BestBuy had Blueair’s “Blue Pure 211i” air purifier on sale for $280, so I picked one up and put it in the common room, which has already helped with residual cigarette smoke following the roommates back into the house (they were here long before me), and should help with the upcoming tree pollen doing the same.
This machine seems well reviewed and capable of good filtration (via consumer reports). Supposedly the filter is good for 9 months or so, and the fabric prefilter will make it obvious when it needs a quick vacuum.
It’s “smart”, but not intrusive. The touch controls will work fine without an account. If you like, you can give it an email (I just made a fastmail “masked” address for) it and gibberish for a name and the app will work with finer controls/scheduling. If you really want, you can give it more info to auto order filters at a discount.
The built in air quality meter doesn’t detect my filthy roommates, so I just leave the fan speed at 25%, which strikes a good balance of airflow and white noise for me. The 1st quick setting of 12% is audible, but is unlikely to bother anybody. I don’t really have the capacity to try to capture and convey the sound “tone” it gives off.
The LED brightness range leaves something to be desired, the brightness is inconsistent across the screen, and none of them are really dim enough for sensitive sleepers if you were to have this in the bedroom. Setting the LED brightness to 0% does turn all the LED’s completely off though, including the blue light on the front. So that’s fine by me.
First picture is full brightness, second picture is 3% brightness (somewhat brighter in picture than in real life due to phone camera sensitivity).
So far, I’m pretty happy with it. There’s a bit less sneezing happening now.
For anyone curious, here are some “measurements” I took from it.
Watts are from a " Poniie PN2000" wattmeter, letting the machine settle after about a minute
Decibels measured with NIOSH SLM app on a iphone 12, removed from it’s case, 1 yard away from edge of the machine. Numbers intended more as relative measurements, rather than absolute.
For Reference:
Ambient, hvac off: 30db
Ambient, hvac on: 33db
| Mode/Fan speed | Watts | Noise |
|---|---|---|
| Off/“standby” | 1.60w | N/A |
| On, but fan still off | 2.30w | N/A |
| Fan@12% (1st blade*) | 6.65w | 36db |
| Fan@25% | 8.15w | 38db |
| Fan@41% (2nd blade) | 11.10w | 40db |
| Fan@70% (3rd blade) | 18.70w | 50db |
| Fan@ 100% (4th blade) | 44.35w | 56db |
*The touch interface has 4 settings for fan speed, iconified as increase number of fan blades.