《IQAir Atem Review – Is This Portable Air Purifier Effective?》有15条评论
Hello Smart Air Team, I am currently researching whether the IQAir Atem could be an interesting device for me or not. So I came across your IQAir Atem test simulation. Very interesting, but unfortunately I cannot understand your assumption of a CADR of 13 cbm/hour. On the specification page of IQAir I findt “Default air delivery incl. filter, 3 fan speeds 4.7, 8.8, 18 cfm (8, 15, 30 m3/h)”, at another point I read about the “Customizable airflow range 1.8 – 39 cfm (3 – 67 m3/h). So the maximum is either 30m3 or 67m3 and not 13. Can you please explain this to me in more detail? I am very much looking forward to your answer.
With reference to: https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/iqair-atem-purifier-review-effective/ you mention: “To find out how effective it is to direct air in a specific direction, we modified the Smart Air Blast Mini to mimic the Atem. To do that, we created a nozzle similar to the “PureJet diffuser” on the Atem.”.
1. From the picture it would appear that you took the Smart Air Blast Mini and then covered the outlet, leaving only a small opening for the nozzle?
2. If my assumption above is correct, then surely the modified Smart Air Blast Mini (with nozzle to simulate the IQAir atem) should have exactly the same cleaning performance as the original Smart Air Blast Mini?
3. It is not clear from the website for how long the tests (of the modified Smart Air Blast Min) at various distances have been performed?
4. But surely the original Smart Air Blast Mini should be able to clean a room up to 85 square meters (given enough time)?
What if someone sleeps in the equivalent of a closet? I sleep in a very small bivvy tent. Would this product effectively clean the “room” I’m sleeping in since I’m sleeping in a small tent? I was going to but the small power bank which optionally comes with thia air purifier.
Hey Greg, good question! If you’re living in a really small space, then the Atem may well do the job for you! As I’ve written in point 1 above, the Atem would be good for a 1.4 square meter (or 14 sqft) room turned on high. If you room is that small, then the Atem may do a reasonable job of cleaning the entire space. Although you may well still be better off pointing the Atem your face and keeping it within about 30cm of your face.
Hi guys,
I have very recently purchased the Atem because our office employees LOVE to open the windows and the air ventilation system itself is very low quality.
Anyway, the article is correct. One has to have the outlet of the clean air really close to the nose to achieve a reasonable filtration air and by that I mean approximately 50% PM10 reduction.
Combined with the horrible loudness of the Atem it means that one has to have it very, VERY close to the face. And that’s what I do….
I could go on into how “young” this product is and how it could be inooroved but that’s not the point of the post.
So stop bashing that author of this post, he was right. And IQAir marketing BS is laughable. This product works but only when it is VERY close to your face.
I often use the 1.1 up close and personal. Using a ventilator pump to sleep at night, I place the 1.1 within a few cm’s of the ventilator input filter and am assured (thanks to egg confirmation) that I’ll be having forced into my lungs 0 particles of pm2.5. during waking hours the 1.1 dutifully cleans the room.
I’d love if Smartair was able to develop a smaller version of the 1.1 that was portable enough to place on your lap or desk at work.
I’m sorry, Paddy, but I am with Michael on this one. You can’t effectively make a comparison without actually testing the product. This is especially true when you are an air filtration company reviewing a competitors product. The need for an ulterior motive is directly related to you HAVING a dog in this race. While I respect SmartAir’s ability to actually run a real test, it would not kill you to order an IQAir Atem from amazon.com and apply Global Shipping to to China for under $100 USD. You could easily re-sell this model in Beijing on the internet for a large part of this cost AND you would be MUCH more credible in providing a comparison review without the actual product. I am just a random guy researching air filters of all kinds, and I found this review appalling and full of assumptions. If you want to self-promote and discredit others, then you need to buy the product for testing. Plain and simple. Asking others to send one is ridiculous. Air quality is YOUR business. I’d personally be very interested in the results, instead of this odd comparison of the DIY1.1 model and this model, which are for different purposes entirely.
Hey Ryan, thanks very much for the comment! You’re absolutely right that a real test of the IQAir would have been much better. There are definitely some assumptions we’ve made when using data from our ‘makeshift’ portable air purifier. When publishing the results, we figured it’s not perfect, but the airflow is very similar to that of the IQAir that it’d at least give reasonable results that could be useful to help people judge how far they need to be from the purifier.
Having said that, after seeing your comment I went away and seriously discussed with the team the idea of buying an Atem to run some real tests. However since we’re a small social enterprise, running open-data tests and publishing the results open source we don’t have a huge budget. With the price of the Atem here in China at 3680RMB/550USD, that’s a serious amount of cash which we don’t have the liberty to spend. Instead, I’ve tried to tone down the article, and make it more representative of what we’re actually testing. You’re absolutely right it could look like we’re just out trying to self-promote Smart Air, and so I’ve also altered the text to focus more on the Atem testing and usability, and less on the alternatives people can use.
Finally, since we wrote this post we’ve actually tested the Wynd portable air purifier, here’s the writeup. We found pretty similar results, that the effectiveness dropped after moving 20-30cm away from the purifier outlet.
In 2003 Fighting the spread of SARS a viral disease known as Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) spreads quickly in Asia.
IQAir® is sought out for its expertise in air cleaning technology. After weeks of testing and installation of trial systems, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority chooses IQAir systems to help stop the spread of SARS. IQAir provides systems to 150 hospitals and health care facilities in Hong Kong to help contain the virus.
Below is a longer discussion on the use of hyper HEPA filters in 2003 in Hong Kong
(https://www.iqair.com/newsroom/iqair-selected-provide-hong-kong-hospitals-new-tool-fight-against-sars-virus)
I don’t know too much about China but presently in this country many hospitals and medical facilities also use IQAir’s filters. Even some dental offices use IQAirs cleanroom filters for surgery. IQAir has some special FDA rating for their filters and machines
There is so much information on the IQAir products that you would be able to get with google searches You would easily see why I love the Air purifiers. Personally, I got interested in their product 2 years ago. I was in and out of a hospital three times in 2 months with respiratory distress from allergies with breathing problems. No one knew the exact cause but I decided to buy the Healthpro plus unit from IQAir after studying the pros and cons of all the popular air purifiers.. Non stood out more the IQAir so I purchased one even though it was one of the most expensive units.. All I can say is that after using this unit I never had to go back to the hospital for any problems. I feel it really worked. The ultrafine particles that filtered to .003 microns made a difference to me personally. Anyway, hope to continue your good work and let me know what your final thoughts will be.
you are not taking into consideration that the filtration goes down to .003 micron and not the .3 microns of standard HEPA filters. In my eyes, the ultrapure hyper HEPA filter blows extra clean air just around your immediate location. It is basically blowing ultra pure air and displacing the less purified air that around your face with super clean air. their so-called bubble effect that IQAir claims. I am very impressed with the air I breathe from the Atem. The air blown at me is really wonderful and does help with allergies is my case. I really love this unit and would recommend it to anyone who might have some breathing problems caused by mold, pets or allergies such as dust. Unless you do have this unit and test it to see how it helps with this ultra filtering, you can’t possibly judge things for other people. Sorry to disagree with your comparison above.
Hi Michael. Paddy here, I ran the tests on the IQAir Atem. It’s great to have your response and hear your feedback, and I’m glad you feel the IQAir is getting you clean air!
Your point about ‘Utrapure Hyper HEPA filter’ is a great one, and it’s a good example of how many companies use marketing jargon to convince us into thinking their ‘technology’ is better than the rest. It’s a very common misconception that HEPA filters can’t capture particles smaller than 0.3microns, but that’s actually not true! HEPA filters are great at capturing particles bigger and smaller than 0.3microns, with 0.3microns being the most difficult size to capture. In fact, HEPAs can capture almost 100% of 0.01 micron particles. Check out this fact sheet for graphs showing how HEPA filter effectiveness actually improves for even smaller particles: http://donaldsonaerospace-defense.com/library/files/documents/pdfs/042665.pdf
I’m not sure if you’re in China, but if you are and are willing to let us borrow your Atem, then we would love to test it. You’re right, the only way we can make a real assessment is to test a unit ourselves!
Hi and thanks for allowing my thoughts of the Atem. Unfortunately, I live in New York so sending you my unit would not be practical. Just two last thoughts.
When the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus was very prevalent in and around 2002 and 2003, a hundred and fifty Hospitals in China requested and used the Hyper Herpa filters that IQAir uses. it was the only filter that could on a routine basis filter these airborne viruses over extended periods of time. Secondly, there is very little leakage of air around IQAir purifiers filters including the Atem. 99% of the air goes through the filter versus 30% or less on most air purifiers thereby filtering ultra pure air very efficiently. As you can see I am an avid IQAir fan because of my personal use and help with the Healthpro plus and the Atem Again thanks for allowing my response
virus was widespread in China in 2002 and 2003, over 150 hospitals requested and used the IQAir Hyper Hepa filter because they all felt that on a constant basis the .003 micron filters were necessary. Secondly, with all the IQAir purifiers including the Atem, there is very little leakage of air around the filters, therefore, filtering 99% of the air and not the 30% as in most other air purifiers
That’s a really interesting report on the the 150 hospitals Michael! Do you have any evidence pointing to the fact that only the HyperHepa filters used in IQAir purifiers were able to filter out the viruses, and not the other types of filters? I’d love to see the data on that! Other than press releases on the announcement, I can’t find any hard data.
Having said that, you got me curious. I wanted to really get into the nitty gritty details of what the smallest particle size HEPA filters can capture. First of all I looked to one of Tom’s previous Quora posts where he cites tests done by Sweethome, testing down to 0.01 microns. The results were pretty clear – all the purifiers tested (BlueAir, IQAir, Coway, Sharp etc.) were all able to filter the 0.01 microns.
But that’s still not as small as the 0.003 micron particles IQ Air claims to filter. To look at even smaller particles, I turned to one of our blog posts on mask effectiveness (masks use essentially the same material as HEPA filters). A study was done on masks, testing down to 0.007 microns. What they found was that N99 rated masks were able to filter 99% of even the smallest particles (0.007 microns).
Then again, that is still larger than the 0.003 microns claimed by the IQAir. I did some Googling and came across this piece which claims that HEPAs can capture down to 0.001 microns. Now there’s no data or testing evidence in that post so we can’t be sure. In fact, various reports state we still can’t know what the smallest particle size HEPA filters can capture (it comes down to the natural forces at play and Brownian motion, and when things start transitioning from being particles to being gases).
You’re motivated me to see if we can get our hands on a particle counter that can measure down to 0.001 microns, to really test out these different claims. I hope we can have a definitive answer soon!
Hello Smart Air Team, I am currently researching whether the IQAir Atem could be an interesting device for me or not. So I came across your IQAir Atem test simulation. Very interesting, but unfortunately I cannot understand your assumption of a CADR of 13 cbm/hour. On the specification page of IQAir I findt “Default air delivery incl. filter, 3 fan speeds 4.7, 8.8, 18 cfm (8, 15, 30 m3/h)”, at another point I read about the “Customizable airflow range 1.8 – 39 cfm (3 – 67 m3/h). So the maximum is either 30m3 or 67m3 and not 13. Can you please explain this to me in more detail? I am very much looking forward to your answer.
Hi Eva. Song here from Smart Air. Good catch! CADR is typically lower than the air flow, and CADR is more accurate because it takes many factors into account. Hope it helps.
With reference to: https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/iqair-atem-purifier-review-effective/ you mention: “To find out how effective it is to direct air in a specific direction, we modified the Smart Air Blast Mini to mimic the Atem. To do that, we created a nozzle similar to the “PureJet diffuser” on the Atem.”.
1. From the picture it would appear that you took the Smart Air Blast Mini and then covered the outlet, leaving only a small opening for the nozzle?
2. If my assumption above is correct, then surely the modified Smart Air Blast Mini (with nozzle to simulate the IQAir atem) should have exactly the same cleaning performance as the original Smart Air Blast Mini?
3. It is not clear from the website for how long the tests (of the modified Smart Air Blast Min) at various distances have been performed?
4. But surely the original Smart Air Blast Mini should be able to clean a room up to 85 square meters (given enough time)?
What if someone sleeps in the equivalent of a closet? I sleep in a very small bivvy tent. Would this product effectively clean the “room” I’m sleeping in since I’m sleeping in a small tent? I was going to but the small power bank which optionally comes with thia air purifier.
Hey Greg, good question! If you’re living in a really small space, then the Atem may well do the job for you! As I’ve written in point 1 above, the Atem would be good for a 1.4 square meter (or 14 sqft) room turned on high. If you room is that small, then the Atem may do a reasonable job of cleaning the entire space. Although you may well still be better off pointing the Atem your face and keeping it within about 30cm of your face.
Hi guys,
I have very recently purchased the Atem because our office employees LOVE to open the windows and the air ventilation system itself is very low quality.
Anyway, the article is correct. One has to have the outlet of the clean air really close to the nose to achieve a reasonable filtration air and by that I mean approximately 50% PM10 reduction.
Combined with the horrible loudness of the Atem it means that one has to have it very, VERY close to the face. And that’s what I do….
I could go on into how “young” this product is and how it could be inooroved but that’s not the point of the post.
So stop bashing that author of this post, he was right. And IQAir marketing BS is laughable. This product works but only when it is VERY close to your face.
Regards.
Anon
I often use the 1.1 up close and personal. Using a ventilator pump to sleep at night, I place the 1.1 within a few cm’s of the ventilator input filter and am assured (thanks to egg confirmation) that I’ll be having forced into my lungs 0 particles of pm2.5. during waking hours the 1.1 dutifully cleans the room.
I’d love if Smartair was able to develop a smaller version of the 1.1 that was portable enough to place on your lap or desk at work.
That sounds like an awesome setup Garyaiden! Do you have photos of your ventilator you can send us to see your solution in action?
I’m sorry, Paddy, but I am with Michael on this one. You can’t effectively make a comparison without actually testing the product. This is especially true when you are an air filtration company reviewing a competitors product. The need for an ulterior motive is directly related to you HAVING a dog in this race. While I respect SmartAir’s ability to actually run a real test, it would not kill you to order an IQAir Atem from amazon.com and apply Global Shipping to to China for under $100 USD. You could easily re-sell this model in Beijing on the internet for a large part of this cost AND you would be MUCH more credible in providing a comparison review without the actual product. I am just a random guy researching air filters of all kinds, and I found this review appalling and full of assumptions. If you want to self-promote and discredit others, then you need to buy the product for testing. Plain and simple. Asking others to send one is ridiculous. Air quality is YOUR business. I’d personally be very interested in the results, instead of this odd comparison of the DIY1.1 model and this model, which are for different purposes entirely.
Hey Ryan, thanks very much for the comment! You’re absolutely right that a real test of the IQAir would have been much better. There are definitely some assumptions we’ve made when using data from our ‘makeshift’ portable air purifier. When publishing the results, we figured it’s not perfect, but the airflow is very similar to that of the IQAir that it’d at least give reasonable results that could be useful to help people judge how far they need to be from the purifier.
Having said that, after seeing your comment I went away and seriously discussed with the team the idea of buying an Atem to run some real tests. However since we’re a small social enterprise, running open-data tests and publishing the results open source we don’t have a huge budget. With the price of the Atem here in China at 3680RMB/550USD, that’s a serious amount of cash which we don’t have the liberty to spend. Instead, I’ve tried to tone down the article, and make it more representative of what we’re actually testing. You’re absolutely right it could look like we’re just out trying to self-promote Smart Air, and so I’ve also altered the text to focus more on the Atem testing and usability, and less on the alternatives people can use.
Finally, since we wrote this post we’ve actually tested the Wynd portable air purifier, here’s the writeup. We found pretty similar results, that the effectiveness dropped after moving 20-30cm away from the purifier outlet.
In 2003 Fighting the spread of SARS a viral disease known as Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) spreads quickly in Asia.
IQAir® is sought out for its expertise in air cleaning technology. After weeks of testing and installation of trial systems, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority chooses IQAir systems to help stop the spread of SARS. IQAir provides systems to 150 hospitals and health care facilities in Hong Kong to help contain the virus.
Below is a longer discussion on the use of hyper HEPA filters in 2003 in Hong Kong
(https://www.iqair.com/newsroom/iqair-selected-provide-hong-kong-hospitals-new-tool-fight-against-sars-virus)
I don’t know too much about China but presently in this country many hospitals and medical facilities also use IQAir’s filters. Even some dental offices use IQAirs cleanroom filters for surgery. IQAir has some special FDA rating for their filters and machines
There is so much information on the IQAir products that you would be able to get with google searches You would easily see why I love the Air purifiers. Personally, I got interested in their product 2 years ago. I was in and out of a hospital three times in 2 months with respiratory distress from allergies with breathing problems. No one knew the exact cause but I decided to buy the Healthpro plus unit from IQAir after studying the pros and cons of all the popular air purifiers.. Non stood out more the IQAir so I purchased one even though it was one of the most expensive units.. All I can say is that after using this unit I never had to go back to the hospital for any problems. I feel it really worked. The ultrafine particles that filtered to .003 microns made a difference to me personally. Anyway, hope to continue your good work and let me know what your final thoughts will be.
you are not taking into consideration that the filtration goes down to .003 micron and not the .3 microns of standard HEPA filters. In my eyes, the ultrapure hyper HEPA filter blows extra clean air just around your immediate location. It is basically blowing ultra pure air and displacing the less purified air that around your face with super clean air. their so-called bubble effect that IQAir claims. I am very impressed with the air I breathe from the Atem. The air blown at me is really wonderful and does help with allergies is my case. I really love this unit and would recommend it to anyone who might have some breathing problems caused by mold, pets or allergies such as dust. Unless you do have this unit and test it to see how it helps with this ultra filtering, you can’t possibly judge things for other people. Sorry to disagree with your comparison above.
Hi Michael. Paddy here, I ran the tests on the IQAir Atem. It’s great to have your response and hear your feedback, and I’m glad you feel the IQAir is getting you clean air!
Your point about ‘Utrapure Hyper HEPA filter’ is a great one, and it’s a good example of how many companies use marketing jargon to convince us into thinking their ‘technology’ is better than the rest. It’s a very common misconception that HEPA filters can’t capture particles smaller than 0.3microns, but that’s actually not true! HEPA filters are great at capturing particles bigger and smaller than 0.3microns, with 0.3microns being the most difficult size to capture. In fact, HEPAs can capture almost 100% of 0.01 micron particles. Check out this fact sheet for graphs showing how HEPA filter effectiveness actually improves for even smaller particles: http://donaldsonaerospace-defense.com/library/files/documents/pdfs/042665.pdf
I’m not sure if you’re in China, but if you are and are willing to let us borrow your Atem, then we would love to test it. You’re right, the only way we can make a real assessment is to test a unit ourselves!
Hi and thanks for allowing my thoughts of the Atem. Unfortunately, I live in New York so sending you my unit would not be practical. Just two last thoughts.
When the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus was very prevalent in and around 2002 and 2003, a hundred and fifty Hospitals in China requested and used the Hyper Herpa filters that IQAir uses. it was the only filter that could on a routine basis filter these airborne viruses over extended periods of time. Secondly, there is very little leakage of air around IQAir purifiers filters including the Atem. 99% of the air goes through the filter versus 30% or less on most air purifiers thereby filtering ultra pure air very efficiently. As you can see I am an avid IQAir fan because of my personal use and help with the Healthpro plus and the Atem Again thanks for allowing my response
virus was widespread in China in 2002 and 2003, over 150 hospitals requested and used the IQAir Hyper Hepa filter because they all felt that on a constant basis the .003 micron filters were necessary. Secondly, with all the IQAir purifiers including the Atem, there is very little leakage of air around the filters, therefore, filtering 99% of the air and not the 30% as in most other air purifiers
That’s a really interesting report on the the 150 hospitals Michael! Do you have any evidence pointing to the fact that only the HyperHepa filters used in IQAir purifiers were able to filter out the viruses, and not the other types of filters? I’d love to see the data on that! Other than press releases on the announcement, I can’t find any hard data.
Having said that, you got me curious. I wanted to really get into the nitty gritty details of what the smallest particle size HEPA filters can capture. First of all I looked to one of Tom’s previous Quora posts where he cites tests done by Sweethome, testing down to 0.01 microns. The results were pretty clear – all the purifiers tested (BlueAir, IQAir, Coway, Sharp etc.) were all able to filter the 0.01 microns.
But that’s still not as small as the 0.003 micron particles IQ Air claims to filter. To look at even smaller particles, I turned to one of our blog posts on mask effectiveness (masks use essentially the same material as HEPA filters). A study was done on masks, testing down to 0.007 microns. What they found was that N99 rated masks were able to filter 99% of even the smallest particles (0.007 microns).
Then again, that is still larger than the 0.003 microns claimed by the IQAir. I did some Googling and came across this piece which claims that HEPAs can capture down to 0.001 microns. Now there’s no data or testing evidence in that post so we can’t be sure. In fact, various reports state we still can’t know what the smallest particle size HEPA filters can capture (it comes down to the natural forces at play and Brownian motion, and when things start transitioning from being particles to being gases).
You’re motivated me to see if we can get our hands on a particle counter that can measure down to 0.001 microns, to really test out these different claims. I hope we can have a definitive answer soon!