Product Review: GermGuardian Air Purifier
Markus getting his air purified behind the GermGuardian Air Purifier
Like so many of you, my wife and I are meticulous shoppers. Whether it be online or in-person, we tend to put a lot of research into the things we purchase so that we know we're putting our hard-earned money on the proper products. There are so many options for even basic items like leashes and collars that it's easy to get lost in what we're buying.
We will be writing reviews as we purchase and use these items ourselves. As you do your research for products you're planning to buy, our goal is to add another layer to that research.
During these unprecedented times of COVID-19, we've become people who are a lot more conscious about the air that we're breathing. It's important for us to get fresh air where we can, but as dog owners stuck indoors and sharing space with a dog that's starting to shed, we cannot stress the importance of using an air purifier. The one that we use and are reviewing today is the GermGuardian 28-inch 4-in-1. We've had ours for a while now and we originally picked it up at Costco (we have a black one) and it's putting extra hours these days.
Growing up, I had pollen and dust related allergies. Around this time of year (not every year, but most years), I would start to get hay fever and my nose would be itchy and my eyes puffy. As I grew older, I seemed to have gotten past the hay fever, but it was still something that I considered when we were adopting Markus. What if his shedding got so bad that it flared up my allergies again? That's a concern that a lot of people have. Fortunately, we didn't have that problem and even though Markus sheds a lot, I believe that we've been able to keep the allergies at bay because we actively keep the air clean.
But what does that mean? Air is air, so couldn't we just open a window and let fresh air come in? While it would definitely help with the clearing the stale air, there are plenty of other things we can be doing to improve the air that we breathe.
For starters, we try to do anything fur related with Markus outdoors. Grooming a dog releases all types of things beyond the fur into the air such as pet dander. Fur is usually visible so we can easily vacuum it up when we see it, but thing that's much less visible and more likely to trigger people with allergies is the dander. The best way to describe pet dander is that they're tiny, even microscopic, flecks of skin - much like dandruff, but even smaller. Running an air purifier, then, actively catches and reduce the amount of dander that's in the air, giving us cleaner air to breathe and keeping the allergies at bay.
A shot of the settings on the GermGuardian Air Purifier
The GermGuardian comes with three settings: Speed, Timer and UV Mode. The speed setting works a lot like it does with a fan and at low, the machine runs so silently that we hardly notice that it's on. The timer setting works like a sleep timer, so if you're planning to leave the house or don't want to have it running overnight, you can set the timer up to 8 hours by one hour increments. The last feature that the purifier comes with is a UV light.
The UV light has the same goal of attacking microorganisms and germs in your space, but does it differently than the filter. If the goal of the filter is to trap microorganisms, the UV light actively attacks them to render them inactive, similar to the effect of the sun. That said, I can't speak to how effective the UV light is on this air purifier since I don't have the means to test air purity to that level.
Since we've purchased our air purifier, there's an updated version today that looks the same as the one we use, but now has WiFi and Bluetooth technology integrated. We don't have that one, so we can't speak to how effective it really is, but its basic function of purifying the air looks to be the same.
One of the frustrations that we had with this product was when we were changing the filter. We went to buy replacements, but we accidentally bought the wrong ones. Long story short, we weren't allowed to return the wrong replacements even though we never even took out of the box, so just be aware of that. I didn't discover this until after the fact, but all you need to do is open up the air purifier from the back, remove the old filter which will have the label of the replacement type that you need. I just didn't consider opening up the air purifier until the replacement came in, so I never saw the label.
It's recommended that the filters are changed every 6 to months. For us, because Markus' fur collects so much, we're changing it about every 6 months. If you do the math, the cost of the replacement filters adds up quickly. I'm usually a stickler for authentic products, but since the no-refund incident left a sour taste in my mouth, we've opted for alternatives. Through reviews and trials, we found an alternative filter that we can confidently say works as well as the original. I might even argue that the alternative works better than the original.
Whether or not you choose to go with a GermGuardian Air Purifier is, of course your decision, but I would recommend having an air purifier anyhow if your dog sheds a lot or if you have allergies. Dander is something that we don't normally see, but are most likely breathing in and the air purifier helps us limit the amount we inhale and keep our passageways clear. It's hard to put a value on something like the cleanliness of air, but take it from someone who used to have a bad case of allergies that it’s worth it!
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