Airth AC Air Purifier Review: Air Purifiers Under Rs 1,500? Meet The Right Combination Of Smarts & Simplicity
Airth AC Air Purifier Review: The best gadgets are often the ones that bring a simple and cost-effective solution with a whole lot of smarts. Airth's purifier is one of them.
Airth AC Air Purifier Review: As Winter seeps in, AQI levels in Delhi and most other cities have started to resemble 4-digit ATM pins. With concerning amounts of PM2.5 and PM10 in the air we breathe, purifiers have become an absolute necessity in almost every household. Now, air purifiers don’t come cheap. Be it top-shelf brands like Dyson or entry-level offerings from the likes of Philips and Honeywell, you will have to prepare to dish out at least Rs 10,000 to get some semblance of air purification in your home or office space. What if I told you there is one air purifier that comes at under Rs 1,500, but still cleverly manages to filter air in your sizeable bedrooms?
Airth, a New Delhi-based startup has managed to cleverly mix IIT- and IISc-developed technology with an appliance most of our homes or workspaces have already installed - air conditioners. All you need to do is fit an Airth AC Purifier on your AC (split, window, or cassette variant) and et voilà, you have a fully functioning air purifier in your service.
Airth AC Air Purifier Review: Quick Pointers
What I Loved:
- Cost-effective and smart
- Saves buying yet another home device
- Can deal with PM2.5 effectively
- Easy installation
- Low maintenance
What I Don’t:
- Doesn’t work for ACs without heating mode
Clever? Yes. But Is It Effective?
Airth’s air purifier uses technology developed by IIT Kanpur and IISc Bangalore and brings it to your home rather ingeniously. These air purifiers are nothing but slabs of air purifiers with a special coating that is fitted to your AC machine.
Installation is not a headache either. If you have a split AC, the purifier comes with magnetic strips that get fixed on top of your machine. If you have a window AC, the purifier uses adhesive tape to stick inside the air grille (see below). 
Now, all you need to do is your air purifier as you normally would, and the purifier with significantly reduce the PM2.5 and PM10 particulates in your room.
The clever bit here is that almost every household in India, certainly in cities and townships, has AC units installed. So, leveraging that by adding an effective purifier fitting is a cleverly cost-effective idea.
I tested the window AC unit and found that right after installation, in a closed-room scenario, the PM2.5 level dropped from 160 to an astounding 40 within a matter of minutes. Of course, since the purifier is fitted to an AC powerful enough to deal with the air within a room, this purifier is certainly more effective than an entry-level air purifier with a far less powerful motor and a much lesser room area coverage.
And these are HEPA H10 filters we are talking about, which are generally tested at 95 per cent to 0.3 microns, which is pretty clean and sterile for a home.
When I kept all the windows and the balcony doors open, the PM2.5 level generally remained within 50-75, which is a reasonable level.
It should be kept in mind that I was testing this at my South Delhi residence, which means the purifier has to deal with an insanely high level of pollutants to begin with. I’ve no reason to argue that in regions with comparatively clearer air, Airth AC Air Purifiers should work more effectively.
What About Maintenance?
During installation, the company personnel told me that one filter is enough to last between 12-18 months.
Now, of course, I haven’t yet got a chance to verify this bit yet, however, I have been using the AC Air Purifier on Fan mode for over a week now, and the PM2.5 on my air sensor stood steady with no major fluctuations.
Also, since this air filter is placed just outside the air grille, your AC unit also remains considerably cleaner, which could lead to a not-so-frequent AC maintenance schedule, which is a blessing.
What Are The Cons?
Now, while Airth AC Air Purifiers don’t have any glaring negative issues, there is one issue that felt like a headscratcher to me.
In Delhi and most other North India regions, the mercury drops to shivering levels during the Winter months. And not all ACs come with a super-effective heating mode. Matter of fact, when the Delhi Winter truly bites, even the innocent Fan mode feels like a spiny beast.
So, for now, it appears that without a heat mode on my AC, the Airth offering falls short.
Of course, another argument could be that you have to change your filter no matter what, so it’s not a one-time-pay solution. But, no air purifiers are. You have to replace the filters in those machines as well, and HEPA filters don’t come cheap.
Airth AC Air Purifier Review: Final Verdict
Let’s talk price tags. The window AC model is priced at Rs 1,349 on the official Airth website. The cassette AC model is priced the same, at Rs 1,349. The split AC unit comes in two variants - Winter (for 300+ AQI) priced at Rs 3,199, and Summer (for <200 AQI) priced at Rs 2,199.
I’ll just come out and say it. These are insanely cheap prices. Of course, you will need to have an AC in the first place to use them. But, if you look at the cost-effectiveness of it all (including the elimination of one more home appliance), Airth AC Air Purifier is just the right kind of technology that makes sense - lots of smarts with a gust of simplicity (the cheapness of it all is certainly alluring).
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