Air Purifiers Reviews

The Venta-Airwasher may be good as a humidifier in countries like Germany where it is extremely cold in winter and the heating stays on 24 hours round the clock, thus there is a continuous need to replace the replenished humidity in the air. But here in San Francisco the weather is mild and we have plenty of humidity in the air due to fog and there is no need to keep heating on 24 hours. If one airs one's apartment on a regular basis, one would have sufficient humidity in doors. What we need here is a good solid air-purifier to clean the allergens, dust, etc from the air.

The problem with the Airwasher is that it has no separate button to turn off the humidifier section when the room gets saturated with humidity. Secondly, there is no thermostat built in to check and turn off the machine when the humidity reaches the optimum level in the room. Because both humidifier and air cleaner are one, you can't separate the two. Thus if you keep on running the machine after saturation point, you'll get mold all over the walls and clothes. Even my clothes in my wardrobe were wet. I had to stop using the machine. For the past two weeks I could hardly find clothes to wear that were dry. Thirdly, what they don't tell you on their web site and publicity brochures is that this machine requires an expensive chemical substance added to the water chamber on a regular basis otherwise it won't clean the air. But even then, this machine is more of a humidifier than an air cleaner. After two weeks of use I noticed almost no residue in the water chamber, i.e. it did not clean the air at all. I felt the change that air was getting cleaner once I operated the new Sharper Image Hybrid GP Germicidal Air Purifier. I am glad that I bought two different machines to try. Now I know.

By the way, the Venta-Airwasher has not been tested by the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM)or the US Environmental Protection Agency or the http://www.cadr.org/ for Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR). When I called the company in Illinois and asked why, I was told that their technology is different than the competition that's why. Well, if you believe in that excuse go and buy this machine and see it for yourself. The machine is made of plastic and is very basic.

It's of course bogus to point out the German social system as reason for the price. A free market is characterized by supply and demand setting the price. I asssume there is a free market in the U.S.?. What you effectively pay for in this humdifier is the idea and patent, not the material. It's the same why an Armani suite costs 2000$ and why Microsoft Office costs more than the CD it is burned on.

I have this humidifier now for a year. I am an allergy sufferer and dry air makes it worse. I live in CA. Thye humidifier extends on the principle of what my Mom always recommended: Put a bowl with water in your room. Since it does not heat the air you don't have problems with overheated air that then condenses on windows etc. The dryer the air the more it will pick up the humidity. It's kind of self regulating.

It does the job for me. I measure it and I get usually a jump from 45% to 55% of humidity in my room. I personally think cleaning is very easy. You have to use their cleaner, I do it every 8 weeks or so. It's true there will be mineral deposits on the air cleaner. I wipe them away every 2.5 months. It's not a problem as you can dissassemble this thing completely.

I think this is the best humdifier out there. It avoids all the problems of heated humdifiers and it's self regulation is ingenious. I don't believe it does a good job of cleaning the air however. That's why I have Friedrich B as well. BTW speaking of which it costs 500$ and is a set of metal plates with a fan made in the U.S.

Spent hundreds of dollars on wicks, heating units, cold spinners, etc. etc. etc. This is expensive, no doubt, but we'll make the money up not having to buy the crappy stuff anymore, not to mention the frustration. The fan button was broken on two of the units we own (4), so we had to return them and get new ones, but other than that, hand it to the Germans, they designed a pretty good product.

Its advertised as whisper quiet. Well, its not. The instructions say for continuous use choose the high setting. When it is on high it is extremely loud, like a good size table fan on high, at least. There is no way I could sleep with this thing in my room. The low setting is not as bad but still quite loud. For the price it cleans the air well, but describing it as whisper quiet is fraud.

This small filter did a great job taking care of a litterbox dust and odor problem. It's fairly inexpensive, but keep in mind that the filter is only something like 6" x 4" so it has to be replaced fairly often.
Two replacement filters are required: the HEPA filter ref. HAPF22PDQ-U, and the carbon pre-filter, ref. HAPF220. Unfortunately Amazon no longer carries the HAPF220, so keep that in mind when making your purchase decision. Had I known I would have picked a model for which Amazon carries replacement filters!

I realized that I had a terrible dust problem in my office, so I bought this thing.

So far I have had it for a couple of days, and it has a noticeable amount of dust on the odor grabber part, so it surely is doing something.
When I opened the box, I was amazed of the sheer size of the thing! Its much bigger than I would ever have expected!
When turned on its lowest setting its very quiet but I noticed when turned on its 2nd and highest setting I was overwhelmed with the noise. Well after having it on for awhile I am used to the noise it makes, I guess its not really that bad.

Well worth your $30 or so American dollars...

Pros: Not too terribly loud, it works...

Cons: The filters cost more than a drunk hooker on a Monday at 12:00AM.....$15+ (a piece)! oh my, well deal with it.