Indoor allergies and my experiences in graduate school definitely were in mind when I finally decided to purchase an air purifier after I moved to New York City. Unfortunately, the Levoit H132 didn’t quite live up to expectations when it came to testing how well it absorbed particles, consistently falling some way below the 99.97% expected from a device with an H13 HEPA filter. However, running the purifier for longer periods may yield better results.
Here you’ll get Alexa and Assistant integration with a similar HEPA H13 filter to trap airborne particulates. It too has a 360-degree air intake to process the air of a 904-square foot room every hour with four different fan speeds that can be set on the purifier itself or through the Govee app. You can even set a schedule for the purifier to follow, like for it to only be on while you’re out of the house, using the app. The filter replacements are cost-effective, with a recommended lifespan between 6 and 8 months. Apart from the filter reset indicator, the Levoit core 300 also features an on/off display, a child lock, four timer settings, as well as 3 levels of fan speed. By assessing the needs and wants of different users, we’ve put together some of our favorite Levoit air purifiers to suit every space.
We have long recommended running air purifiers on high for an hour and thereafter running them on the quiet or medium setting to create and maintain clean air in the home. Our budget pick, the Levoit Core 300, is meant for smaller bedrooms or offices about 200 square feet in size. In our 2020 test, it reduced a heavy load of smoke in our 135-square-foot test space by 97.4% in half an hour on high and 92.6% on medium.
The Blueair Blue Pure 211+ is our choice among air purifiers for large spaces of up to 650 square feet, especially when the space involves open floor plans or high ceilings. With the ability to filter more air per hour than our top pick, the Coway Airmega AP-1512HH Mighty, it works faster to achieve and maintain low particulate levels in such challenging rooms. The combined up-front price and running costs of the Blue Pure 211+ are much higher than those of the AP-1512HH (totaling about $1,150 over five years), but that’s comparable to the costs of most other large-space purifiers we’ve looked at. It was an exceptional performer in our testing, and it’s quiet and attractive, to boot.
(I was 20, what do you expect?) I remember feeling mildly not great for weeks before I moved out of that apartment and just accepting it. When I left, I felt better within a day or two, but I never had a flash of realization about how stale
my air had become. Most reviews are positive, with users praising the purifier as convenient and highly efficient at reducing the symptoms of allergies. Customers particularly like how quiet the purifier runs, even at the highest setting.
If you don’t suffer from allergies or other health conditions, you may not even notice it, but it still affects how you feel. In fact, just breathing polluted air can decrease your lung
function and possibly increase your risk of developing health issues. In the case of the calculations we shared on this page, we used California as our base state for energy prices.
One of the keys to the AP-1512HH’s performance is its build quality, particularly the tight fit of its prefilter and HEPA filter. The prefilter captures large particles, such as pet hair and lint, that would otherwise block the HEPA filter and reduce its ability to capture fine particulates. The HEPA filter, meanwhile, fits snugly into the AP-1512HH’s frame, sealing tightly against the plastic housing. That prevents air from bypassing the filter around the edges and ensures that
virtually all air drawn through the machine gets HEPA-filtered. In a new section, we cover a few other purifiers that fit specific needs, including a purifier for handling VOCs, an especially energy-efficient small-space purifier, and a truly smart air purifier. Honeywell’s Cool Moisture Humidifier uses UV technology and a wicking filter to grab minerals from tap water and keep them out of the air for a cleaner mist (and also prevent hard-water buildup inside the machine).
The two machines are similarly quiet, with the Airmega 400 registering 40 decibels on its quiet/high-medium setting and the Blue Pure 211+ measuring at 43 decibels on medium. But the Blue Pure 211+ comes out on top on cost, as it typically sells for $300 versus the Airmega 400’s usual price of $500. Finally, and repeatedly, so does the Air Pro’s cost—something that alone would lead us to dismiss it, even if it performed beautifully in every way. It typically retails for $1,000, and replacement filters (“average use 6 months” per the Molekule site) are $160. If you kept up with that cycle, you’d spend $1,440 on replacement filters over the course of five years. Add the cost of electricity and the purchase price and you’d spend well over $2,500 on a machine that performs no better on particulate pollution than the inexpensive (to buy and run) HEPA air purifiers we recommend.
This extra feature makes the Levoit H132 an ideal air purifier for a nursery or child’s bedroom, along with the fact it runs at 25 decibels in the lowest settings, which is slightly louder than a whisper. Where the 300S differs is with its range of advanced smart features that will enable the user to operate the unit in new ways and learn more about your environment’s air quality. Perhaps the best smart feature comes from Levoit’s AirSight™ Plus technology. This enables the purifier to monitor the surrounding air and provide real-time air quality updates through its color-coded display and more detailed feedback through the Levoit app. Levoit has recently established itself as one of the most popular air purifier brands worldwide. Winning many awards, including the German Innovation Award, IF Design Award, and a Red Dot Design Award, Levoit air purifiers are widely preferred due to their attractive designs, zero ozone emissions, low costs, and high-grade filtration.
And when we tested it during ongoing smoke conditions in a vast Los Angeles conference room of nearly 10,000 cubic feet—more than twice as large as the AP-1512HH’s specs would seemingly allow—it cut particulate pollution by almost 70% in an hour. It’s a great value at an up-front price often lower than $200, and its energy efficiency and only-once-a-year filter replacement keep its running costs lower than those of many competitors. The AP-1512HH’s compact form, quiet operation, and ability to shut off its display lights make it especially well suited to bedrooms.