Blueair - Classic Series 480i 434 Sq. Ft. Air Purifier - White

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Good air purifier, Mobile App needs work

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  We have had this filter in our kitchen for almost 2 weeks now and we can clearly see the difference that it makes. It makes the cooking odors disappear in minutes. Here are some detailed observations: Pros ------- 1. Quick installation and setup. It took me probably 5 minutes to get the unit out of the box and up and running. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. 2. Good minimalistic design. It looks pretty good in the kitchen. 3. Silent on low and medium settings. On the high fan setting, it gets loud. But thanks to the auto setting, it will go back to low or medium setting as soon as it has done the hard work of cleaning the air. 4. The auto mode. I find it's sensors to be quite reliable and quick. 5. Clean air fast!! Cons: -------- 1. The mobile app definitely need some work. It is not totally unusable but the experience is not as smooth as you would expect in 2021. Here are few things that need to be improved: a) App doesn't work well with Mesh Wi-Fi systems as it only supports 2.5G band. I had to do the manual configuration. The mobile app setup took much longer than the setup of the actual machine. b) Setup of blueair account is supported via mobile app but only partial information is shown on the app. For example, on the "Profile" page, it was not showing my name and email address. This makes me wonder if my profile was correctly setup or not. So, I logged onto their website to confirm and complete the registration process. NOTE: Don't forget to register your unit on the website otherwise you won't get 5 year extended warranty. 2. The power cord is not long enough. This is probably a personal issue but I wish the cord was a bit longer. I had to purchase an extension cord to use it in the location where we wanted to place it. Overall, I think this is a good air purifier. I also looked at some other websites to view the results of it's purification capabilities using more scientific means. All these websites provided good ratings for its purification capabilities. So, if you want that clean air in your house, you can't go wrong with this one.

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  Posted 4 years ago by Shail

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Whisper quiet and almost perfect…

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 250 Contributor

  Air quality is very important especially when a lot more people are working from home or spending more time indoors. This filter will filter out airborne bacteria, viruses, allergens and gaseous pollutants from cooking and smoking. Pros: • Blends in well with any home decor • Set it and forget it operation • Whisper quiet on lowest setting Cons: • Filters can be expensive (see more below) • No air quality numerical indicator on unit • iPhone app is lackluster This Blueair 480i is designed for medium sized rooms around 20ftx20ft. They claim it can filter a 434sq ft room 5 times an hour. We have our unit in the master bedroom and it is quiet enough that we can sleep with it running. In fact, we have ours running 24/7. The air purifier does automatically ramp up in fan speeds as needed. When we cook in the kitchen on the floor below, the super sensitive sensors pick up air quality issues upstairs in our bedroom and adjusts fan speeds accordingly until the air is clean. The supplied air filter is easy to insert and the installation reminds me of how one would replace a furnace filter. The door opens without any tools and simply slide it in. The supplied filter is a dual element with carbon on one side to help filter out smells. The unit has a built in 6-month timer that will tell you when you are due for a filter replacement. There are 2 different filters that you can get off their website. The dual protection, carbon and filter, is $130 for 6 months or $260 per year to replace. The standard filter with no carbon is $60 for 6 months or $120 per year. I would recommend the dual protection if you have pet smells and cooking smells that you would like to eliminate. Also keep in mind that these are not standard HEPA filters. Blueair uses a variant of the filter claiming that it allows less air pressure to pass through the filter than traditional HEPA. That ultimately results in quieter working units. The unit does have app support and Alexa support. The app is very low rated in the apple app store and I can see why. It’s an app you will only use a few times and the unit can operate fine without the app. The app does allow you to see numerical air qualities that I wish the unit itself shows. Alexa support is limited to fan speed voice control…which begs the question on why one would need to. In summary, I do recommend this air purifier if air quality is important to you. It’s the perfect size for a medium to large bedroom or common space per floor of your home. If you’re trying to decide on size, its best to go bigger than smaller. A smaller unit will have the fan speed at 100% (more noise) for longer than larger units. I’m very happy with the build quality of the Blueair. The thing that would make this perfect is to have an actual numerical air quality indicator on the unit itself…therefore can eliminate the lackluster app completely.

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  Posted 4 years ago by TonyMSP

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Many Features and Effective

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  As I usually do in my reviews, I’ll comment on the environmental effects of the packaging. Except for some small foam-like inserts to protect what is both an appliance and instrument, the balance of the packaging is recyclable cardboard. The manufacturer comments on its commitment to environmental sensitivity in the manual, and it is evident. The company make several different series of air purifiers, and this Classic 408i is intended to be used in space of about 400 sq. ft. Thus the air in a room as large as 20 x 20 feet should be easily cleansed. In this same series there are more basic models, but this one has a number of automated and enhanced features which will be discussed shortly. With dimensions of 23 x 20 x11 inches, it is small, but not unobtrusive. The modern Swedish design however helps it blend in to most room decors. The Classic 408i is portable in that it weighs 33 lbs. It does not, however, have wheels but does have comfortable handles. Most of the initial set-up is a snap requiring only that the rear hinged panel be opened for access to the filter which needs to be unwrapped from its plastic protection. The ease of this process indicates that future filter changes will be simple and quick. After plugging in the unit and tapping the comfortably sensitive fan-speed button, the unit is working. One aspect of the set that is not as easy is installing and using the Blueair Friend Mobile App. Connecting the purifier to the wi-fi was a slow and often-frustrating chore. Since it only works on the 2.4 GHz band it was necessary to temporarily “sleep” the 5.0 GHz bandwidth on my mesh system. Linking everything was far from plug-and-play and seemed outdated. The app does allow remote control of some functions and also contains information about possible pollutants. Whether a remote function is even necessary for this type of appliance is a question that users will have to decide for themselves. The control panel is generally intuitive, but initially there is the likelihood of confusion as the rings that surround each change color to indicate status and the inner symbol may have a different color to indicate. For the first few weeks, keep the helpful and clear manual nearby. Electrical consumption is minimal: After 24 hours on medium speed my plug-in usage meter showed less than 1 Kw. On the control panel, nicely hidden by a cover, the soft-touch buttons are, from left to right, Wi-Fi set-up and status indicator, fan speed selector/indicator, filter status, auto speed operation on/off, a VOC indicator, and a PM 2.5 indicator for the presence of extremely small particulate matter. Noise levels vary significantly. At the lowest speed, the sound is virtually imperceptible; the middle setting generates modest noise comparable to white noise and certainly not obtrusive. At the highest speed setting (which the manufacturer rates at 52dB(A)) the noise is disruptively loud anywhere near the purifier. These are, of course, subjective interpretations and others will react differently. How effective is the 408i? It is hard to say. During and after cooking a smoky meal the 408i (on high speed) seemed to clear the air of cooking odors quickly. That was easy to determine. After many days of use, I cannot meaningfully evaluate its performance in other areas with one exception. Immediately after having some new carpeting installed, the VOC indicator turned orange (from green) and an hour or so later it had returned to green. Apparently, the sensors worked as advertised and the cleansing started and ended automatically. Well done, BlueAir! Overall, a good, solid appliance that seems to offer many valuable features.

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  Posted 4 years ago by HonestJohn