Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier • Hacker News Board

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#181

Post by jefftk » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #156

A bit off tangent, but Blueair purifiers was the only brand where the output air was 0 PPM2.5 during wildfire season in the Bay Area (I have the $50 uncalibrated laser PPM sensor that purpleair uses so interpret this as you want). I tried Dyson, Winix, and making a V-shape DIY purifier with a vornado fan. Nothing was able to pull the indoor air below 15 besides Blueair so I recommend it to any of my family and friend…

As the article explains, unless you're using the purifier to filter the air coming into a space, small differences in the purifier output PM2.5 level don't matter. If the output has 99% lower PM2.5 than the input vs 100% lower, that's dwarfed by all the existing particles that the output is about to be mixed back in with.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#182

Post by hackernewds » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #154

arkitaip wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what the messed up thing about Wirecutter's affiliate marketing is? Their Amazon links are consistently broken to the point where the links don't point to products but are faulty search queries. Like, if you are going to compromise your reputation doing affiliate marketing, at least get the damn links right so I don't have to perform a Amazon search to find the actual product.

Some might say this is intentional, the whole point for the link is to corrupt your Amazon cookie so that they get credit for the (next?) purchase you make. At least that's how I've always assumed the links work, not that you have to buy the exact product immediately.

This blew my mind. And would be highly unethical that Amazon should know, since the accounting often happens on the publisher's side

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#183

Post by donohoe » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #60

donohoe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The air purifier industry is more about aesthetics than it is function Well, sure, to a point. I could make my own air purifier (like the one you link) but it looks awful. I would not want that in my home. So yeah, aesthetics do matter. Its not the only thing but it is a factor.

> it looks awful. I would not want that in my home. When west coast forest fires put dangerous levels of smoke into peoples homes, box fan air filters are an extremely valuable tool for lower income families. Consider yourself extremely fortunate if you are able to choose form over function on devices like this.

Um. Okay. I was just responding to your comment about:

"The air purifier industry is more about aesthetics than it is function"

I didn't mention anything about dangerous levels of smoke, forest fires, low income families...

I take your overall point but I think you need to keep the context of which it was said and not add a different one.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#184

Post by Hamuko » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

donohoe wrote: post #43

daenz wrote: post #19

Protip: you can turn a box fan into an incredibly effective air purifier[0] (particle measurements in thread). The one they show is pretty elaborate, using 4 filters and some construction, but you can also use a single filter and slap it on the back of the box fan and have similar results. The air purifier industry is more about aesthetics than it is function. 0. https://twitter.com/LazarusLong13/status/1425517352624…

> The air purifier industry is more about aesthetics than it is function Well, sure, to a point. I could make my own air purifier (like the one you link) but it looks awful. I would not want that in my home. So yeah, aesthetics do matter. Its not the only thing but it is a factor.

I almost want to replace my old Electrolux EAP300 with an IKEA one because it looks less like shit. The EAP300 is just this big floor beheamoth with no aesthetics. Lower filter costs wouldn't be bad either (if the IKEA filters last as long as the Electrolux ones, they're under half the cost). It's just so hard to justify as long as my old air filter still functions.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#185

Post by KoftaBob » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

kettleballroll wrote: post #132

idoh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

site:reddit.com works and I use it often. But I do wonder how long it will be until reddit starts to get gamed as well (if it isn't already).

It regularly gets gamed very hard. You can sell old high karma accounts for quite a lot of money, because those are best for such things. It's also a thin line between astroturfing and fill on spamming products. But I have no doubts that some reviews on Reddit are payed for.

> You can sell old high karma accounts for quite a lot of money, because those are best for such things.

Why is the accounts karma important for something like that? Does the Reddit algorithm favor high karma accounts when deciding what posts to rank higher?

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#186

Post by elabajaba » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

edgefield wrote: post #55

hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

rtings.com is very good for certain types of products like TVs, headphones, etc.

I trust their measurements, I just don't like how they score things, and people tend to just use their scores instead of looking at the pros+cons and measurements. (they weight all the different subscores, and add them up, so eg. if there was an excellent monitor except it had a 100:1 contrast ratio, it'd still get great scores despite having such a huge flaw that most people would consider it to be essentially unusable).

It's really bad for HDR monitors, where an edge lit "fake HDR" monitor can get a 7, while failing the basics that are necessary to give a proper HDR experience. Something like TFTCentral or HardwareUnboxed's HDR checklists, and just straight up failing monitors that don't meet all the requirements would be much better than their current (imo misleading) system that can give good SDR monitors high HDR scores, when they're terrible at HDR.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#187

Post by matthewfcarlson » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

I’ve quite enjoyed rtings.com but they only cover a few categories. I remember growing up that my grandparents were huge consumer reports fans

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#188

Post by underhill » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

I feel like the crowd-sourcing / SEOing / optimization of reviews on the internet has, for all its benefits, made everything too noisy and untrustworthy. I know myself and a lot of other people first search reddit now instead of google because it's impossible to get anything written by a real nonbiased human otherwise.

For similar reasons I've used things like Yelp less and less and tried to use professionally editorialized reviews (Eater, The Infatuation, Bon Appetit, etc) for food, well-known travel sites/bloggers for hotels, etc. There's still some paid incentives there too obviously but I can at least calibrate it to how much I align with the publication.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#189

Post by s0rce » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

99_00 wrote: post #47

jefftk wrote: post #41

Agreed: the Wirecutter's emphasis on HEPA is not right for a purifier that sits in a room. Once you get to reasonably high removal efficacy (even 90%, let alone 99.5% vs 99.97%) flow rate matters far more than filter spec. I also wish the Wirecutter would publish more detailed logs. They just check the particle density after half an hour, which is generally super low. Instead they could show the particle density curv…

>HEPA is not right for a purifier that sits in a room Why not? I don't know anything about HEPA, or quality, air flow, etc.

HEPA makes sense if you filter all the air, ie. the filter is inline like in a laminar flow cabinet/cleanroom or directly inserted in an air stream filtering 100% of the downstream air. In those cases you care a lot about how many particles make it through since they will cause yield loss or contamination in the processes.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#190

Post by tediousdemise » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

Consumerlab.com is a paid but excellent resource for obtaining information about various foods and supplements that we can find on the shelves.

Just last night I was eating some of my favorite organic roasted seaweed from Costco and spit it out half-way when I read that they are laced with lead, cadmium and arsenic, which was confirmed by independent third party testing [0].

This website has opened my eyes that many foods and supplements we have access to are deceptively unsafe.

[0] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/seaweed-snacks-and-foods...

> All of the products contained the heavy metals lead, cadmium, and arsenic at levels often exceeding tolerable upper intake levels. It is no secret that there are heavy metals in seaweed snacks, in fact, many have warning labels indicating that they may pose a risk of reproductive harm or cancer (typically due to lead), as this is a legal requirement for products sold in California under its Prop 65 law. However, labels don't tell you how much lead or other heavy metals are present in a product. We even found that one product without a warning was more contaminated than one with a warning. Our report shows exactly how much iodine and heavy metal contamination we found in each product (see What CL Found).

Individual concentrations can be found in their product table for paying customers. The subscription cost is worth more than its weight in gold.