Air Purification Week -- Blueair Eco10

Welcome to installment #2 of Air Purification Week here at 1GreenProduct.com!

On Monday, we explained that indoor air pollution can be a real health concern according to the EPA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Air purifiers can be help improve indoor air quality, but of course it's best from an eco standpoint to get one of the greenest and most energy-efficient air purifiers on the market.

Which brings us to today's featured air purifier - the Blueair ECO10.

Blueair promises that the Eco10 will get the job done (i.e. clean the air) while using up to 95% less energy than other air cleaners in its class.

Thanks to our trusty Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Meter (available from Current Energy), we're able to test just how much energy the Eco10 actually uses.

First, we have to admire the simplicity of the Eco10 purifier which has just three settings operated by one sturdy knob:

1) Off
2) Minimum HEPASilent(TM) speed
3) Maximum speed

On HEPASilent speed, the Eco10 draws just around 6 watts of power.

Even more impressively, on Maximum speed, it uses only between 10-11 watts of power. (This pretty much matches the literature on Blueair's website, which claims maximum 10 watt usage.)

According to Blueair, the 10 (or 11) watt power usage is "nearly 10 times more energy efficient than the minimum performance requirements for energy-efficient room air purifiers established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its ENERGY STAR program."

What else is there to like about the Blueair Eco10?

1) Excellent build quality. The Eco10 feels solid, which is probably because it's made in Sweden out of high-quality galvanized steel.

2) Great design. We like the fact that the Eco10 doesn't have any bells or whistles. There's just one knob that controls the on/off and fan speeds. The external parts are "powder coated for endurance and environmental protection (with no introduction of chemical outgassing)," according to Blueair. Translation - this machine should last and keep looking good in your home for many years.

3) Wheels! By U.S. standards, we have a relatively small home (600+ square feet), but there are still times you want to move the purifier from the bedroom to the living room, or from the office to the kitchen. Having smooth, easy-rolling wheels on the bottom of the Eco10 makes all the difference in the world.

4) Quiet. The first page of the Blueair Eco10 manual cautions that you might not hear anything when you plug in and turn on the air purifier. If the cool blue power light is on, everything is probably OK. "Bueair is so quiet on min speed, you may not realize it's on," says the manual. Believe it or not, that's really true. But the fan is on and pulling air through the filters to help you breathe easier.

5) Great design #2. Many air purifiers have a filter on one side (usually the back). Put the air purifier next to a wall and you may end up blocking most of the air flow and thus purification power. The Eco10 has three intake filters - one on each side of the unit and one on the bottom. (The bottom filter is made possible since the unit is elevated on wheels - another reason we like the wheeled design.) Clean air returns to the room through the top of the unit and also on each side after passing through one of three Polypropylene HEPA-Silent Filters. We're not the only ones who like the Eco10's design -- it has won a design award in Sweden and is even featured in the permanent collection of Stockholm's National Museum!

6) Lifetime warranty. The Blueair website indicates that the Eco10 comes with a lifetime warranty against defects in material or workmanship, provided that you change the filters every six months. (Interestingly, the user's guide that came with our unit mentioned only a 10-year warranty, but perhaps Blueair has upgraded the warranty since then...)


Incidentally, the warranty brings up one of the few drawbacks we could find in the Blueair Eco10 -- there are three filters that need to be changed every six months. A set of three filters (available directly through Blueair) costs $139.95, which could add up over time.

(The small air intake inlets can simply be vacuumed with a brush attachment, according to the user's guide.)

You could call the price another drawback. The Blueair Eco10 retails for $929.95 through Blueair's website.

We'll finish on a high note by mentioning something else that could justify a Blueair investment. The user's guide notes that Blueair air purifiers are built for years of use and are designed to be disassembled so the components can be recycled after the product has eventually reached the end of its working life.

We're not sure how many buyers will actually go to the trouble fo figuring out how to recycle their Blueair instead of just discarding it. It would be nice if Blueair had some sort of program to pick up and recylce old units. But at least the company tries to build durable products and thinks about how parts of these products can be recycled years down the road. From our experience, that's pretty a pretty rare attitude for a manufacturer to have and one that wins significant kudos from 1GreenProduct.com

Where to buy:

You can order the Blueair Eco10 online directly through Blueair's website (second to last machine from the bottom of the list, $929.95), but you may be able to find it elsewhere at a significant discount.

When we checked, Amazon.com had the Eco10 for around $712. Through Shopping.com, we found another highly-rated online retailer called Air & Water selling the Eco10 for $699.95 including free shipping.