Best Air Purifiers of 2025

To notify you of your air purifier pick, we collected 14 of the most popular models at our CNET Labs product testing facility in Louisville, Kentucky, where we conducted a rigorous series of tests. Our goal was to determine which air purifiers provide the best performance in terms of particle removal efficiency, energy consumption and quietness, and assess each feature set and value.

Particle removal test

The air we breathe is not just air. In fact, it is a combination of naturally occurring particles produced by humans. The former consists primarily of urban, industrial and automobile emissions of hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides and combustion byproducts, while the latter is due to smoke from forest fires, sulfates, soot and materials around the world. It is primarily represented by smoke.

According to EPAsome of these microscopic solids and droplets are made up of hundreds of different chemicals, so sucking them is almost inevitable. PM10 and PM2.5, particles with diameters less than 10 micrometers each, pose the greatest risk to human health since they were once inhaled. They are assigned deep into the lungs, and even the bloodstream, impairing proper functioning of the lungs and heart.

“It’s the size that can enter our bodies, our lungs and our bloodstream,” Zhao said. “This is an environmental risk factor around the world. It kills around 6-7 million people a year,” he said due to cardiovascular or respiratory problems brought about by particulate contaminants.

The custom air purifier test chamber uses a clear view front panel made with hand access with plexiglass and gloves. This allows you to operate the E-Appli Fire, the particle counter holder of the control device. Within the chamber, there is always a small amount of fresh air, an ignition port that illuminates the smoke bomb from the outside of the rig, and an exhaust port that safely removes remaining smoke from the chamber and building after each test.

The chamber is not sealed, but is tight enough to ensure that no dangerous amounts of smoke escape around it. Our mission is to create an environment that exposes each air purifier unit to approximately the same concentration of particle saturated air, and evaluates how quickly and efficiently the air can be returned to a breathable state. did.

We created a custom smoke bomb made with 50% potassium nitrate (KNO3), 40% sucrose (sugar), and 10% sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and included a safety fuse to ignite it far away. Sugar acts as our fuel source, while potassium nitrate acts as an oxidant, and baking soda ensures that the dry mixture maintains its combustion slowly.

Using a Temtop PMD331 particle counter, we were able to confirm that 5 grams of smoke bomb dry mixture produces between 590 and 610 million particles per meter cubes. The device can count particles of various sizes, including PM2.5 and PM10, and records this data every 15 seconds. Although we can count particles of different sizes individually, that is the total number of particles that we care about, and this is the sum of all particles of different sizes.

After installing an air purifier and ensuring proper sealing, we prepared a 5 gram smoke bomb ignited through the ignition port. When the air in the chamber is particle saturated (over 580 million particles/m3), turn on the air purifier in question. Data extracted from Temtop allows you to accurately track the impact of air purifiers on particle counts in real time.

Noise level

I used a decibel meter to measure how big the air purifier was on low, medium and high fan settings. This is especially important if you plan to put an air purifier in your bedroom overnight and don’t want to disrupt your sleep. This test was performed in a studio that enhances the sound and confirmed that the decibel meter only picks up sound stimuli from the air purifier except for other possible sources.

Energy consumption

I used a device called to answer this question Killwatt We measured the amount of power consumed by each air purifier in various fan settings. Knowing the energy draw of an air purifier can make a difference in your energy bill.