Skip to main content
Like a lot of people who suffer from allergies, I've tried a lot of air purifiers. The first one I remember was a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze purifier, and I remember being shocked and horrified by all the gucky stuff on the filter.
A recent mention of the advantages of a humidifier have me thinking about the quality of the air inside my house, and how that effects overall health. Portland is, of course, known for its mold problem and my apartment has had some things growing in it that disturbed me. So I was happy get an email about the Airfree Air Purifier.
Like those old Ionic purifiers, the Airfree is a silent room purifier that aims to clean out viruses, pollen, dust mites and mold. Unlike the old purifiers, it doesn't spit out ozone gasses.
Rather, the Airfree draws in indoor air and uses high heat to "destroy all airborne particles, allergens, mold spores and microbiological antigens" through a patented process it calls "Thermodynamic TSS Technology." It then spits out sterile air. There are no ions, ozone or UV light. There is no filter to clean or wipe—the Airfree just vaporizes what it catches.
I have been using the Airfree Onix 3000 ($300) for the last week or so. Because it's silent and has no filter, and because we grow accustomed to the smell of our own home, it's hard to tell whether it's working.
So you just have to trust the scientists.
Airfree boasts of being the "most tested purifier on the market," and on its site you can see a whole page of test results. You can read those results in PDF form. I am not a scientists, and don't have the patients to analyze a whole report, but I skimmed the results of this report prepared by a lab in New Jersey and trust their conclusion that "the P2000 air sanitizer was observed to reduce bacteria by 85.0%
and fungi by 69.64% for the four weeks it was turned on."
Portland's air tends to be pretty nasty this time of year—baked dry by heaters and yet also, somehow, still full of mold and allergens. So I'll be happily running this Airfree until a laboratory advises otherwise.
(Cool Stuff is a new feature at Willamette Week where we feature product reviews, roundups, sales and other commerce and shopping-oriented content. All Cool Stuff reviews are editorially independent, meaning we provide honest reviews and aren't paid by the brands we write about. If you do choose to purchase something after following one of our links, Willamette Week may receive a commission, which helps fund our journalism.)