The Homedics Deluxe 5 in 1 Air Purifier at Costco is a solidly built, highly functional air purifier that combines HEPA filtration with carbon based odor blocking and UV powered elimination of air borne viruses and bacteria.
There are some nice features about this air purifier but I am not crazy about the filter design and will be buying a different product.
Let me walk you through what comes with this air purifier and look at a few customer reviews to see if it will meet your needs.
Key Features
The Homedics 5 in 1 features:
- Five Stage Cleaning System
- Auto Mode with Particle Sensor
- Auto Off Timer
- Night Light Functionality
- Essential Oil Diffuser Tray
The filter has dimensions (W X D x H) of 10.1 x 10.1 x 25.3 inches and weighs 10.5 pounds.
The purifier comes with remote control but is not WiFi enabled and it does not Heat/Cool the filtered air like a Dyson air purifier.
Five Stage Cleaning System
The Homedics air purifier has a Five Stage air cleaning system. The five stages are:
- Mesh Prefilter (removes large particles such as cat hair)
- Carbon Filter (removes odors from pets, smoking, cooking)
- HEPA Filter (removes 99.97% of 0.3 micron fine particles)
- Ionic Ozone Generation Cleaner (makes filtration more effective)
- UV radiation (kills airborne viruses and bacteria)
I love that this unit has a UV radiation unit but I have concerns with other aspects of the five stage system. My two concerns about the five stage system are the ozone generating ionizer and the filter design.
Ozone Generating Ionizer
The use of ozone generation to purify household air is old technology that, in my opinion, has never been shown to be effective and may even be harmful.
The user manual for this air purifier states, “The ionizer produces less ozone than the UL-established limits of 0.05 ppm. Ozone may be harmful around birds and small pets. To prevent ozone buildup, use the ionizer feature in a well-ventilated area.”
Did you catch that last sentence? If you use the Ionizer feature then make sure the device is in a well ventilated area. Seriously? I have to take safety precautions to make sure the air coming out of a “purifier” isn’t dangerous??
I will follow this with a quote from an EPA article about the use of ozone generators for air cleaning: “Available scientific evidence shows that, at concentrations that do not exceed public health standards, ozone is generally ineffective in controlling indoor air pollution.”
I would absolutely never use the ionization function of this air purifier and have no interest in paying for a feature that I don’t want.
Filter Design
The Homedics purifier uses a single All in One True Hepa Filter to serve as:
- Mesh Pre-Filter for large particles
- Carbon Filter for odors
- HEPA Filter for small particles
On the positive side, this air purifier only has one filter which makes replacing it easy.
On the negative side, the ability of the HEPA section to filter out the fine particles is hindered by the fact that it is also filtering out large particles. To make sure the filter maintains adequate performance the manufacturer recommends that, ONCE A MONTH, you take the filter out of the unit and clean it with a vacuum cleaner.
Umm, no. I am not going to take apart an air purifier and vacuum it on a monthly basis.
UV Radiation Cleaner
UV radiation has proven to be highly effective at killing air borne viruses and bacteria. The UV radiation component makes this unit great for places like the waiting room at your doctor’s office.
I am not sure how useful the UV component is for home use simply because of family dynamics. For example, if my wife catches a cold or flu then I don’t think having a UV radiation unit in the corner of the room is going to protect me while we are sleeping in the same bed.
The UV unit might offer some level of protection in a home environment as long as you are diligent about staying well away from sick family members. And good luck with that if you have a sick kid.
Two Operational Modes with Five Fan Speeds
You can use this air purifier in either a Manual or Automatic mode.
Manual Operation
The Homedics has five fan speeds that determine how fast the air in the room is cleaned. The fan speed also determines how much noise the unit makes.
On the low end of the noise spectrum is the Night mode which is whisper quiet. On the high end of the noise spectrum is Turbo mode which is quite loud. In between are the fan speed settings of 1,2 and 3.
You can access any of the five speeds when the purifier is in manual mode by cycling through the “Fan” icon on the control panel or remote.
Automatic Operation
You can press the center icon of an “A” surrounded by an arrow to place the purifier into Auto Mode.
When the unit is in Auto mode it uses a particle sensor to determine the air quality in the room and uses an LED display to show the results as either Good (Green), Fair (Yellow) or Bad (Red).
When air quality is “Good” the auto mode will set the fan speed to 1 while Fair gets a fan speed of 2 and Bad gets a fan speed of 3. If the air quality is Bad or Fair the fan will run at the target setting until the air quality improves at which point the fan speed is automatically lowered.
Just like the filter, the particle sensor needs to be vacuum cleaned on a monthly basis.
Auto Off Timer and Night Light with Child Lock
You can choose to let the purifier run continuously or to shut down after a certain period of time.
To use the timer you press the icon of a clock face and select if you wat the unit to turn off after 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours.
The unit cannot be programmed to shut down or start up at exact times. That is, you can’t tell it to shut down at 8:00 pm or to start back up an 10:00 am.
Right beside the Timer icon on the control panel is the Night Light control icon. Pressing this button lets you either turn off the lights from the control panel or light up the blue night light that is under the control panel.
One last feature of these two buttons is that if you press both the Timer and Night Light button simultaneously for three seconds then it locks the control panel so small children can’t mess with the settings by randomly pressing buttons.
Essential Oil Diffusing Tray
I am not a fan of essential oils so please pardon my bias.
This unit has a tray insert that allows you to place a pad soaked in essential oils into the exhaust of the unit.
Please, help me understand, if the point of this device is to remove particulates and chemicals from the air, then why is it designed to make it easy to emit chemicals into the air?
Is this a device to help you cover up the smells that the unit was unable to remove from the air??
This is a feature, along with the Ionizer, that I would never use.
Cleaning Performance
The Deluxe 5 in 1 Air Purifier is designed to clean the air in a 343 sq ft room with 10 foot ceilings in 12 minutes. On Turbo Mode it can clean the air in a 1,555 sq ft room in one hour. The Turbo Mode gives it about 50% more cleaning power than the Shark Air Purifier 4.
The cleaning ability is based upon the tested CADR values for Smoke. I was unable to find any documentation of third party verification of performance such testing against AHAM Verifide Standards.
Costco Value
You can buy the Homedics Deluxe 5 in 1 air purifier at Costco for $179.99. You can buy the same model at Lowes for $249 which means you will save 28% if you purchase the purifier at Costco.
While this unit is a Costco bargain I am going to take a pass and will probably be purchasing the Winix AM80 at Costco instead.
What is the little square door above the filter do? I cannot find its use in the manual. But, I do see it on the picture on this site.
Thank you.
The little square is the particle sensor that helps measure air quality.