I recently went room by room and replaced all of our air purifiers with internet-connected ones, incorporating them into my smart home. Is it worth it? For a house as connected as mine—absolutely. Here's what you gain when you bring a Matter-compatible air purifier into your home.
I now know more about the quality of our indoor air
Purchasing an air purifier can be intimidating. They come in different sizes, with the more affordable options better suited for small rooms. Those that can clean large living areas are much more expensive than I expected.
A smart air purifier doesn't inherently clean the air better than a dumb one. What I find most helpful is its ability to help me gauge whether air needs to be purified in the first place.
We purchased air purifiers originally to help remove pathogens in the air after a particularly brutal cold and flu season. A smart air purifier can't notify us of pathogens, but it can detect particulate matter that arises from cooking and other sources of smoke.
We have a wood burning stove, and every winter I wonder if too much smoke is escaping from the fireplace into our living room. When I placed an air purifier in the living room, I had to merely trust that it worked. Now I can verify. A smart air purifier comes with the sensors necessary to tell me when there's too much particulate matter in the air, and it can be set to automatically kick in during those times.
Smart air purifiers can be controlled from a centralized place
I loved my Alen BreatheSmart Flex air purifiers. They ran quietly, and they could run 24/7 on a single filter per year. But when I wanted to change any of the settings, I had to walk up to each individual one. We live in a 3,000 sq ft home and have five air purifiers spread throughout the house. That amount of walking quickly adds up.
Now I can view and monitor each unit from an app on my phone. Since I have SwitchBot air purifiers, I merely open the SwitchBot app to check air quality and adjust fan speeds.
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Read more about our ethics policySwitchBot Air Purifier
A quiet and efficient air purifier with smart functionality, perfect for pet owners and those looking to enhance air quality while adding ambient lighting to their space.
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Read more about our ethics policySwitchBot 4 in 1 Air Purifiers Table
A compact, multi-functional table that combines air purification, wireless charging, ambient lighting, and more, tailored for pet owners and smart home enthusiasts.
Unfortunately, Matter integration with my air purifier is lacking. I can use a Matter controller to turn the air purifier on and off, but I can't use it to adjust the air purifying strength. That said, I don't change fan speeds all that often, and the ability to know if they are running or not is the primary thing I'm checking for. Matter can handle that.
That's not to say that I can't integrate my air purifier with my preferred smart home platform. SwitchBot manually integrates its devices with most of the major smart home platforms, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home . In my case, there's a SwitchBot app for my Homey Pro. But it is the intent of Matter to remove the need for these specific app integrations—the dream just isn't yet reality.
I know when my air purifiers aren’t running
As useful as it is to pull out my phone and adjust my air purifier settings, I really appreciate being able to see at a glance which air purifiers are on and which aren't.
The most frustrating thing about having five regular air purifiers is that even though I assume they're running 24/7, they often aren't. Sometimes the power flickers, turning off all five units. I have two young kids, and sometimes they unplug their air purifiers or turn them off for whatever reason while playing in their rooms. They then remain off for days until someone notices.
I can let automations do all the work
While smartphone apps have their place, I don't actually want to be pulling my phone out all throughout the day to manage the things in my home. A smart home is at its best when it doesn't have to be thought about at all.
This is why I’ve created an automation that turns on my air purifiers each day. If the air purifiers are all already on, then this does nothing. If they've been turned off for any reason, this turns them back on. As a result, I don't have to worry about my air purifiers being off for more than a day unless it's an extended outage, or they've gotten unplugged.
I have climate sensors all throughout my home. I can set the air purifiers to automatically operate at a higher speed based on the readings of these sensors rather than the air purifiers' built-in ones. They'll then turn back down after the air clears. Again, this saves me from having to think about my air purifiers all that often.
Should you swap out your existing purifiers?
If you already have an air purifier, you have to ask yourself how much you want smart home integration. Many of my issues deal from the number of air purifiers I need to manage. If our home only had one or two, merely purchasing an air quality meter like the IKEA Alpstuga could be enough. It’s not that big a hassle to turn a single air purifier on as needed, and it’s not too difficult to keep tabs on only one.
If you don't already have an air purifier, then I can quite easily say that it’s worth picking out a smart one. Even if you aren't yet invested in a smart home platform, it's worth buying a Matter-compatible model just in case you do someday—because once you start automating your home, it's functionality you'd wish you'd have.
In this instance, it’s not even the case that smart purifiers are guaranteed to cost more. Brand and power play a bigger role in the price than the presence of Wi-Fi modules. SwitchBot’s air purifiers cost us less than the ones we had before, and they go on sale all the time. If you haven’t already read our review of the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table, check it out. There really is something special about an air purifier that doubles as a night light, a table, and a wireless phone charger.
