Best Air Purifiers 2024: Keep allergies at bay with these top picks

Every time Dyson launches a new purifier, it seems to add more features to it. Arguably, the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde is the most useful product of the lot: it’s a fan, it’s a heater for the colder months of the year, and it’s also a purifier. New to this model is the formaldehyde sensor.

This detects the dangerous gas, which can be released by old furniture, and ramps up the fan speed. Inside the fan is a catalytic filter that turns formaldehyde into water and CO2; this converter never needs to be replaced.

Alongside this, there are sensors for PM2.5 and PM10 dust, VOCs and NO2. This combination of sensors, plus the filters to deal with harmful particles, makes the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde more responsive than much of the competition. Leave it running on Auto mode, and this purifier will ramp its fans more often, as it’s capable of sensing more things wrong in the air.

As with other Dyson products, this is a smart product, so you can control it with your phone, or voice via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.

Putting the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde through our tests, we found that it cleaned our room from the harmful particles generated by a smoke pellet in just 10m 39s: that’s faster than the older model and one of the best results from an air purifier that we’ve seen.

As a fan, it’s powerful to: 3.8m/s of airflow at 15cm on maximum, dropping to a gentle 0.69m/s on the quietest setting, delivering just a very gentle breeze. Heat mode ramps up the fan speed a little, but the onboard thermostat turns the fan off as soon as your desired room temperature has been reached.

The overall combination of quality cleaning, sensors and all-year-round use makes this the best overall air purifier, with only the price likely to hold some people back.

Full review: Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde review

Reviewer: David Ludlow

If there’s one issue we experience with most of the air purifiers we test, it’s that they’re not designed to meet your specific requirements. The Mila Air Purifier fixes that, and has a range of filters that you can buy, each designed for a specific job.

The Big Sneeze, for example, has an H13 HEPA filter designed to capture allergens, such as pollen. The Overreactor gives you hospital-grade H14 HEPA filter and 1.25lbs of carbon filter to extract gasses and VOCs, such as Formaldehyde. Finally, the Critter Cuddler has the Mila Sock, which picks up pet hair. Filters range in prices between $59 and $99 and last for six months.

Built like a piece of scandi furniture, the squat Mila Air Purifier looks great. You can just turn it on and let the auto mode – which uses a combination of PM, VOC and CO2 sensors to detect air quality and adjust the fan automatically – do its thing.

It’s by connecting the purifier to your Wi-Fi and smart app that you really get the main benefits from it, however. Here, you’ll find a load of smart modes. Bubble Boy mode lets the purifier rip, pushing its cleaning to maximum levels. Housekeeping Service ramps up to maximum when the purifier spots that a room is empty. Quiet mode drops fan speed when you’re in the room. Sleep mode turns off the screen and reduces fan speed during your set sleep time. The Turndown service ramps up an hour before you go to bed, again taking the timings from the bedtime you set in the app. Finally, Whitenoise mode throws out some soothing sounds from the fan while you sleep.

It’s a shame that there’s no voice control, and this purifier doesn’t support Alexa nor the Google Assistant.

Performance is good, too. Although the fan was a little slow to ramp up after I’d lit the smoke capsule, the Mila Air Purifier still cleaned my air in 10m 39s, which is similar to that of the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde.

A purifier only, the Mila Air Purifier is a great choice if you want lots of clever cleaning modes and the choice of filter to suit your specific needs.

Who wants an ugly air purifier taking up their homes? Well, nobody if we’re being honest. Hand it to Ikea to fix this problem, with the Starkvind. Designed to blend into your home, this model comes in two versions. The standard version (pictured) looks a bit like a drum, standing vertically on legs and decked out in black or white material.

Then, there’s the side-table version, which is the same unit, only it has a solid top and long legs, so it can be used as a sidetable. That’s the ultimate way to make an air purifier fit into your life.

Internally, the filter is in three parts: there’s a pre-filter that you can vacuum of larger particles, such as hair, then two filters that can’t be cleaned, with one for gasses and odours and one for particles. Replacements cost a reasonable £27 and should last for around six months.

The Ikea Starkvind can be controlled via the simple dial on top. Turn it to a manual fan speed (one to five) or use the auto mode, which uses a PM sensor to watch for dust. That makes this purifier a little less responsive than the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde, which has a greater range of sensors, so can respond automatically to more threats, during our tests.

If you have an Ikea Tradfri Gateway, you can hook the Starkvind up to your home network and control it via the app, including setting schedules as well as taking manual control. There’s, bizarrely, no option for remote control through the Ikea app, although you can add this functionality by switching to HomeKit control.

Performance was good in our tests: our smoke pellet was cleared out in 11m 57s, although it took a full 25m until the app reported that the air was fully clean. This purifier was also a little slow to ramp up fan speed to full in order to deal with the smoke.

If you mainly want to deal with small particles, such as dust and other allergens, then the Ikea Starvind is a neat air purifier that will blend into your home.

Full review: Ikea Starkvind

Reviewer: David Ludlow

Ikea Starkvind, £179 at Ikea

There’s no messing about with the Shark Air Purifier 6 HE600UK: it’s a huge air purifier, with a massive filter and lots of fans, designed to clean the air quickly. Filters should be replaced every 12 months (or when the filter light turns on) and cost a reasonable £69.99 each.

The Shark Air Purifier 6 HE600UK doesn’t have any smart features, and everything is controlled via the remote control. This can sit on top of the purifier, although a magnetic mount would make it easier to store without risking of losing it.

The filter can absorb small particles (99.7% of those down to 0.3 microns), odours and VOCs. However, there’s only a PM sensor in this machine, so it will only respond and ramp up fan speed automatically when it detects smaller particles. If you want a more responsive air purifier, the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde is a better choice.

Air quality is shown on top, running from 100% (the best) and dropping down. In auto mode, the purifier will turn off automatically once the air is clean, saving power.

We tested the Shark Air Purifier 6 HE600UK by lighting a smoke pellet. It took just 6m 30s for the Nest Protect to say the air quality was good, and only 9m 46s for the air purifier to show full air quality again. Both are very fast results.

If it’s mostly dust particles and allergens, such as pollen, that you want to deal with, this air purifier is very fast. However, it’s very large, taking up a lot room.

Full review: Shark Air Purifier 6 HE600UK review

Reviewer: David Ludlow

The Blueair DustMagnet 5440i is so called, as it’s designed to suck dust out of the air and reduce the amount of vacuuming you need to do.

It’s a stylish choice. The 5440i is draped in a soft material finish and comes in either white or grey; on top of the purifying unit itself is a small tray, which turns it into a nifty side table.

This purifier also comes with two filters, one at the top and one at the bottom, and a mesh pre-filter for dealing with larger particles and hair. The internal filters themselves are said to trap dust, VOCs, smoke, pet dander and bacteria and viruses, and can be replaced – Blueair say they should last for six to 12 months, although you will get alerts through the app that says when they need to be replaced. These aren’t HEPA filters here, but ones that Blueair assures are just as effective.

To go with the basic controls for fan speed and a mode switch, the 5440i is a smart purifier that connects to WiFi and works with the Blueair app; the app allows you to turn down the ambient lighting on the purifier, as well as assigning different products to locations around your house, if you’ve got more than one Blueair product at home.

In addition, there’s also a wider choice of manual fan speeds than with the physical controls, and the ability to schedule the purifier’s operation, which we found especially useful, given the purifier will only capture dust and dirt when it’s on. The app also displays the current quality and the level of PM2.5 in the air, and if you want to control the purifier with your voice, it can also work with Amazon Alexa.

In placing the 5440i in a particularly dusty spot at home, we found the purifier to be rather efficient and we had to vacuum far less often. When running our standard tests, Blueair’s stylish candidate also performed admirably with it removing pollutants caused by a smoke capsule in 6m 43s, which is rather quick. The noise level of the 5440i is also comparatively quiet on all settings, with 58.96dB at its highest setting. If you want to reduce how dusty your home is, this is a stylish way to do so.

Reviewer: David Ludlow

Full review: Blueair DustMagnet 5440i review

The Levoit Core 300S represents a useful step up from the more entry-level purifiers that are designed for smaller rooms.

This is illustrated especially thanks to the fact it’s 37cm tall and 22cm in diameter, which means it’s physically better suited to good-sized living and dining rooms. As a cylindrical purifier, it draws in the air from all around the circumference of the device into a HEPA filter which should remove dust, mould spores, pollen, particulates and at least 99.97% of aerosols of 0.3µm diameter. Levoit says the filter should last for between six to eight months, although our long-term testing noted that you may be able to get longer out of it, especially if you maintain it properly.

Control is taken care of thanks to the black touch panel where you can dial up the main fan settings as well as enable the purifier’s sleep mode or set up a shutdown timer. As this is also a smart purifier, you can also connect it to WiFi and use the VeSync app to create schedules or set the sleep timer. It also enables you to control the C300S via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant for hands-free operation to set the purifier running or adjust its speed. Just note, you may have an issue connecting the C300 to your network if you have WPA3 encryption enabled, but this is only a temporary glitch,

In testing, the Core 300S managed pretty well with our demanding smoke test, and it took 14 minutes for the air quality to normalise. While this may be double the time that was taken by our most powerful purifier, it’s still a decent showing for a purifier that’s capable of dealing with more everyday workloads. Flat out, its noise level sat at 54dB, which is reasonably quiet and meant the C300S didn’t make a racket at all; put it in sleep mode and it decreases to just 20dB.

For slightly smaller spaces, this is a neat and effective air purifier.

Reviewer: Simon Handby

Full review: Levoit Core 300S review

If you’re searching for a smaller air purifier, the Beko Air Purifier with HEPA Filter and HygieneShield ATP6100I has a compact shape, offers fast purification and is easy to use. 

The ATP6100I is tall and cylindrical, making it stylish enough to display but not so big that it dominates a room. This particular air purifier is designed to be used in rooms up to 24m² and Beko also offers a smaller version for rooms up to 13m². 

There are three filters inside the purifier – a vacuumable pre-filter to pick up larger items like pet hair, a HEPA 13 filter to take care of smaller particles like dust and pollen and a carbon filter to remove odours from the air. 

The ATP6100I can be controlled using the touch buttons on the front, with three manual speeds to choose from and an automatic mode that detects the level of dust particles in the air using a built-in dust sensor. If you want a purifier that can respond to more environmental factors than just dust, you may want to consider the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde. 

There’s a status light to indicate air quality, a Sleep mode to switch the light off at night and a timer with two, four and eight-hour options, allowing you to clean the air in your room before you doze off. 

We tested the ATP6100I by lighting a smoke pellet and found that it took six minutes and two seconds for the Nest Protect to announce that the air was good to breathe again. That’s exceptionally fast at almost double the speed of the Ikea Starkvind and similar to the Blueair DustMagnet. 

If you want a simple and effective air purifier and are not overly bothered about smart controls or additional sensors, the Beko Air Purifier with HEPA Filter and HygieneShield ATP6100I is a great choice. 

Reviewer: David Ludlow
Full Review: Beko Air Purifier with HEPA Filter and HygieneShield ATP6100I