If I bought an air purifier today, I know what. Blueair 680i - review

Winter, smog, outdoor air of such quality that it's up to fear to open windows. How to deal with this? I have been checking for the past few weeks whether the Blueair 680i air purifier can solve this problem.

It is not the case that the presence of an air purifier in my home is a whim and a fashion effect. I live on a housing estate of older houses, mostly fired with old wood or coal stoves, where on colder days it is better not to go outside because of the quality of the air. And what goes in the air outside, sooner or later goes home - whether through the open door, or through the open windows during the weathering.

Effects? In the best case, not very pleasant smell in the apartment. In the worst? Cough, sleep problems, and difficult to determine the long-term consequences of exposure to such bad air.

Besides, I have a cat and a dog at home, and this is another element that influences to a large extent what we breathe and how we feel. Especially that one of the family members is allergic.

I did not need to be persuaded twice for the Blueair 680i purifier tests.

Blueair Classic 680i, or what?

The most powerful, the most powerful and the most advanced purifier of the Swedish Blueair brand from the Classic series.

The most efficient term has not been used here for no reason - the maximum area of ​​the room, which is able to clean 680i, then 72 m2, and in such a room is able to replace the air 5 times per hour. So you can think not only about putting it in a really large living room or office, but also, for example, in open-space .

With such a serviced surface, nobody should be surprised that the Blueair Classic 680i is a big device. It measures 66 x 50 x 34 cm and has a mass of 14 kg. However, there is no reason to be afraid - for two reasons.

First of all - in my opinion it is one of the most attractive visual purifiers on the market. When I unpacked the device, I was not convinced of simple, rather industrial design, but doubts disappeared when I started to choose a place for him at home.

Blueair Classic 680i, just because of its simplicity, fits everywhere. He looked good in my kitchen, living room, office, and even in the bedroom. Did I place it against the walls of GK boards, wood or bricks - it suited everywhere. For this he does not try to be elegant by force and does not succeed. No plastic chrome, no shiny black plastic. If anything in the construction of the Blueair Classic 680i looks like metal, it is made of metal.

Of course, with its dimensions you need to get some free space, but after a few entrances and exits from the room, we simply stop noticing it.

In addition, the whole is surprisingly mobile and stable. Blueair Classic 680i is set on four wheels, making it easy to move between rooms, when we think it would be more useful elsewhere.

Unfortunately, there were no handles to raise the device, but this can only be a problem if you want to bring it to the first floor. When it comes to smaller and larger thresholds, the wheels at the base will successfully manage.

Where are the buttons?

At first glance, the Blueair Classic 680i front is almost completely uniform. Ot, a white wall, decorated only with the company's logo. We look at it from the top and also do not see any buttons - only the next fragments of the white case and the metal filter cover.

However, the buttons are perfectly in place. With their help, we can manually select the intensity of air purification, enable automatic mode, check the condition of filters, connection to the WiFi network, as well as air quality.

Only that they are hidden under a magnet flap, which is a simple but fantastic solution for several reasons.

First of all, they allow you to protect the device's settings from the curious - even children (there is also a classic parental lock) or, for example, co-workers or household members. If an outsider approaches the purifier and wants to switch something out of curiosity, there is a good chance that ... he simply will not find the control panel.

In addition, the flap will also be useful at night, if you do not want the glow from the illuminated buttons to fill the room in which you set up the purifier.

For me, however, hiding the buttons was a great solution for the sake of ... never - after a short, initial play - I did not take advantage of them.

Why go to a cleaner that stands at the other end of the house when you can use the app?

Blueair Friend - your friend and air cleaner.

I have complained repeatedly that nowadays selling air purifiers above a certain amount without proper communication and mobile application should be banned. Fortunately, the Blueair Classic 680i is not disappointing in this respect.

The purifier is equipped with a WiFi module, and from the Apple App Store or Google Play, we can download the Blueair Friend client application. And - which is not often the case with this type of equipment - this app is really, really good.

Configuration? Banał - we hold longer one button on the casing of the cleaner, and from the level of the application we log in to our WiFi network. The end - everything works the first time. We can of course add to the application more than one purifier.

After configuration, we get access to all settings, which otherwise we would have to use with buttons, as well as additional options.

On the main screen we can check the air parameters in a given room, collected thanks to the built-in Blueair Aware sensor. The following graphs detail the concentration of PM 2.5 dust, volatile organic compounds (tVOC), as well as temperature and humidity. All of this data can be tracked on the chart generated from the first start of the device, as well as set alarms and notifications, if any of these parameters fall below or exceed a certain level. We can also check how much the air quality in the room being cleaned differs from that outside.

However, if we scroll through any of the tabs down, we'll get to additional settings. From here you can either manually control the speed of the purifier (three levels plus off), or switch on the automatic mode or activate the night mode. This last option works great especially when you set the purifier in the bedroom - at given times in given days the purifier switches permanently to any speed set by us. Therefore, we do not have to worry that a sleeper will suddenly rip us out of the sleep activating the most effective level of purification. In night mode, you can also turn off or reduce the intensity of the button illumination.

Blueair Friend also allows you to check whether our filter no longer requires replacement. Yes, the same information will be received on one of the illuminated buttons of the device, but here we can check exactly how much we still have to buy and replace.

And most importantly - everything works here. Communication with the device, schedule, speed of command execution - everything works without the slightest complaint.

What's inside?

First of all, three large and thick filters, whose task is to eliminate dust, dust, hair, mold, bacteria and mites.

And at the start I have to praise the manufacturer for the way in which the filters are installed. We do not have to open the construction with trembling hands, after which everything falls to the floor. Filters, in appropriate housings, slides in after removing the top cover, while the upper filter simply puts in the right place. Clean, simple and fast.

How do these filters work from the technical side? At the beginning, the air is sucked into the chamber using a really large windmill through the bottom, rear and side walls of the device. Then, the particles are loaded , and when passing through the filters attach themselves to their surface. This solution has two advantages - first, according to the manufacturer, this allows you to capture 99.97 percent. airborne particles, and secondly, the particles remain on the filters forever, even when the time is up to replace them.

This combination of electrostatic and mechanical air filtration (referred to by Blueair as HEPASilent) has one more plus. And it's huge.

This great air purifier is almost completely silent.

According to the specification, Blueair Classic 680i generates 32 dB of sound in the lowest gear. Much? Little? I decided to check it, putting it in a more or less 12-meter-high bedroom, about 1-1.5 m away from the bed, expecting to have to turn it off soon or put it out of the room.

None of these things. The noise generated by the Blueair Classic 680i at the lowest intensity setting is basically negligible, even when the house is completely silent. Ba, the noise of sucked in and out air bothers even less than the noise generated by my private purifier, which according to the specifications ... should be quieter.

If that was not enough, in bedroom applications (if someone has a bedroom with an area of ​​72 m2), I also appreciated the fact that Blueair Classic 680i first of all throws air out of it gently, and secondly - only up and sideways. It does not cause that we wake up in the morning.

In the end, although the volume of my bedroom did not match the possibilities of the Blueair Classic 680i at all, I left the air purifier in it for a few days.

You just have to remember that when setting the Blueair Classic 680i in the bedroom it is necessary to activate the night mode from the application on the phone. After activation in the second gear, the device starts to be heard, while on the third - it turns into a small tornado.

And in something bigger than a bedroom?

If we plan to insert a cleaner, for example into a larger office, then there is no question of noise problems on the first two levels. With the crowds of everyday sounds only the noise of air will come to us.

The third level is a bit different story - the purifier turns into a small tornado center and you can not pretend that you do not hear this noise.

Fortunately, the third course was involved in me (ground floor, about 50 m2) very rarely, and for this - for a very short time and in certain situations. First of all, when the window was opened or when some other way air got inside the house, or someone caused, for example, one way or another, that a cloud of dust rose into the air.

In other cases, for the vast majority of the day, the purifier worked at its lowest speed, remaining a silent but functional element of the living room decor.

What is the result of such short work on high gear? To a large extent due to the fact that it is one of the most efficient purifiers on the market, with a very high CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate), which determines the volume of air that the device is able to effectively filter.

In the case of Blueair Classic 680i, this coefficient is as high as 1087 m3 per hour for pollen, 850 m3 per hour for dust and 850 m3 for smoke. For comparison, my private purifier, which costs a lot more than 2,000 PLN, offers a maximum of 396 m3 per hour.

I also reviewed the offer of the most popular purifier manufacturers and ... it is difficult to find any equipment with similar parameters. Some appliances designed to theoretically clean the air in rooms with much larger surfaces offer a significantly lower CADR.

No wonder that the Blueair Classic 680i works extremely fast at its best - it simply accomplishes its tasks faster and more effectively. This, in turn, translates into lower power consumption and lower electricity bills.

But does it cleanse?

Unfortunately, I do not have specialized measuring equipment, but I know very well what is the air in my home during the winter season, and what is with my private purifier. A few days before the tests, I disconnected my purifier and let the air pollute a bit.

And after prolonged use 680i I can write one - yes, it works. It definitely works, which you can see, well, after the behavior of the household. The quality of sleep improves immediately, it is easier to focus all day (and I work from home, so it matters), there are fewer coughs and similar sounds, and possible sneezes caused by the presence of a dog and a cat at home.

I was even a bit worried that ... I could not test any Blueair equipment before I bought my purifier. 680i is better in many respects, and it can be controlled by the application, which is important to me.

The only thing you need to remember when purchasing the 680i is the relatively frequent need to replace the set of filters. With a standard 24-hour use it lasts for about 6 months (about 4320 hours of work), and a set of three filters costs about PLN 400. Drożśzy is a set of filters with a SmokeStop liner - PLN 699. However, clean air at home is definitely worth the expense.

So you buy a Blueair 680i after returning the test copy?

No, but for the simple reason - 680i is definitely oversized for my needs. The entire ground floor of my house - or at least the surface that you can reasonably handle with the purifier - does not even approach 72 m2. So spending about 3000 PLN (it costs 680i) would be an unnecessary payment for something that I will not use.

It is very likely, however, that in this or next season, one of the smaller models from this line will be aware of it - 280i (if I would like to put it in the bedroom) or 480i (if it will go to the living room). The first one costs less than PLN 2,000, while the second one costs about PLN 2,200. At the same time, they differ mainly in performance and the supported surface, while those functions that are important to me remain unchanged, including both the built-in pollution sensor and the great mobile application.

If I bought an air purifier today, I know what. Blueair 680i - review