Hate to break it to you, but the air inside your home isn’t all that different from the air outside your home. You know, with all that pollution floating around. Think about it; if your house were airtight, you’d suffocate, right? So new air is entering it all the time, and where is it coming from? That’s right. So while it’s new air entering your home from outside, I certainly wouldn’t call it fresh air. It’s full of germs, dust, viruses, and pollution, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs).To breathe easily, you need an air purifier indoors. I’ve been testing them for six years now, and my hands-down favorite for large rooms is the Coway Airmega 250. As for the fire I mention in the headline, we’ll get into that in a moment. Forgive me for forgetting whether I counted seven or eight fire trucks outside the apartment building. I was bleary-eyed without my contacts, and I’m already not much of a morning person, so it goes double when I’m roused from bed at 4 a.m. and it’s dark outside.Coway Airmega 250 – Credit: Matt JancerTL;DR – My Quick VerdictI’ve used a lot of air purifiers, and none of the competition out there beats the Coway Airmega 250 when it comes to purifying the air of large rooms. It’s not enough for truly huge rooms, despite Coway’s marketing language, but it’s plenty powerful enough for most homes that aren’t owned by people who appear on shows that start with The Real Housewives of… Rock-solid reliable for years, easy and intuitive to use, the Airmega 250 checks all the right boxes: a genuine HEPA filter that captures 99.999 percent of bacteria, viruses, dust particles, and pollution down to an extremely tiny 0.01 microns, plus a smart automatic mode that ramps up the purification when it detects elevated levels of indoor pollution.(opens in a new window)CowayAirmega 250(opens in a new window)Available at AmazonBuy Now(opens in a new window)How I TestedHah. You ready for this? Aside from just running the damn thing for four years without ever unplugging it, the Airmega 250 has carried me through a few calamities. For one, I was woken up at 4 AM due to a raging fire in my apartment building, which firefighters battled for three hours. Imagine 1,000 bags of popcorn being burnt in the microwave. After the building was saved, the place stank and black grit had been pumped through the building’s HVAC system into my apartment. It was ludicrous. The Airmega 250 kicked into its highest fan setting, but within a couple of hours its carbon filter began to absorb and neutralize some of the stink as the HEPA filter captured the carcinogenic particles released by the fire.And then on June 6, 2023, when Canadian wildfire smoke descended upon New York City, I hunkered down indoors and breathed easy. Literally. Even though it was as if Atlas himself were smoking a pan flute’s worth of cigarettes just beyond my window, the air inside was so pure that the Coway was humming away on the lowest of its three settings inaudibly.Disasters aside, I’ve been testing and using air purifiers every day for the past seven years. I’ve test driven more air purifiers from more brands than I can count (seriously, computers ruined my math abilities; I’m begging for help), and I know what makes for a solid air purifier, both from expertise in understanding the technical components and experience from using them firsthand.Smartypants Air PurifierThere’s a mercifully simple control panel on the top of the Airmega 250 with touch-controls that respond quickly and cleanly to inputs. Even though the Coway Airmega AP-1512HH‘s push buttons aren’t what I’d call inaccurate, they do feel mushy compared to the Airmega 250’s touch-controls. control panel on the Coway Airmega 250 – Credit: Matt JancerThere are three fan settings: low, medium, and high. Almost always, I leave the air purifier in Smart mode, which means that it’ll constantly monitor the surrounding room for air pollution and airborne debris levels. Most of the time it hums away on the low setting, which is inaudible. Only for short bursts when my neighbors burn their cooking or I open a window does it kick into a higher gear.There’s a version with app control, the Airmega 250S (S for smarts), that costs $449. Is it worth the additional $50? There are a lot of household appliances I like being smart. Things like smart light bulbs and smart door locks. I’ve never cared for “smart” air purifiers.Why would I care to see what my air purifier is up to at home when I’m out at the movies or sipping coffee in a café? It’s an air purifier. How exciting could its life be when I’m not around? Even most of the non-smart air purifiers these days are automatic, meaning that they’ll ramp up the fan speed without your oversight or intervention whenever they detect increased levels of indoor pollutants. The beauty in them is that you don’t have to micromanage them. How much smarter do you need it to be? Air purifiers are truly set-it-and-forget-it devices, aside from filter swaps. I’d save the $50 and just buy the plain Jane Airmega 250.the airmega 250’s combination hepa and carbon filter after several months of use – Credit: Matt JancerHubba Hubba, That’s a Real HEPAThere’s a lot of malarkey—I’ve never before felt the urge to use that word—yes, malarkey around the terminology of HEPA filters. It’s become sort of a household buzzword to the extent that hospitals and airlines brag about their HEPA filters and the people who patronize them purse their lips, furrow their brows, and tent their fingers as they nod approvingly, even if there’s little said other than the vague notion that HEPA equals “good.”Coway says the Airmega 250’s HEPA filter captures 99.999 percent of bacteria, viruses, dust particles, and pollution down to an extremely tiny 0.01 microns. It even scrubs 99.98 percent of Covid-19 viruses from the air. Not every air purifier has a genuine HEPA filter. Some, such as IKEA’s popular FÖRNUFTIG, talk about cleaning the air of dust and pollution but don’t have True HEPA filters. I just wouldn’t bother with an air purifier that doesn’t have a genuine HEPA filter. Look for True HEPA in the marketing materials, as found on the Coway Airmega 250.the front panel pops open just enough to slide out the pre-filter screen without tumbling open – Credit: Matt JancerReplacing the FiltersReplacement filters are pricey at $79 a pop for official Coway ones. Tempting as a third-party cheapie would be, I’ve stuck with the Coway-branded ones because I know they’re good. Filters aren’t like coffee mugs or kitchen chairs. You and I can’t tell if they truly capture germs and viruses just by looking at them, and those discount replacements could be duds.I’ve only had to replace the filter about once a year, though. Each one includes both the HEPA filter and the carbon filter element that’s responsible for soaking up various stank, such as pet odors (clean your pet!), weird trash odors (clean your house!), and b.o. (clean yourself!), so you don’t have to buy two separate filters, as with many air purifiers.out slides the reusable pre-filter screen for cleaning, easier than any other air purifier i’ve used – Credit: Matt JancerEvery so often the Airmega 250 will light up a red light to remind you to clean the reusable metal mesh screen that sits in front of the filter. It captures big debris, such as hair and dust bunnies, before it can reach the filter in order to prolong the filter’s life. It slides in and out easily, and just may be the easiest screen filter on an air purifier that I’ve used. And not all purifiers come with one.I used to wipe it down with a wet paper towel, but these days I just hold it over the kitchen trash can and use a handheld vacuum on it. Less messy, works just as well. Then I put the screen back in, turn the Coway back on, and reset the reminder by pressing the button for a few seconds until it chimes.Sizing It UpAt the strictest requirements of how much air an air purifier should purify in an hour, the Airmega 250 is ideal for rooms of up to 372 square feet. Envision a room 22 by 17 feet. That’s a pretty damn big room, and that’s about the maximum size of what the Airmega 250 can very competently handle.If you’re wondering why Coway says the Airmega 250 can handle rooms up to an astounding 1,860 square feet in its marketing language and I’m basically saying something very different, hang with us for a bit. Or just skip down a couple of paragraphs.Coway Airmega 250 – Credit: Matt Jancerthe coway airmega 250 at a glanceGot a room of 372 square feet or less? Then the Airmega 250 is the finest air purifier you can buy. That’s about 22 by 17 feet, or some similar pairing of dimensions that equals a square footage of roughly that amount. For four years and change the Airmega 250 has been plugged in and running, and I’ve yet to encounter a fault. It’s been through several filters in that time, a major apartment fire, a few wildfires, and a lot of cooking smells. It’s performed as dependably as I could’ve asked from any air purifier, and Coway’s long-standing expertise in air purifiers shows in how easy and intuitive it is to operate.figuring out the right size air purifier for a roomYou want your air purifier to achieve five air changes per hour (ACH). That means that all of the air in the room will be completely replaced five times every hour. Yeah, it’s a lot, that’s what the CDC says is what you should aim for in an air purifier, and the EPA endorses it.Because air purifier companies are in the business of moving product, they use all sorts of ways to juice the numbers and make it seem like their air purifiers are better suited for larger rooms than they are. Yes, even Coway.you can turn the lights off if you like – Credit: Matt JancerCoway’s no more resistant to the allure of marketing than Blueair, IKEA, Honeywell, or any of those other companies that sell air purifiers. They write that the Airmega 250 is suited up to 1,860 square feet of cover, but that’s only 1 ACH. Not good enough. Coway does provide more information than most companies by explaining that it covers a room up to 465 square feet for 4 ACH, but that’s still not quite enough.The Airmega 250 achieves 5 ACH in rooms up to 372 square feet, so it’s better for living rooms and larger bedrooms. Mine lives in my living room, which is about 275 square feet. It also has 12-foot ceilings, so there’s a lot of air in there.the bottom lineThe Coway Airmega 250 is a stellar air purifier. Even though it’s five years old at this point, who cares? Air purifiers aren’t exactly like smartphones and laptops that grow outdated and slow down after a short while. The Airmega 250 is intuitive to use, and its family sedan looks are stately but not unattractive. I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t blend into almost any home decor scheme.More importantly, it has the performance to back up its claim on a one-square-foot footprint on your floor. It captures 99.999 percent of particles, bacteria, and viruses down to 0.01 microns, which means it’s about as good at scrubbing illness, dust, and indoor pollutants from your home as can be, aside from hospital-grade medical air purifiers.After over four years of daily use, it’s never once given me even a hiccup of a problem. It’s still going strong. Just now that I’ve said that, let me knock on some wood…The post This Coway Air Purifier Gave Me Clean Air After a Four-Alarm Fire appeared first on VICE.