The air in our homes can be five times more polluted than outdoor air. Energy-efficient homes are designed to be tightly sealed, too, so they trap more pollutants inside. Cooking emissions, cleaning chemicals and fragrances all contribute to less-than-healthy air. Pets, smoke and off-gassing furniture do their part as well. If the air quality outside is good, the best thing to do is open up your windows for at least 15 minutes a day. But if wildfires, car pollution, or high pollen counts prevent you from letting in fresh air, an air purifier may be your best bet. These machines can reduce pollutants, remove odors and trap some bacteria and mold. We tested over a dozen to see how they perform and how nice they were to live with. Here are the best air purifiers we could find.
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Best air purifiers for 2025
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Best air purifier overall Levoit Core 400S Smart Air Purifier Filters: Pre, activated carbon, HEPA | Auto Mode: Yes | App-connected: Yes | Sleep Mode: Yes | Coverage area in 30 minutes: 1,000 sq.ft. | Max decibels: 64 | Weight: 14 lbs | Filter replacements: $50 The Levoit Core 400S Smart Air Purifier isn’t trying to be anything fancy. It’s a simple white cylinder with holes for air intake and a black ring of vents on top. Touch controls in the center of the vents are easy to suss out, letting you adjust the fan speed, enable auto mode and turn on a sleep setting, which drops the fan to the lowest intensity and shuts off the display lights. The internal sensor measures particulate matter at 2.5 microns, which displays in the center of a lighted ring near the controls. The ring turns blue when all is well and moves through to green, orange and red as air quality levels deteriorate. In auto mode, when it detects a drop in air quality, the fan increases speed until levels go back down. Even at its highest level, the fan isn’t terribly loud, peaking at around 62 in the Decibel Meter app and leaving my cat undisturbed on the couch nearby. Yet the force of the air coming out is strong and feels on par with output from purifiers that are quite noisy (which made the cat run away). The Core 400S claims a half-hour air exchange rate for a 1,000-square-foot room and combines the three main filter types — pre-filter, activated carbon and HEPA — into a single ring. Perhaps the best part is a replacement filter is only $50, half the price of some competing brands. In multiple burn tests, the Core 400S reliably got the room back to its starting level in about a half hour of running on high. Auto mode does a good job of reacting to drops in quality, kicking on to a higher fan level nearly every time someone in the house cooks and after an incense burn. This true HEPA air purifier connects to the VeSync app; setup is easy, but the app itself is overpacked. There’s a forum, a wellness tab and a shopping page where you can buy not just Levoit products, but also devices from sister brands Etekcity and others. But as far as controlling the Core 400S itself, the in-app controls are easy to use and nicely laid out. Pros Easy on-board controls
Reliably improved the air quality in our tests
Inexpensive replacement filters
High speed is powerful, but not overly loud Cons The companion app is over-stuffed
Ho-hum design $182 at Amazon
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Best air purifier for small rooms Levoit Core 300S smart air purifier Filters: Pre, activated carbon, particle | Auto Mode: Yes | App-connected: Yes | Sleep mode: Yes | Coverage area in 30 minutes: 547 sq.ft. | Max decibels: 58 | Weight: 6 lbs | https://www.standards.doe.gov/standards-documents/3000/3020-astd-2015: $36-40 The best pick for a tiny room turned out to be the mini version of our overall pick: the Levoit Core 300S. Manufacturers recommend elevating smaller air purifiers on a table or stool — where you’re even more likely to notice them. From a looks perspective, I prefer Molekule’s Air Mini+ better, but Levoit’s model goes for nearly $200 less and replacement filters are a third of the price. The Air Mini+ did perform slightly better than the 300S in my burn test, but the results were very close — and when you’re dealing with measurements in the parts-per-million, a difference of a hundred or so in the numbers is near negligible. Simple controls at the top of the Core 300S turn on auto mode, adjust fan speed and more. You don’t get the PM meter readout that the larger unit has on this model, but you still have the lighted ring that shines blue when the air is clear and goes to red when things get unhealthy. Of course, you can always head to the app to see the PM2.5 measurement, as well as to do things like set schedules and timers and enable different auto modes. You can turn on a quiet auto mode, which will raise the fan speed when air quality goes down, but won’t ever use the highest fan speed. There’s also an efficient mode that lets you set the size of the room and it will blast the highest fan speed for the amount of time it takes to do one air exchange, before dropping back down to low — sort of like an on-demand reset for the room. The lowest setting is remarkably quiet, which makes it good for small rooms like home office or bedrooms. Unless the room is fully silent, I have to hold my hand over the vents to make sure it’s on. The highest speed isn’t terribly loud at around 58 decibels, yet the air comes out forcefully. Pros Simple on-device controls
Low mode is very quiet
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