BLUEAIR Air Purifier Large Room, Air Cleaner for Dust Pet Dander Smoke Mold Pollen Bacteria Allergen, Odor Removal, for Home Bedroom Living Room, Washable Pre Filter, HEPASilent, Blue 211+ (Non-Auto)

This review is for the two 211+ (not automatic) units I've had since 2020. Initially, I purchased these after the devastating wildfires in the Pacific Northwest when people were sealing off their windows with tape and using box fans with furnace filters on the back in a desperate attempt to remove the wildfire smoke that had infiltrated all our homes. And with three not-small dogs anyway, it just made sense. Five years in now, I can say that I have been EXTREMELY satisfied and impressed with both of my BlueAir 211+ air purifiers. The initial setup and subsequent maintenance is effortless. You take it out of the box, put it's little prefilter on the base, drop in the air filter, pop the top of the unit containing the fan back on, and forget about it for a while. I replace the filters about every 6-9 months, and wash the prefilter cover way less often than I should considering the amount of dust it very efficiently sucks up. With one in the living room and one in the main bedroom, I have both ends of my home more than covered, as with the two combined, they are rated to filter more square feet of air than the size of my house. I've literally had them both running *nonstop* for the ENTIRE five years I've had them, and haven't had a single problem with either of them. Once in a while I'll come home to find that during rambunctious play or a particularly assertive barkfest at a delivery person, a dog butt has grazed the power button on the one in my living room enough times to turn the unit off. Kept on low, the fan is incredibly quiet and barely perceptible if at all. The only reason I notice it's been turned off immediately when I come home because the living room smells noticeably different when the purifier hasn't been running; the air smells comparatively stale and decisively more like dog than when it's running. I also noticed and appreciated their impressive performance in 2022 when once again, my city was infiltrated by wildfire smoke from fires that were literally hundreds of miles away. The air quality outside was dangerously high, but inside my home, per my thermostat app, the air quality was normal. This was particularly impressive considering it was literally snowing ash outside, harkening back to the much closer terrifying fires of 2020 that nearly breached city limits. Having these in my home gives me piece of mind that I'm about as protected as I can be against airborne pollutants like smoke, dust, pet dander, and the occasional cooking-adventure-gone-awry. Eventually when these do stop "biting the dust" as it were, I'll gladly replace them with the newer model that has the power button on top and the ability to turn off the power indicator light, which I desperately wish my older model had for my bedroom unit.

I am reviewing the BlueAir 211i Max and 411i Max series in this review as I bought both - one for living room and one for bedroom. Bottom line, these are very impressive units and for the price I am impressed and pleased with each for functionality and effectiveness. Pros for the BlueAir series. very very quiet. On auto maintenance mode - you can't hear the thing. These are smart machines. You can monitor every aspect of your air quality through the app. You can adjust the control lights from off to bright. It tracks months of air quality data for the room it is in by month, week, day. You can adjust from sleep mode, auto, and 3 fan speeds using the app remotely. It tells you how much filter life is left. It tells you the outside air quality and compares to your inside. Example of its effectiveness; I was sautéing some Italian sausage and onions, the unit detected the particles and immediately went into high mode for about 5 minutes until all the odor was eliminated and then went back to silent. The front LED bar changes from Blue to Green, orange and red depending on the air quality while at the same time adjusting the fan speed to address the corresponding level of air quality indicated. Same thing happened when smoking some meat on the back patio. I left the door open to bring in the food, the unit detected the smoke and the front LED went red. After closing the door, it ran on high mode until the LED indicators began to regress back to blue and the fan speed decreasing accordingly until all the smoke odor was eliminated from the room. Cons for the BlueAir product. It is a bit pricier than other options - but for all the differences - so far, I feel the Blue Air product is definitely worth the price difference, for me at least. What I have not addressed: the longivity of the products; the life of the filter; ease of maintaining; Both of my purchases are within the first month;

This is a review of the 211+ (not auto) product. I purchased this to take the place of a Winix 5500-2 that I moved to a smaller room. I did a fair amount of research before deciding on this model. I wanted something under $300 that could filter a larger room. Consumer reports and the Wirecutter both rating this model very highly (in the case of CR this model was only beat out by the Blueair Classic 6XX model and that one goes for nearly $800 right now and is only somewhat more powerful. The unit is very simple. It’s a large fan in an attractive white housing with a slightly larger white plastic base that houses the main filters inside. There are two different colors of the washable external cloth filter in the box. You can use whichever one you prefer. My unit had a reasonably bright blue one and a dark gray one. It’s nice that they give you 2 of them. They only give you one of the large internal filters. The power cord is attached to the back of the unit, so if you break it or a pet chews the cord, the whole unit will have to be replaced. That’s a shame. The unit itself is made mostly of plastic, which makes it light and easy to move, but it won’t stand up to abuse. If your kid sits on this, it will break. I find the size to be good. It’s not really enormous, as some large room purifiers are, but it will take up more floor space than the Winix 5500-2 (but it isn’t as tall). The unit pulls air from all 4 sides, so you can’t stick this right up against a wall if you want the best performance. The clean air comes out the top of the unit. As for the sound at full power, a noise meter registers 64 dB right at the top of the unit wheee the air comes out. To put this into perspective, my Winix 5500-2 registers 74 dB at the air release when it is also on full power. The Blueair’s sound is noticeable, but it is very even and is decent white noise at top speed. I haven’t had a problem falling asleep near it. The Winix can be annoying at full speed. At the lowest speed for both the Blueair and Winix, they register at 42 dB measured from the same spot as before. You’ll have a hard time hearing them at this level unless the room is really quiet. The Blueair really moves air well. At top speed, you can feel the air moving in all parts of the room. It will make the room feel a bit cooler. It is noticeably better than the Winix 5500-2 in this regard. Controls: there’s one button. You tap (not press) it to control fan speed or turn the unit off. The top rim of the button lights up with a pretty bright white light to let you know the fan speed. The one thing I miss with the Blueair 211+ is there is no automatic mode. The Winix 5500-2 offers this and kicks the unit into higher gear if air quality is poor. It’s not a deal breaker, but I do appreciate the feature so you can save money but still have very clean air. There is a newer version of this Blueair that does offer automatic mode with air quality sensing. If you want that go with the 211+ Auto model. The price difference wasn’t worth upgrading, but you might catch it on sale. The Blueair does not have a remote control like the Winix 5500-2, and that I definitely miss, especially without the automatic mode. The cost of replacement filters seems about the same as other popular air filters and they offer a wide variety of colors for the external filter. A word about putting on that external filter. It goes on like a sock, but in order to stay in place, you have to put the filter material over the top part of the bottom white plastic unit. This means the filter will cover the latching locations where the top part locks into the lower part. I find this makes the security of the latching not as good, but it works well enough to keep the two parts together. The Blueair is not very heavy and I find it easy to move (though you may want to move the two halves separately if you find it awkward). As for air quality, Consumer Reports seems to be correct. It has done wonders for reducing allergens and smells. It also does this without the trendy but potentially problematic negative ion generation that some other filters offer. I find this to be a pro for the Blueair. I don’t need more ozone in the room. I did not have any odd smells from this unit, even with my nose up close. Based on other reviews I may have gotten lucky or perhaps they’ve improved the production process. All-in-all, I find this a great unit for the price.

My initial impression is mostly positive. The user manual is confusing, but gets more understandable as you use the machine. We are using the system primarily for humidification, as we already use filters with high rated MERVs in our HVAC to remove allergens and other particulates, and we run the HVAC unit fan all night to circulate the air. The water capacity seems low (3+ qt) for such a large unit and requires multiple fillings over several days when you are trying to go from a very dry humidity (e.g., low to mid-20s%) to a more comfortable one (e.g., low 40s%), especially where you have central forced air heating in a larger space. In our case, it took three days to get from about 23% to 42% uniformly in a 1400 sf condo, where we run the HVAC fan all night. We needed to refill the water tank about 3x per day. That obviously slowed as we approached the desired humidity target. Other positives include the app is easy to use on my Android phone. The unit gets very quiet in operation after initially filling the tank with water. (It is important to turn off the entire unit or at least the Humidification control when filling/refilling the water tank. Otherwise you get loud water gurgling that lasts for a very long time.) I wish the unit monitored the water level more continuously than just empty/full. It would make planning for refilling the tank much easier. I was also pleased that the packaging used molded cardboard rather than Styrofoam. Indeed, except for the plastic around the filters and the plastic bag around the main unit, there was little non-recyclable waste (although the filters themselves are not recyclable, but they do last a long time). The exterior of the unit is attractive and well designed. It is easy to access the filters and water tank. The ability to fill the water tank through the top of the unit is especially convenient. The 3 year extended warranty is a nice feature. It shows that the manufacturer has confidence in the product. I haven’t yet done the weekly maintenance on the filters and water tank, but it seems straightforward. We have very hard water (>20g/g), so it will be interesting to see how well the unit does with limescale. We use an electronic deionizer (not a water softener), which otherwise generally makes any mineral deposits easy to remove from surfaces. So, overall, so far so good. I’ll give it four stars for now and see where we are by the end of the heating season.

We have had a Panasonic HEPA unit for many, many years. But alas, we can no longer get the filters. So we purchased this unit after much investigation and comparison shopping. Having CR recommending this unit was the final straw in favor of this particular brand & model. Overall - we are really happy with the performance. Honestly, we read some of the negative reviews on Amazon and I am amazed at what people feel negative about. Some say the pre-filter clogs too quickly other say how loud this is. Really? You are upset that the pre-filter actually works and captures stuff before it gets to the HEPA? And the sound... on high it has significantly less volume than a 20" box fan; far less noisy. Less noise than a 12" oscillating fan. What do you expect from a fan?? Silence? Okay - enough ranting - hehe! Three fan speeds. Top speed is less noisy than a regular fan. Pre-filter is awesome at getting dog hairs, dust and dander before it can clog the HEPA. The HEPA and carbon do the rest of the work and what comes out the top of the stack is allergen free air. Works great. And I REALLY like the fact that the pre-filter catches most of the larger dust, hair and other stuff. This means that the HEPA has to do less work, will last longer and most importantly - save me money. Blueair - great idea regarding the pre-filter - thank you! The size of the 211+ is roughly the size of a gym bag or carry on suitcase. A bit larger than what I suspected but it is fine for the room size and the amount of air it is processing. Bottomline is that this is a great unit. Today is late October 2017 - if my opinion ever changes I will let you know. Cheers!

Works well right out of the box. This the 4th one of these that I've purchased and all are still running strong. I have several family members suspectable to airborne allergies and these help quite a bit. We use the medium speed to keep down the noise and they run 24X7.

I've only used this for a few days now but I absolutely love it already. My husband smokes and stinks up the whole house all day long. This air purifier kicks on in about 1-2 minutes after he starts smoking and the smell is gone in a matter of a couple minutes. The smell of the food you cooked for dinner lingering hours late? NOPE, not with this machine. Number 2 lingering after a potty break? NOPE, not with this machine. Air so clean it tastes like NOTHING! I highly recommend this item.

This air purifier has completely exceeded my expectations. It is extremely quiet on every setting and you can see in my video how smoothly it runs. The auto mode is the best feature by far. It is so sensitive that it will kick on from across the house if I spray hairspray in my bathroom about twenty feet away. I love knowing it is constantly monitoring the air and adjusting on its own. The design looks clean and modern, it covers a large space easily, and the setup took just a minute. I have noticed that the air feels fresher and the room does not get stuffy at all anymore. It works so well that I am planning to buy another one.