Coway Airmega 150 vs IQAir HealthPro Plus

“The best course of action is to ventilate your house sans purifier and reside elsewhere if possible. If the outdoor air is quite humid (above 60% relative humidity) and your windows are open, this could prematurely saturate the sorbent media inside and shorten the life of the filter. The IQAir HealthPro Plus is extremely likely to be inadequate if you have loads of new materials off gassing. The V5 Cell filter for gases weighs only 5 lbs. This model is meant for filtering particulates and low to moderate levels of gases. Heavyweight sorbent media purifiers have \~15 lbs. to 34 lbs. typically of activated carbon and work quite slowly. The sorbent media beds—whether activated carbon, activated alumina, or synthetic zeolites—are often quite deep and require proper ["dwell time" or "residence time"](https://www.emcelfilters.co.uk/carbon-filters-frequently-asked-questions/). This results in lower post-motor air flow and therefore slower cleaning. Examples of this purifier type are the IQAir GC or GCX series, Austin Air, Airpura, and AllerAir. To boot, some gases are not well-adsorbed by something like plain or untreated activated carbon. Impregnated activated carbons can improve removal efficiencies for certain VOCs. A modified medium like potassium permanganate (KMnO₄) impregnated activated carbon can oxidize certain pollutants. But the KMnO₄ impregnated carbon can off gas as it becomes saturated. (In general, you need to replace any saturated sorbent media for two reasons. One, it no longer works to remove gases. And secondly, saturated media left in operation can desorb, meaning it releases trapped gases back into the air.)”

“So the bad news here is that the AirMega 150 moves around half the air of the other two. It has no onboard ionizer (which many consider a good thing), and it has green-HEPA medical grade filter with antimicrobial properties, so that's a plus, but it DOES move less air. It's quieter and looks nicer, but the CADR doesn't lie. In this case I'd advise to get the Levoit. I'm NOT a Levoit fan - in fact, I think they're generally a garbage company. But in this case it's CHEAPER, moves more air, has quite a good HEPA filter, and a carbon grid (which neither of the Coway models here do). HOWEVER, turn off the stupid smart features and cover the light when you get it. The air quality meter is a lie, the smart features just make it work worse. Turn it on, leave it on, and it'll be fine.”