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Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

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Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#291

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

highwaylights wrote: post #97

I have three of the Fornuftig and am very pleased with them, save for the noise being quite bothersome at the highest setting. They’ve helped quite a bit with a pollen allergy. Getting good information has been a nightmare and it’s nice to see a post calling out the utter nonsense that gets spread about HEPA and filtration, with no thoughts to diffusion. The big problem I have now is that I would like to upgrade to t…

I'm not qualified at all to do a deep dive, but I've got a FORNUFTIG and a STARKVIND and can give you some thoughts.

The STARKVIND is a LOT bigger than the FORNUFTIG. Assuming you're getting the standalone model, it's probably the depth of two or three FORNUFTIGs. This really surprised me. The table version is very interesting because it eliminates that problem by being a functional piece of furniture.

The STARKVIND filters are different than the FORNUFTIG, so no filter sharing. Conceptually they're the same - a paper particle filter plus an optional carbon filter. At its highest setting it's louder than the FORNUFTIG's highest setting, but at its lowest it's virtually inaudible. If you leave it in Auto mode you'll hear it ramp up when it detects particulates in the air and ramp down when the air quality returns to normal.

The main reason I bought the STARKVIND was the Zigbee interface. The IKEA Home Smart app is functional, but after the initial setup I only use Home Assistant to control it. In Home Assistant there are sensors for particulates and filter life, and controls for fan speed and mode (auto/manual). I'm using the IKEA gateway for my STARKVIND since deCONZ support wasn't completely ready at the time. Overall, it lives up to expectations as far as control goes.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#292

Post by zucked »

throw0101a wrote: post #139
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…

> 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? I like America's Test Kitchen for kitchen-y stuff. Project Farm (on YouTube) for tools / DIY stuff perhaps.

ATK is, as far as I am concerned, the gold standard for kitchen reviews.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#293

Post by csours »

etchalon wrote: post #134
jefftk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explains it well: Here’s a thought experiment: Take a 1000 cubic feet room and a purifier that processes 100 cubic feet of air per minute. (I follow Wirecutter in using vulgar imperial units.) Assume pessimistically that all particles are the worst-case size. If you run that purifier with an E12 filter, the fraction of particles that will remain after one minute is .1 × (1-.995) + .9 = 0.9005. That’s beca…

The idea that the difference between 0.9005 and 0.90005 is "small" is … weird. The moment I read that I checked out on the rest of the authors opinions.

The author explicitly states that it's small in the home use context. If you're talking about medical or cleanroom manufacturing contexts, yes it's a huge difference.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#295

Post by jve »

Great article. I myself have IKEA air purifier.

Has anyone used https://www.mi.com/global/mi-air-purifier-3c ? Can it achieve lower noise per CADR? IKEA one on full speed is pretty loud (I may not know what loud air purifiers are, but I get concert of sounds at home I want to minimize - refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, electric water boiler, air purifier)

Does it work via LAN with Home-Assistant? Are they "smart" filters you are forced to change or "dumb" ones?

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#296

Post by Splendor »

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…

For synthesizers and other music gear, there's loopop on YouTube. His reviews are so in-depth that they can often function as replacements for the product's user manual.

https://www.youtube.com/c/loopop

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#297

Post by etchalon »

1986 wrote: post #169
etchalon wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the difference between 0.9005 and 0.90005 is "small" is … weird. The moment I read that I checked out on the rest of the authors opinions.

Why? It's a 0.05% difference, seems pretty small to me.

The difference between 99.5% and 99.95 is the difference between an event happening 1 in 200 times and happening and 1 in 2000 times.

It's a 10x difference.

The author's "I'll just times .1 by the percent of flow, and produce very small numbers that look fine! See! The numbers are so small!" trick is just … wrong.

The author implies that the difference can be made up by the volume of air being processed, but that would only be true of a sealed environment, where no new pollutants are added to the air.

Setting aside the basic misunderstanding of probability, and ignoring that home purifiers don't operate in sealed environments, the IKEA unit does not process 10x the amount of air as the other units, so the point is mute.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#298

Post by mschild »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #230
bayindirh wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also Rtings ( https://www.rtings.com ).

I wish rtings had a Boolean on tvs so we could search explicitly for non smart models. That is basically the only thing else I’d want from that site, it’s really good.

I think the main problem is probably finding any mainstream consumer TVs that are non-smart. I have looked and beyond some obscure brands or short of incredibly expensive commercial models there are barely any options.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#299

Post by Dylan16807 »

daenz wrote: post #288
Dylan16807 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about emergencies, or are you talking about "the low-income perspective"? Because you said you were doing the latter, and I was criticizing your words using that context. In that context, your words come across as judgemental. If you're actually talking about the former, then you chose your words pretty poorly.

The low-income people are often the most impacted when an emergency hits. I'm sure if someone had $1000 for an air purifier, they could get one the next day, in most circumstances. Though I'm not low income (now), I got a reminder of it when local materials were totally gone and I would have had to pay through the nose to keep my place breathable. It was bad. The hallways in our apartment building had a haze of smoke…

> The low-income people are often the most impacted when an emergency hits.

Yes, but it's not relevant to low-income people in general. For someone getting an air purifier in a normal situation, they can go for an ikea model about as well as any other solution. Especially considering the box fan uses a ton of power, costing money.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#300

Post by mrandish »

bayindirh wrote: post #198
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…

There is also Rtings ( https://www.rtings.com ).

Yes, for the things they cover Rtings is excellent.
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