Blueair - HealthProtect Air Purifier

Product Notes:

Blueair's HealthProtect air purifiers can not only remove 99.97% of the airborne particles such as pollen, dust, dander, and mold from the air in a room and 99% of bacteria or viruses down to 0.1 micron in size and trap a lot of their odors and harmful gases, but also kill or arrest the growth of up to 99% of the germs caught in the filter – all while using less than half as much energy and generating 10% less noise than conventional HEPA filtration units!

OVERVIEW

Blueair has really pulled out all the stops with these models, which are oriented to those especially concerned about the transmission of airborne germs, such as health care settings (such as doctors' or dentists' offices or waiting rooms) or people with compromised health or immune systems.

Not only have they redesigned their signature HEPASilent filters into an HEPASilent Ultra model to make them even quieter operating and more efficient than ever before and outfitted them with a smart chip to gauge and report their effective lifespan more accurately, but they've also improved the output design by adding omnidirectional 'fins' called 'SpiralAir Outlets, so the clean air radiates in all directions (rather than just straight up or out), and they've increased the number of air quality factors the machines can monitors and report. These reports can either be seen on top of the device itself or on the free Blueair app, if you have installed that on a smartphone and enabled the machine's WiFi capability. The app (which also works on a tablet, an Alexa, or a Google Assistant enabled device) also enables you to activate the air purifier remotely, and enables the unit to receive possible software upgrades (such as a program to gear itself up just before your anticipated arrival back home).

Blueair has also added several convenience features to the Health Protect family, such as: wheels on the back side, so the machine can be tilted back and moved from room to room, if desired; a cord winder area underneath, to take up excess slack on the power cord; and a pair of permanent, metal screen prefilter trays much like the lint screens on commercial dryers and some home humidifiers (as shown beginning 2:50 into the final product video in the Usage section), which are easily cleaned by wiping with a dust cloth or vacuuming with a soft brush attachment.

GermShield

Last, but certainly not least, the HealthProtect models all have a new "GermShield" feature, to ensure that the bacteria and viruses caught by and captured within the filters are not allowed to remain active or continue to multiply unabated, to give you more peace of mind. This feature, which operates when the machine has either been turned off or is on standby (which happens when its air quality sensors determine the air is of sufficient quality that the fan can be turned off automatically), generates an plasma charge (it uses some type of electrical grate to transform incoming air into a plasma state), which releases electrons which can bond with bacteria and viruses to deactivate them. This patent-pending technology has been tested on two types of bacteria (Staphylococcus albus and E. coli and one type of virus (MS2 bacteriophage) and been found to be able either deactivate or prevent 99% of such germs from continuing to grow on the filter.

COVID-19

Blueair actually conducted a 'proof of concept' test on the HealthProtect machine's ability to capture COVID under laboratory conditions using the 7470i model, and found it removed 99.99% of airborne live SARS-COV-2 when HealthProtect 7400 model tested in a sealed 13 cubic-foot test chamber. They have not tested the extent to which GermShield can deactivate the virus once in the filter, however, nor how the machine performs in an ordinary room. Consequently, they note that it not been proven to prevent/reduce transmission of COVID-19.

MODEL OPTIONS

There are two options available here, which have different room size capacities:
* the 7400 series, for mid-sized rooms (or studio apartments) up to 418 sq. ft. (which would be more than adequate for most bedrooms or family rooms); and,
* the 7700 series, for areas as large as 674 sq. ft. (which would be more suitable for a health practitioner's waiting room, or for an oversized family room, or a full basement or other open concept area). These 7700 models are quite a bit bigger and heavier and have much better performance specs.

Both of these models have the most advanced types of display panels available for the new HealthProtect series, which not only indicate the room's overall air quality with a coloured bar glowing one of five colors, to show the range for the highest reading currently found in the surrounding air among the three main different sizes of particles [PM1, PM2.5 and PM10] the system monitors, but which can also display precise numeric readings on a number of specific factors you can toggle between on a dynamic LCD panel. These include readings for the levels of gases and VOCs the unit's sensor detects in the room; and for each of the three main different particulate sizes; and for the relative amount of filter lifetime remaining; and even for the room's current temperature and relative humidity. These '-70i' models (whose tops are mostly black, as shown) also display the operative fan speed with a numeral, rather than just a series of small bars (as some other models in this series do).

(Blueair also produces two other types of models in this series which are only available at certain outlets or regions referred that are referred to in the Blueair HealthProtect User Manual (which is available for download here as a 604kb pdf): the 7410i and 7710i models, which have an all-white top and more basic read-out capabilities; and the -40i models, which use LEDs (rather than LCD) to display the readings on the three particulate sizes you can toggle between, but do not show the gas levels, the percentage of filter lifetime remaining, or the room's temperature and relative humidity, as these -70i models do.)