Holmes Air Purifier Reviews for The Best Pick
Holmes air purifiers are one of the products of Holmes brand of products, which has been in the air purifier business for over 15 years. They have three types of air purifiers with a different designs including a tower air purifier and desktop/mini air purifier:
- Air purifier with true HEPA filters or also known as Holmes Allergen Remover (Holmes HAP 726-U, Holmes HAP 756-U, Holmes HAP 716-U, Holmes HAP 8615-U and Holmes HAP 706-U),
- Air cleaner with HEPA-type filters (Holmes HAP 2400B-U, HOlmes HAP 424-U,Holmes HAP 242-UC, HAP 1200-U and HAP 412W-U)the odor grabbers.
Under these three main categories, Holmes offers a number of air purifiers that have a pretty good price range, from $22 for the smallest odor grabber to over $200 for Holmes air purifier with a true HEPA filter whereas the room coverage goes from 80 to 400 sq feet. In regards to the price, even the top of the line Holmes air purifier is much cheaper than the top rated air purifiers in the market today.
Of course, as they say, you get for what you pay for, and Holmes air purifiers, although being in the business for more than 10 years have yet to make it to any top 10 listings for air purifiers.
Improving your indoor air quality is the reason why you would be interested in getting an air purifier. Statistics show that indoor air can be much more toxic than the air we breathe when we are outdoors. This being so, it makes sense then to want to purify the air in your homes as much as possible.
Unless you have major problems with allergies, asthma, sinus, and the like, a Holmes air cleaner might just be what you need. It will not cost you much, but don’t expect the first degree of air purification. What you can expect is cleaner air and is therefore more suitable for people looking for all around cleaning.
The Holmes Air Purifier in Review – How The Holmes Air Purifier Works.
If you are planning to buy an air purifier, it would be best to know how the whole system works. It’s quite simple. Basically, every indoor area, whether its the office, garage, workshop, factory, home or retail outlet, has polluted air. The pollutants come from different sources like cooking, pets, office machines, chemical fumes, air conditioning, exhaust fans and vents, and from people.
The problem is that indoor air rarely get to leave the room unless you open your windows and air out the room. During bad weather, this becomes very difficult to do. Thus, we have the air purifier.
Air purifiers like the Holmes air purifiers come with filters. Air purifiers work by sucking the air, and then letting the air pass through a pre-filter. With the pre-filter, large particles are captured – similar to the filter of your air-conditioning unit.
The next stage is the activated carbon filter which takes care of the odors. It’s important to note here that the amount of carbon in Holmes air purifier is not large enough for a proper gas control, but for minor control of gases such as cooking odors, it is adequate.
The next stage before releasing the air back into the room is either the HEPA filter or the HEPA-Type filter. This is where majority of the air impurities are trapped. Some Holmes air purifier models have a permanent filter which eliminates the need to replace HEPA or HEPA-Type filters. HEPA-type filters are not true HEPA, and therefore have less efficiency in trapping air pollutants, especially the particles sized 0.3-2 micron which are particularly important to capture for people with allergy or respiratory disease. You can check out our Holmes HEPA air purifier reviews here.
With Holmes though, even the true HEPA does not live up to its theoretical efficiency value, which is 99.97% of particles sized up to 0.3 micron, because the way the Holmes air purifiers are constructed. Basically, with Holmes air cleaners, bypassing occurs, so that not all air sucked into the machine pass through the filters.
Different degrees of bypassing is very common with cheap air cleaners such as this, and is only eliminated altogether by the more expensive premium air purifiers.
Finally, there is also an additional feature known as the ionizer which can handle the tiniest particles and chemical fumes. Basically, the ionizer sends out negative ions which then stick to suspended air particles. Those charged air particles then fall down to the floor and can subsequently be vacuumed. Or, those charged air particles can re-enter the machine and stick to the HEPA filters with higher efficiency.
The main drawback of using this air purifier is the release of ozone, a potential lung irritant, albeit within the safety limit imposed by EPA.
For a Holmes air purifier to work, you need to turn it on for several hours a day, at the very least.
The Positive Features of The Holmes Air Purifier
- The most prominent advantage of a Holmes HEPA air purifier is the fact that they are incredibly cheap. You will not have to shell out a lot of dollars just to get cleaner air.
- The Odor Grabbers are great for dealing with indoor air smells. It uses the very reliable Arm and Hammer baking soda which are known to be a very good household cleaner. Apart from using a carbon filter, other Holmes air purifiers also enhance their capability in odor removal by using Arm and Hammer odor grabber.
- Filter changing dial is available to remind you to change the filter. This is not a sophisticated sensor, just a simple dial which dials with clocking mechanism.
The Drawbacks of The Holmes Air Cleaner
- As a stand alone, the Holmes HAP will not be sufficient to clean your indoor air of the smaller particles in the air.
- You will be better off using the Holmes air purifier as a back-up system, or as an appliance for general cleaning. You cannot expect extensive air cleaning from the Holmes, but you will notice that the dust will be taken care of. Mainly visible particles will all but disappear, but a big fraction of the invisible ones, which are the more dangerous ones, will remain.
- Quality control is unreliable, and you take a hit or miss chance buying a Holmes. In other words, it either works or it doesn’t.
- Filter seals are unreliable and tend to break down.
- Carbon filter/prefilter needs to be replaced every 4-6 months and the HEPA filters should be replaced every year, depending on the model . Although the prefilters are cheap enough (most at less than $5 apiece), the true HEPA filter, ranging from $high 40s to $80, are not so cheap. Also, some of the models require more than 1 HEPA filter and prefilter every time you change. So, while the unit itself is cheap, it seems that the company makes up the loss by selling more filters.
- Ozone, a potential lung irritant, is released by the ionizer attached to the machine, although the level of the ozone released is still within the safety limit imposed by EPA.
- The use of simple ionizer may result in accumulation of charged dirt particles around the air cleaner, for example on the wall, on the table, and so forth. When allowed to accumulate, they can be hard to remove.
What Kind of Particles Are Trapped With The Holmes Air Purifier and Who Needs This Air Purifier The Most?
Generally, you can expect the most barest and simplest standard of air cleaning. This means that the large particles will be dealt with. But you can forget about the smaller particles, much more so those that are less than 0.3 microns or gases.
Bigger dust, pollen, animal hair, bigger mold spores, human hair, and mild odor such as cooking odor is what you can expect to be removed from your indoor air with the Holmes air purifier. This will tell you that this is definitely not the best air purifier machine you can get for someone with even a mild allergy, much more someone suffering from chronic respiratory problems.
All in all, Holmes is not actually an air purifier. It is more appropriately called Holmes air cleaner because it does not purify air; it cleans air. For people looking for cleaner air and minor odor control, this cheap air cleaner is very suitable.
Still, an air purifier that does an ok job at cleaning the air is much better than none at all. That is, as long as the person using it is not bothered by allergies or other ailments. Also, it is best not to use if you have low resistance to viruses and bacteria because chances are the Holmes air purifiers will not be able to eliminate these effectively for you.
