Made for spaces under 403 square feet, this pick is high-tech and nearly silent. “At a max volume of 23 decibels, it’s the quietest purifier on our list,” editors wrote. It’s also critical to maintain and upgrade your home’s heating and cooling equipment. “[Whole-house] filtration is the easiest retrofit opportunity by installing high-capture filters in HVAC systems,” says Sam Rashkin, chief architect of the U.S. Most top-performing air purifiers use mechanical filters with a dense web of fine fibers that trap particles from the air as it is pushed through by a fan. As part of our 2023 air purifier tests, experts closely evaluated the filtration systems, including the type of material and how easy each filter is to replace.
On its medium and low speeds, it’s quiet enough for sleeping or conversing near (43.2 decibels on medium and 38.7 decibels on low, measured from 6 feet away). You can shut off the display so that it emits no light (a feature it shares with the AP-1512HH), which makes it much easier to sleep near. The Core 300 also features a separate sleep mode, at which it produces almost undetectable levels of noise—but also moves so little air that we doubt it does much for purification. The medium and low settings should be quiet enough to sleep near for most people. Senior staff writer Tim Heffernan has been at Wirecutter since 2015 and has overseen this guide since then.
If the AM90 is unavailable, the otherwise identical Winix AM80 is worth considering. It comes only in dark gray, lacks Wi-Fi connectivity, and uses a one-year VOC filter in contrast to the AM90’s three-month filter.
The 200M and the AP-1512HH are virtually identical in performance, but the 200M has an appearance that you may prefer, and it’s a great alternative if you find it at a lower price. You can also use the air purifier for aromatherapy purposes by adding four to five drops of essential oil. “I’ve only had this for about
a week and I’ve already noticed a difference. I’m not as stuffy as I used to be when I wake up in the morning, and I sneeze a lot less,” one reviewer noted. It affects our lungs, blood circulation, heart, and overall physical health. But it’s possible that the air inside your home is dirtier than you think.
In fact, our years of testing have shown that any appropriately sized purifier will distribute filtered air evenly, into the farthest corner of a room. To qualify as great, however, an air purifier doesn’t just need to work well; it also needs to be robustly engineered and thoughtfully designed. After nine years, during which we’ve tested more than 50 different air purifiers, we believe that the exceptional
Coway Airmega AP-1512HH Mighty is the best among them—as we have since 2015. That said, as strong as the Mighty is, its performance is not as singular as it once was, and in recent years many other air purifiers have closely approached our high standards. If you prefer the looks, cost, or other features of our also-great picks, know that they match this Coway model in purifying performance.