5 Best Air Purifiers for the Baby in 2023 | Reviews & Buyer’s Guide
Environmental pollution has become endemic in the last couple of decades. On a larger scale, it has messed up the regular seasonal patterns and is constantly increasing the average temperature of the planet. On a micro level, it has tainted our surroundings. The emission of greenhouse gases in many forms has significantly dipped the air […]
Environmental pollution has become endemic in the last couple of decades. On a larger scale, it has messed up the regular seasonal patterns and is constantly increasing the average temperature of the planet. On a micro level, it has tainted our surroundings. The emission of greenhouse gases in many forms has significantly dipped the air quality of our outdoors.
Amid such a bleak situation of air quality outside the house, one tends to think that indoor air is healthy enough to breathe. But here is bad news. If the outside air is infested with greenhouse gases and other toxins, then the indoor air is tainted with dust, mold, mites, pollen, VOC, animal dander, etc.
In short, indoor air in any regular household also doesn’t have the same quality as you like to believe or would want for healthy respiration. Apart from worsening the symptoms of people suffering from asthma and other respiratory issues, poor indoor air is chronically bad for babies.
While having a proper ventilation system in the house is a great way to deal with a lot of airborne pollutants, dedicated air purifiers can help you in clearing out your indoor air for many allergens and micro-particles that ventilation fails to nab.
Before we delve into discussing and reviewing the best air purifiers for babies, it is important to understand why children in their infancy are more prone to health risks associated with breathing in polluted indoor air.
Immature Immune System: During the age of infancy, the human immune system is still in the development phase. In other words, it is still underdeveloped to pose a proper defense mechanism. Air pollution causes damage at the cellular level, but healthy adults can neutralize it with their immune systems. The immature immune system of babies, however, is not able to reverse those cellular damages, which may also end up with particular abnormal developments.
Rapid Respiration Rate: You must have noticed that babies breathe more rapidly than grown ones. This along with small body mass also put them at more risk of falling sick due to air pollution.
Close Vicinity to the Ground: Although air pollution is primarily airborne, many particles land up on the floor or hang close to it due to the gradient of cool and warm air. This makes all the babies more vulnerable who are crawling on floors or lying in their strollers.
In short, air pollution inside the house can be quite detrimental for babies and can have long-lasting consequences for their well-being. To assist you in improving the air quality of your abode, we have curated a list of 13 of the best air purifiers for babies. The numbering here is just for better readability and doesn’t indicate any preferential order.
Best Air Purifiers for Babies
Whether you’re looking for affordability, efficiency, or advanced features, we’ve got you covered. Here’s the list of the 5 best air purifiers for babies.
1. Honeywell HPA300 – Best for Large Rooms
- Two-stage filtration
- 5 filtration and circulation cycles in an hour
- An Amazon’s Choice product
This air purifier by Honeywell has a compact footprint. Moreover, it features a stylish black finish with a slim soaring body. These design features make it equally good for setting up on floors and tabletops. The capacity of Honeywell HPA300 is also good enough to serve any room in the house.
This air purifier features a two-filter system. First, there is a carbon pre-filter that traps all the odor-causing bacteria. From pets to cooking and perspiration, there are many reasons behind those unpleasant odors and Honeywell purifiers can amply deal with them.
After the air is treated for smells, it goes through the HEPA filter that captures the tiniest of the particles polluting the air. From bacteria to fine tobacco smoke, this state-of-the-art filter can trap particles as small as 0.3 microns.
Honeywell HPA300 carries out five cycles of filtering and circulating crisp air in the house. For all parents looking to protect their newborns from unnoticeable indoor air pollution, this Honeywell appliance is a great option. It is important to mention here that HPA300 is a bit heavy so we recommend you to set it up on floors instead of elevated platforms. Rabbit Air has overshadowed all its competitors with this comprehensive purifier unit. MinusA2 is nothing short of a technological marvel. It is shaped like an LED panel that you can use it in both standalone and wall-mount configurations. You can also customize these panels with different themes and designs. However, that’s not what makes Rabbit Air MinusA2 great. Even from that thin flat construction, this purifier unit has a 6-stage filtration system. Yes, you read that right. The filtration starts with a washable pre-filter that captures all the large particles. It is then followed by a medium filter that takes care of particles larger than 1 micron. During this stage, the purifier takes care of the most pollen, mold, and dander irritants. Then comes the impressive BioGS HEPA filtration that is better than regular HEPA because it prevents allergen buildup on the filter. In other words, BioGS have longer service life than standard HEPA filters. This state-of-the-art HEPA filter is followed by a charcoal-activated carbon filter that takes care of odors produced by the obvious and hidden pollutants including VOCs. Rabbit Air has also used negative ion technology to nab all those tricky particles that escape from the filters. Moreover, you also get one option for customizable filter operation. You can pick from odor removers, pet allergies, toxin absorbers, and germ defense filters. A single Rabbit Air MinusA2 can purify the air in an area of up to 700 sqft with 2 cycles per hour. Levoit Compact Air Purifier, as the name suggests, is an appliance with a smaller footprint. This makes it ideal for all room sizes. You won’t need to stress about space due to the compact cylindrical construction of this purifier that can easily be tucked in anywhere.
Like any top-quality air purifier, this one also features a 3-stage filtration system. From pre-filter to HEPA and then carbon filter, this layered filtration cleans the air for the tiniest pollutants and all the unwanted odors. We also like the ultra-quiet operation of this Levoit offering. If your baby has a very light sleep, then this air purification should be your pick. It operates on 3 fan speeds and can produce as low as 25 decibels of sound. This ‘noise’ is even lower in magnitude than a ‘whispered whisper’. In other words, you can purify the air around babies without disturbing their sleep. The purifier also features a soft blue LED light that transforms into a night lamp. Moreover, its control panel is really simple. Apart from the power button and fan regulator, it also features a filter-change indicator light. Coway has designed a technological marvel of an air purifier in the form of AIRMEGA 300S. It is a sturdy rectangular box that sits on four scuff-free feet and offers air purification in a whopping 1256 sqft area. If you are looking for a single air purifier for the entire house including the nursery, then consider buying this hardwearing air purifier unit.
But its capacity is not the reason why we are calling it a technological marvel. AIRMEGA 300S is fitted with pollution sensors that can create indoor air conditions in real-time. You can see it through the LED ring present on the front panel. Different colors indicate different conditions. LEDs turn blue, green, yellow, and red for healthy, moderate, unhealthy, and very unhealthy air respectively. You can run AIRMEGA 300S at five different airflow settings: high, medium, low, sleep, and smart. In smart mode, the fan speed adjusts itself according to the pollution in the air. You can also set the purifier on 1, 2, 4, and 8-hour auto mode. You can also streamline the use of this hi-tech air purifier with an iOS and Android-compatible app. The app gives real-time air quality monitoring. It also tracks the service life of the filter and can also be used to set the timer. This Coway air purifier is rightly called mighty. It features a 4-stage filtration system that makes sure every last particle of airborne pollutant in your baby’s room is taken care of. From pre-filter to deodorization to HEPA activity and air ionization, this compact purifier unit gives a holistic purifying treatment to indoor air.
Moreover, it features a pollution sensor that keeps you updated about the state of air in the room. A light on the top control panel changes color with varying air quality. The same panel also features an indicator light about the service life of the filter. The feature we like most in Coway Mighty Air Purifier is its energy-efficient auto-adjustment. If no pollution is detected for half an hour, it automatically switches to Eco mode to save energy. And even when it is running in regular mode, it consumes not more than 77 watts. You also get a programmable timer for hassle-free overnight use. The noise produced by its fan is also not that much. At low speed, it produces less than 30 decibels that are even lesser than feeble whispers. If you have noticed in the above reviews, one acronym keeps coming i.e. VOC. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) are highly potent irritants for the eyes, nose, throat, and respiration system. What makes VOCs more dangerous is that they don’t come from regular pollutants. It is usually a byproduct of different manufacturing processes. Moreover, its off-gassing nature is the other reason why it poses a health threat inside the house. It is the property due to which VOCs keep escaping from different items for an extended time period just like radioactive rays. For instance, a freshly painted wall can give off VOCs for several months. Similarly, new furniture, carpets, varnishes, and all similar products do the same and become a never-ending source of VOC inside the house. If you are setting up a nursery for the first time then there must be many new installations. In other words, the room will remain polluted with invisible VOCs for many months to follow. You can’t get around VOCs because they are an inevitable byproduct of many synthetic processes. However, air purifiers are an effective solution to deal with VOC infestation in nurseries. Any high-quality air purifier with multistage filtration (HEPA, carbon filters) can effectively deal with those harmful organic molecules that are responsible for causing serious respiratory issues among newborns. The above reviews give you enough air purifier options to pick for your house in general and nursery in particular. Nonetheless, we are going to share a couple of important features that you should always factor in while buying an air purifier mainly for nurseries. Always make sure the unit you are going to buy is fitted with a True HEPA filter. This is the only filtration mechanism that can deal with all sorts of pollutants plaguing any indoor. From pet dander to smoke and pollen to mold, it can take out the smallest airborne pollutants. However, beware of the tags like “HEPA-like” and “As good as HEPA”. They are neither HEPA-like nor as good. Always insist on a true HEPA filter. The activated carbon filter is the second essential component of any high-quality air purifier for babies. The best thing about these filters is that they are able to trap odorless, ever-present harmful VOCs. On top of that, carbon filters are also able to trap smell-causing bacteria. This feature proves to be of great value to keep the nursery fresh and free of diaper stinks. All air purifiers are fitted with fans. So, a slight noise is an unavoidable byproduct of these appliances. Nonetheless, there are many purifiers unit (nearly all in our list) that produce negligible sound. For nurseries, we would always recommend models that offer a fan mode operating on less than 30 decibels. Such low-noise levels help in ensuring trouble-free sleep for babies. Like vacuum cleaners, some air purifiers are also fitted with UV lights for the same reason i.e. to kill bacteria and germs for clean and crisp air. However, exercise caution while using purifiers with UV lights. If the nursery is set up with all new furniture and fresh paint, then we would recommend non-UV air purifiers. In the presence of a high amount of VOCs, there is a strong chance that the UV light in the purifier may end up creating a bad ozone layer inside the house that is not healthy for respiration at all. With air purifiers, you can transform a nursery into a spot for the healthy nurturing of infants. We hope that these reviews and buying guide will help you in picking the right model with desired utility at a reasonable price. Yes, air purifiers are generally safe for babies. However, it’s important to choose an air purifier that’s designed specifically for use in a baby’s room, as some models may emit ozone or other harmful particles that could be harmful to your baby’s health. Look for air purifiers that use HEPA filters and avoid models with ionizers or ozone generators. Yes, air purifiers can help to reduce the allergens in the air that could trigger allergy symptoms in babies. Look for air purifiers with HEPA filters, as they can capture 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns, including common allergens like pollen, pet dander, and dust mites. Yes, some air purifiers can make noise, especially if they use fans to circulate air through the unit. However, many models are designed to operate quietly, with noise levels ranging from 20 decibels (equivalent to a whisper) to 60 decibels (equivalent to normal conversation). The frequency of filter replacements will depend on the model of the air purifier and how often it’s used. As a general rule, HEPA filters should be replaced every 6 to 12 months, while pre-filters may need to be replaced more frequently. Some air purifiers come with filter replacement indicators that will alert you when it’s time to replace the filter. While air purifiers can help to capture airborne particles like viruses, they are not guaranteed to eliminate them entirely. Look for air purifiers with a high CADR (clean air delivery rate) for the best chance of capturing and removing viruses from the air. Yes, air purifiers can help to remove odors from the air, especially if they use activated carbon filters. These filters are designed to capture odors and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can cause unpleasant smells. No, air purifiers do not emit radiation. However, some air purifiers may emit electromagnetic fields (EMFs) that could be harmful if you’re exposed to them for long periods of time. Look for air purifiers that are certified by the FCC or other regulatory bodies to ensure they are safe for use. Thank you for taking the time to read our article on the best air purifiers for babies. We hope that the information provided was insightful and will help you make an informed decision on the best air purifier to suit your needs. Out of these 5 best air purifiers for babies, here are our top three recommendations: It’s always a delight to share our knowledge with you and help make your parenting journey smoother. We understand that when it comes to your baby’s health, safety, and comfort, only the best will do. That is why we carefully tested and analyzed the features and performance of these air purifiers, to assist you in identifying the top options on the market. By investing in one of our recommended air purifiers, you can ensure that your baby’s room is a safe and healthy environment, free from harmful airborne particles and allergens. As a result, both you and your baby can enjoy better sleep and overall well-being. Remember, a healthy baby is a happy baby, and a well-rested parent is an empowered parent. So go ahead, choose the ideal air purifier for your needs, and breathe easy! Related Articles Lasko 2554 vs. 2551 vs. 2511 | Tower Fans Compared & Buyer’s Guide 6 Best Wood Stove Fans | Buyer’s Guide 13 Best Charcoal Air Purifiers | Reviews & Buyer’s Guide 11 Best Bathroom Exhaust Fans With Light And Heater 9 Best Air Purifier for Cigarette Smoke Coway AP-1512HH Mighty Air Purifier Review Honeywell True HEPA HPA300 Air Purifier Review
2. Rabbit Air MinusA2 Ultra Quiet HEPA – Best for Advanced Customization
3. Levoit Compact Air Purifier – Best for Small Rooms
4. Coway AIRMEGA 300S
5. Coway AP-1512HH Mighty – Smart and Energy-Efficient Air Purifier
Best Air Purifiers For Baby Comparison Table
Product
Coverage Area
Filter Type
CADR Ratings
Noise Level
Energy Consumption
Smart Features
Additional Features
Honeywell HPA300
465 sq. ft.
HEPA and Activated Carbon
300/320/300
35-63 dB(A)
77 W
No
Turbo mode, electronic controls
Rabbit Air MinusA2 Ultra Quiet HEPA
700 sq. ft.
HEPA
200/180/200/200
20.8-45.6 dB(A)
7-61 W
Yes
Customizable front panel
Levoit Compact Air Purifier
161 sq. ft.
HEPA and Activated Carbon
40/50/30
28-52 dB(A)
0.8-8 W
No
Night light, 3-speed settings
Coway AIRMEGA 300S
1256 sq. ft.
HEPA and Activated Carbon
335/350/350
22-52 dB(A)
6-66 W
Yes
Air quality monitoring, app
Coway AP-1512HH Mighty
361 sq. ft.
HEPA and Activated Carbon
233/246/240
24.4-53.8 dB(A)
4.9-77.8 W
Yes
Air quality sensor, eco mode
VOC – The Danger Lurking in the Nursery
Air Purifier to the Rescue
Buying Guide For The Best Air Purifiers For Baby
True HEPA Filter
Activated Carbon Filter
Noise-Free
UV Light
Air Purifiers For Babies FAQ's
Conclusion