Top deals for quality products

AirLabs AirBubbl portable air purifier can make air purification flexible and mobile. This device is expected to bring industrial-grade purification capabilities to small spaces (including your car).

In many ways, mobile purifiers make sense. If you drive a taxi or act as a carpool operator, or even if you are carpooling to pick up your kids from school, compared to the dirtiest home or office, the car provides a more compact and cramped environment. The guy sitting behind you is cutting his lungs? Well, this is why most Lyfts and Ubers installed plexiglass screens at the beginning of the pandemic.

AirBubbl is a USB powered device that can be strapped to the back of your headrest, as close as possible to your face (and the face of any passenger sitting behind you) to provide purification. It also made a bold statement about its capabilities, boasting that it is "the only air purifier that has been independently tested and verified, and is more than 99% effective in removing dangerous particles, airborne human coronaviruses, and gaseous pollutants." ." I cannot judge such medical claims, but they are at least worth considering.

The device is a compact cylinder, 12 inches long, with rubber straps that can be clamped to the headrest. Its maximum airflow rate is 22 cubic feet per minute. Although it is small, it is sufficient for a small space like the interior of a car-especially considering that the clean air blows directly to your head. The device can be disassembled after 1,000 hours of operation to replace the filter ($50 each), and the outer tube can be cleaned. AirBubbl's filter does not reach the HEPA rating, but AirBubbl says that its filter can handle 2.5 micron particles and volatile gases-all of which are related to the automotive environment.

Airbubbl is designed to purify the air in small spaces, including your vehicle.

The device can be manually controlled by a single button on one side, which cycles between "pressurization", normal and automatic modes, with the latter being a five-minute pressurization followed by a two-hour normal mode. If you connect the system to its single-screen mobile application via Bluetooth, you can access a more intuitive operating system, as well as a filter monitor that will alert you when it needs to be replaced.

First, you must complete the registration. A very primitive registration process requires you to provide a set of personal information, as well as an email address and password-all of this seems a bit too much for a device that can't even connect to Wi-Fi. We promised to confirm with you soon, but I had to wait a day before I received an apology email from AirBubbl, a temporary password (cannot be changed), and a promise that the new application will make it all better soon . This is good news, because for now, the registration process will not get worse.

After solving this problem, it's time to get the device to work. If you have a convenient USB port in your car, you will find it much easier to route the wires where you need to go; otherwise, you need to use the included 12-volt (cigarette lighter) adapter to power it. (The device does not contain a battery, so you need to always keep it plugged in when you use it.)

When you take the AirBubbl on the road, the first thing you will notice-in addition to the breeze blowing in the car-is how loud it is. At the specified 44dB in normal mode and 48dB in enhanced mode, no matter how loud you turn on the radio, it will be noisy and distracting. It is very difficult to talk to the person sitting directly behind you, at least for me.

Smart functions are absolutely limited; the app effectively provides functions to turn the device on and off and change modes; there is no timer, no settings, and no indication of the actual air quality in the car. The device cannot be set to adjust itself according to environmental conditions. Once, I received a push notification on my phone saying that I got a badge-probably because I just used the device-although there is no mechanism to view the badge in the app, so I'm really just guessing . Maybe this is the upcoming feature of the new version of the app.

The $299 AirBubbl is not cheap, but assuming its statement is accurate, it does seem to provide a reasonable and effective way to clean the air on the go-and the new app will undoubtedly help in this regard . However, I might avoid using the device when other people are in the car; it's just too noisy and too aggressive. Once they have paid the fare and hit the side of the road, they can light the fire at will.

This expensive air purifier is useful in small rooms or on the road, but it still feels like it's in the testing phase.

Christopher Null is a senior technical and business journalist. He regularly contributes to TechHive, PCWorld and Wired, and runs the Drinkhacker and Film Racket websites.

TechHive can help you find the best points of your technology. We will guide you to choose the products you will like and show you how to make the most of them.

Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.