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.
To you and me, that ranges from a whisper on the lowest level to a box fan on the highest. This was the same time as the Levoit Core 400S and the budget TaoTronics AP-003 but 3 minutes quicker than the Mila Air Purifier. The 45i has great performance for a smaller to a medium-sized room but would not be the best choice for a larger room, which is why the Alen 75i exists, which managed to clean our test room in 24 minutes. The Alen Air mobile app offers all of the onboard features and more, at least once you manage to get to them. The lengthy setup process includes more onerous security than my bank account, but while the process is a hassle, I completed it without any hiccups. This gargantuan purifier is best suited for commercial environments, but it really shines when it comes to power.
The first was making sure that the CADR (clean air delivery rate) number provided by the manufacturer was verified by AHAM (Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers). This ensures that the machine’s efficacy has been verified by a third party; not all air purifiers go through this outside verification. The BreatheSmart 75i has the AHAM stamp of approval and is capable of cleaning 400 cubic feet of air per minute.
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.
Noise is based in instrument measurements with the model running at a low speed. The lowest speed may provide even quieter operation but will not be as effective at cleaning the air. The amount of electricity the device uses and how often you have to replace filters.
To measure the amount of electricity used, we hooked the device up to a watt reader and recorded how many kilowatts per hour it used while running on a medium setting. Assuming 12 hours of use per day, it costs around $9.00 to run the BreatheSmart 75i for a year. While quite a few devices were cheaper to run, this was nowhere near the highest annual cost. For those looking for a quiet and powerful purifier for under $450.00 and are happy to pay extra for the lifetime guarantee and smart features, the Alen Breathesmart 45i could be the air purifier for you. The app isn’t the most intuitive, in part because it seems to be designed to service multiple devices instead of just one. All status indicators include the number of devices which are in the given state, so you might see “1” running, “1” with “blue” air quality, and “1” with good filter life.
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.
By putting it through its paces in various real-world tests, it proceeded to tick all the boxes. Working well at eliminating odors from cooking and nearby breweries and noticeably reducing allergies to pollen and alen breathesmart dust while being extremely simple to operate and maneuver around the home. Alen states the sound levels of the purifier are 39 dB at speed 1, 42 dB at speed 2, 49 dB at Speed 3, and reaching 55 dB on turbo.
I went for the ‘Fresh’ model, which contains a medical-grade H13 True HEPA filter plus an activated carbon filter for added protection against VOCs and smoke. ? The replacement filters are expensive.? The cheapest filter option doesn’t have an activated carbon filter.? Being provided with 3 different power cables for various regions is unnecessary and wasteful. Speed can be adjusted manually or using an automatic mode, and a countdown timer lets you shut the unit off after two, 4, or 12 hours.
Its smaller brother, the FIT50, shares similar design styles and capabilities and effectively cover medium-sized rooms such as your family room or master bedroom up to 900 sq ft. Onboard controls are basic but functional, including a color-coded ring around the power button that indicates one of five levels of particulates in the air. The front panel pops off to reveal a large HEPA filter (no rating specified) underneath. Air is pulled in from around the sides of the panel, through the filter, and emitted through a large grille on the top of the device. A child-friendly vent guard attachment is also in the box if you’re worried about Junior sticking a hand inside.