart technology lets you monitor room conditions from your smartphone. We make the invisible visible, so you can verify that your units are removing harmful pollutants from your home – in one or multiple rooms. Designed to service rooms as large as 1,300 square feet, the 75i offers a beefy CADR of 347 cfm at the highest of five available speeds. (No breakdown for different pollutants is provided.) An option lets you turn on an ionization feature, in addition to the unit’s standard HEPA filtration system. If one of these fits in with your décor, it can certainly take some of the sting out of the dominating size of the unit. Just keep in mind that you’ll pay a $39 premium over the $749 asking price for any color aside from white.
And our beautifully designed, whisper-quiet units do it without disrupting your conversations or your lifestyle. While we all want to be in a room breathing clean air, some machines are simply too noisy and distracting to make it feel worthwhile. In order to see just how noisy each device was, we turned each one on and measured the sound output with a decibel reader.
Alen’s medical-grade filtration is highly effective thanks to powerful yet quiet airflow, ensuring pure air for your entire room. As an added safeguard, Alen’s proprietary antimicrobial treatment kills mold and bacteria. As a light sleeper, I thought utilizing the purifier in the bedroom would be a no-go area. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find on the lowest setting, it is barely noticeable. I also had no issues on the second lowest setting, which may have even helped send me off to sleep with its gentle ASMR pink noise hum. Rather than a mere design feature, this light’s color indicates the air quality in the room.
The next step was sealing up our 150-square-foot testing room and filling it with smoke by burning paper and other testing materials. We monitored the air with a Dylos air quality monitor; once the room reached our desired level of airborne particulate pollution, we kicked on the BreatheSmart 75i for an hour. After 30 minutes, there were only 16.62% of the original particulates left floating in the air, .003% after 45 minutes, and 0 detectable particulates after an hour. While the odor from the burnt paper wasn’t entirely eliminated, it was severely reduced.
Dust, pollen, smoke removal is how well a model cleared air of fine clay dust and cigarette smoke when operating at a low speed that was typically one setting above the lowest speed. Many models have multiple speeds and the lowest is not as effective at cleaning the air. A model that scores well for dust removal should perform comparably for pollen. Although its price Lasko Box Fan comes in at the higher end of the mid-range market, you’ll struggle to find another purifier for under $450 that boasts 5 air changes per hour in an 800 sq. Ft room with a CADR rating of 245, along with the real-world performance to back it up. The smart features include App support and an accurate auto mode that switches on when it detects pollutants in the air.
Ultimately, this means that this is an exceptional option for large rooms. I’m pleased to say it has lived up to the expectations of an Alen product. With four fan speeds to choose from, the noise of this purifier can easily be curtailed to suit the user while still vastly improving the air quality in your home. This lets you turn the machine to “auto” and will kick on if the room’s air quality dives below a certain measurement. This function works in tandem with an LED light ring that changes color as the air quality improves or worsens. It can be set to run in increments of two, four, and twelve hours and has five different speed options.
Its intuitive design, whisper-quiet operation and a lights-off mode for sleeping make it a superb choice for large bedrooms as well as open concept rooms. Child-friendly features include a locking control panel and child-safe vent guard make it THE choice for homes with kids or grandchildren. The unit is whisper-quiet at its lowest speed, but in automatic mode I found the unit rather aggressive at ratcheting up the speed, even when particulate levels were low.
Even when set to the turbo, the BreatheSmart 75i produced very little noise. In this setting, it omits a pleasant low hum that our testers found to be noninvasive white noise. When running on medium, it was even quieter, and it was all but unnoticeable when set to low. While the Alen Breathesmart 45i proves to be highly efficient in energy use, filter replacement costs are considerably increased by average running costs.