A small, silent air purifier for smoggy days

Delhi, and all of North India, is under a smog blanket. The Air Quality Index (AQI) has been steadily increasing, and most days is in in the ‘severe’ category. Whilst the AQI hovers around the 150 mark through the year, at this time it shoots up beyond 500. The dense smog, a combination of six atmospheric pollutants, affects us outside and inside our homes. With barely any sunshine, the high AQI leaves us with a burning sensation in the eyes while every breath feels heavy.

While fixing the pollution outdoors is a near-impossible task at an individual level, it’s the exact opposite inside our homes. Air purifiers are the simplest answer to combating the ongoing pollution crisis. There’s the much more expensive alternative of filtered ventilation (it filters the air from the outside before letting it into your home), but it's not a feasible solution for most people.

Quiet and easy-to-use

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using the Philips 3200 Air Purifier for this review, and have ended up recommending it to friends and buying one to replace an old Xiaomi Air Purifier in my parents’ room.

Also read: What to look for while choosing an air purifier

The Philips 3200 ( ₹22,999) air purifier not only looks good, but is quite compact, quiet, and extremely easy to use. But, the USP of this air purifier is under the hood. There is a new double-fan technology coupled with a 360-degree open structure, that makes it deliver up to 30-50 percent more air purification versus similarly sized products.

After unboxing the air purifier, you’re prompted (do read the manual) to remove the frame of the device. It’s simple to remove as there are no nuts and bolts. Thereafter you’ll see the tech that powers the device—there’s one filter up top, and in the middle are two fans are separated by a motor. On the bottom is another filter.

There is a particle sensor at the back, along with the power output port.

Setting it up 

Once you’ve removed the protective coverings from the filters and plugged in the device, the setup is straightforward. Just download and open the Philips Air+ app (from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store) and click ‘Add a device’. You’ll need your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to be on and to give it location permissions. It only supports a 2.4Ghz network and not a 5Ghz one, so keep that in mind. Once you permit it, it’ll instantly connect. Then you just pick the location - bedroom, living room, etc - of the device and you’re good to go.

The app acts as a remote control (as there isn’t a physical one) for the device. Using the app is optional as you can control the device from the touch-enabled buttons sitting atop the device.

Using the app

The app is simple, yet informative. On the home screen, you’ll see a list of your devices, along with the outdoor air quality readings, temperature, humidity, and more. Just tap your device and you’ll see a screen with all the options you’d need. At the top of the page is the indoor air quality (of that room). If you click that you’re led to a page that shows you the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly readings - PM2.5, Allergens (IAI), Humidity and Temperature - in an easy-to-read graph. The temperature readings are something I didn’t bother with. They aren’t wholly accurate and it’s something I didn’t really need to measure.

There’s even a small read-up on what exactly is air quality. It explains PM2.5, Individual Allergy Index (IAI) and humidity. Below that is the power button and child lock button. Once you turn it on, you can change the mode. There’s auto (which automatically determines the air quality and adjusts the speeds of the fans accordingly), sleep mode (which quiets down the fans but is slower at purifying the room), medium mode and turbo mode.

There’s a brightness control and also various lamp modes. Lamp modes can be set to Air Quality, Ambient, or off.

Finally, at the bottom, there is a section called Device Health. Here it is divided into two sections. The one on the left tells you when you need to clean your filter, while the one on the right tells you when the filter needs to be replaced.

After a few weeks of usage, my filter for cleaning is at 76%, while for replacing is at 95%. This means that the filter won’t need to be replaced for a couple of more months, despite being used almost twenty-four hours a day. If it does need to be cleaned or replaced, then there is a handy and easy-to-follow guide in the app.

Last, but not least, you can go into the device settings and schedule the device to be turned on at various times. Whether you want it on 30 minutes before wake-up or 1 hour before bedtime, or want it to turn off at a specific time, it’s easy to set up. Can schedule it differently for different days. There’s also an Auto+ mode (that is currently in beta), that gives you the best performance at the lowest energy.

Finally, if you enable notifications, the app will periodically remind you about the current air quality in the room, and if necessary, you can enter the app and adjust the mode accordingly.

Does it deliver on its promise?

The answer is a resounding yes. Of course, you need to be wary of a few things like keeping the door and windows shut as much as possible. The air purifier also needs to not be kept in a corner and to make sure that nothing is sitting immediately next to the device.

Once that is taken care of let the two-fan technology do its job. The device has a three-layer filtration. The first layer is a pre-filter to capture those larger particles (such as household dust). I’ve noticed, that in the early morning when there is a lot more dust, the air quality remains the same as evening. Even when the room is being swept, the air quality doesn’t go out of control.

Then there is the HEPA NanoProtect filter. This ensures that pollutants are not only captured but also, attracted to the device. Finally, there is the active carbon filter “to capture the gases that cause mal-odor” and thus ensures that your room doesn’t smell foul.

At night, and at times when the device doesn’t need to be running at extreme levels, sleep mode, or just setting the fan to 1, comes in handy. The company says that they have designed the fans to mimic owl wings, and I can attest to this. In sleep mode, the fans are deadly silent. Unless your ear is right next to the device, you can’t hear anything. During turbo mode, the fans do make an audible whir, but nothing that is a dealbreaker.

The one thing I wasn’t a fan of was the Auto+ mode, which can be used in three different modes. Just manually adjusting the settings to your needs yields a better result. The other minor issue I had is that whenever you go back into the app, it takes a few seconds to load all your data.

During my time writing this article from a cafe, I turned on the air purifier, sitting in my living room. There isn’t anyone in the room, and the door is shut. The air quality hasn’t gone a smidge above 50 in that time. It’s constantly been in the 20s and 30s. And this is all in auto mode.

During the worst of times, and if the door is kept open for a longer period, then the air quality does shoot up. The air purifier has to be kept on turbo mode for longer than you’d like and work overtime to reduce it. But, in the end (which was only about 15-20 minutes later), the air purifier did its magic and brought it down from 300+ to around 50.

Verdict

Yes, the Philips 3200 Series air purifier is a step up from most other purifiers I’ve seen recently. It beats every other purifier in its price range. The smaller 900 Series purifier ( ₹11,995) I bought for my parents’ room comes in two variants, one with Wi-Fi and one without. But, whichever you buy, it’ll get the job done. It does miss out on the double-fan technology, but it more than suffices for smaller rooms. It also has historical graphs only for PM 2.5 and IAI levels, and misses out on the Auto+ mode.

The air purifiers are compact enough that if you need to shift them to different rooms, it won’t be an issue. Just plug it in, wherever you are, and it’ll pick up from where it left off. There are some more expensive models, like the Dyson Purifier Cool Gen1, that recently launched, or some models from Coway, but for price-to-performance ratio, the Philips is resoundingly a great choice.

The Competition

There are a variety of solutions in the market today. An alternative to air purifiers is to install something like YOGa Clean Air or IQAir HealthPro 100, both of which are upward of ₹1,00,000. The idea of these is to install the ducting in such a way that the outdoor air is pulled in by the purifier before being run through various filters and then unleashed upon the room.

When it comes to traditional air purifiers, size can be crucial. Larger air purifiers will typically be able to suck in a lot more air, and therefore be better for larger rooms. The one that comes to mind immediately is Dyson’s Big+Quiet air purifier which comes with an H13 filter and costs around ₹66,000. Thanks to a larger diameter, and a vent angled toward the ceiling, the purifier can rapidly intake and disperse a larger amount of cleaner air to the room. Dyson has also quietened down the fans compared to previous models.

Coway is another big name in the world of air purifiers. The Coway Airmega AP-1512HH Mighty is one of the top-rated models across the globe. The biggest advantage is that, despite running 24/7, the filter can last longer than its expected shelf life. It’s small and portable also. It’s currently out of stock in India, but the Air Mega 150 is another potential option at ₹13,900. Honeywell, Xiaomi and Blue Star also have comparable models.

Lastly, there is one other solution. It’s come from a company called AIRTH. They sell air purifiers that are designed to be attached to your air conditioner. It’s a cap that sits atop the AC. These are priced at under ₹3,000. Yes, in the winter, you’ll have to switch the AC to fan mode and have it on for this air purifier to do its job.

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