{"id":4853,"date":"2017-10-27T14:54:01","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T06:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/?p=4853"},"modified":"2026-03-09T14:55:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T06:55:56","slug":"blast-eats-airpocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/blog\/blast-eats-airpocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"What Eats Airpocalypse for Breakfast and Doesn\u2019t Cost Thousands of Dollars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years ago, I was coughing through a Beijing winter and wanted some clean air. But all the purifiers I could find cost hundreds of dollars, so I strapped a filter to a fan I had at home and made my first DIY purifier.<\/p>\n

\"Thomas<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t pretty, but I tested it with a laser particle counter<\/a>, and the data showed it significantly reduced the particles in my bedroom air<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It worked, but it had some problems:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It\u2019s loud. On high, it\u2019s about as loud as major purifiers<\/a>, but that\u2019s still loud.<\/li>\n
  2. It\u2019s kind of a hassle. You have to strap the filter on, and I\u2019ve seen some people do it wrong.<\/li>\n
  3. The fan isn\u2019t really made to power through a dense HEPA filter. A stronger fan would give a lot more clean air.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Fast forward 4 years and hundreds of tests later, I\u2019ve got a new pair of machines that squashes those problems, and they\u2019re badass. They\u2019re my first non-DIY purifiers. Meet the Blast<\/strong> and the Blast Mini<\/strong> (or Ladakh<\/strong> and Ladakh Mini<\/strong> in India!).<\/p>\n

    \"Meet<\/p>\n

    OK, OK, the Blasts are pretty basic. It\u2019s a metal box with a fan and a super fat HEPA filter inside. That\u2019s not some kind of technological marvel. All purifiers are boxes with a fan and a filter inside, but the Blasts have a bigger fan and a much bigger HEPA. That means:<\/p>\n

    \"Blast<\/p>\n

    The Blast Mini puts out as much clean air as about 2.2 Blueair\u2019s or IQAir\u2019s.<\/p>\n

    \"Blast<\/p>\n

    But with that much air coming out, it\u2019s gotta be noisy, right? This bad boy is actually quieter<\/em> than a Blueair or IQ Air.<\/p>\n

    \"Blast<\/p>\n

    As always, I\u2019ve been testing this under real apartments and publishing all the data<\/a> and methods. But it\u2019s kind of unfair because they clean so fast. Here\u2019s the Blast in the 34 m2<\/sup> Smart Air office, and here’s a video of the test.<\/p>\n

    \"Blast<\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n

    Throughout all this testing, several times I\u2019ve asked, \u201cDid anyone turn this on?\u201d It\u2019s that quiet. After experiencing it for a month, I bought up the first few to give to a few friends.<\/p>\n

    Your lie detector should be going off by now. How can it be more powerful and quieter? Well, for one, the HEPA is fat.<\/p>\n

    \"Blast<\/p>\n

    (area calculated taking the HEPA filter and opening all the folds)<\/span><\/p>\n

    That means the air can spread out over a large area. Imagine trying to blow really hard through a straw. Now imagine blowing air through a traffic cone. It\u2019s a lot easier, and it\u2019s quieter.<\/p>\n

    Second, this guy here Paddy engineered the fan and air duct, and he\u2019s an aeronautical engineer. Really. He believes in his creation so much he even pretended to read a magazine next to it.<\/p>\n

    \"Paddy<\/p>\n

    It also means he knows how air moves and designed the fans so that they work well and stay quiet.<\/p>\n

    So the Blasts are more powerful and quieter, well then they must be more expensive. Nope:<\/p>\n

    \"Cost<\/p>\n

    I calculated that the Blast Mini can easily clean up to 85 m2<\/sup>. That\u2019s good for most apartments or houses. And for big apartments or places like offices, gyms, and cafes, there\u2019s the Blast which cleans up to 130m2<\/sup>. And because the Blast\u2019s HEPA is twice the size of the Blast Mini\u2019s, it\u2019s even quieter.<\/p>\n

    \"Blast<\/p>\n

    So, what makes the Blasts so special then? Not a whole lot, just in true Smart Air fashion I\u2019ve packaged them without the high price tag and margin, and bundled them along with hundreds of hours of test data to verify they actually work.<\/p>\n

    My aim is still the same: make clean air more affordable, and get it out to more people.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    As I write this, I want to apologize for feeling like I\u2019m selling this thing. After four years of working on Smart Air, I still haven\u2019t taken a penny for myself. I\u2019ve got a day job (I\u2019ve now moved from grad school life to professor life), so I use any leftovers to pay the Smart Air team an almost-livable wage, set up in India<\/a> and Mongolia<\/a>, and subsidize our educational workshops.<\/p>\n

    So I\u2019m sounding a bit different from usual, but it\u2019s because I\u2019m excited. Four years after building my first DIY, the accumulated data is saying my initial hunch was right\u2014it IS possible to get clean air for a heck of a lot less than what Blue Air and IQ Air say. Data sets us free!<\/p>\n

    Looking to get hold of a Blast or Blast Mini? In China, you can find them on our online store<\/a> (English) or Taobao<\/a>. For India, the Ladakh and Ladakh Mini are available from our India online store<\/a>!<\/div>\n

    P.S. I couldn\u2019t help making a GIF.<\/p>\n

    \"Blast<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Four years ago, I was coughing through a Beijing winter and wanted some clean air. But all the purifiers I could find cost hundreds of dollars, so I strapped a filter to a fan I had at home and made my first DIY purifier. It wasn\u2019t pretty, but I tested … <\/p>\n

    Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"5165,9273,5597,9714,9793,3961","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[190,264],"tags":[233,234],"class_list":["post-4853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-purifiers","category-indoor-air","tag-blast","tag-blast-mini","resize-featured-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4853"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27223,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853\/revisions\/27223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}