Breville Easy Air Purifier

I’d always considered myself lucky to live in a city like Sydney. The beaches are beautiful, we are surrounded by nature and, generally speaking, the air quality is pretty good. That was, at least, until about November last year.

Then the fires started, and the smoke came. While we are fortunate to be nowhere near the nightmare that is the bushfires, we have had to deal with the almost constant blanket of smoke that sits over Sydney. Many days the air quality is far, far below that considered to be of acceptable quality.

As a parent of a small baby, that is terrifying. Not as immediately threatening as a raging bushfire baring down us, but terrifying in the sense that we have no idea what the long-term implications are of constant exposure to poor air on tiny lungs. Naturally, we want to do everything we can to provide the best environment for our children, so an air purifier quickly became a necessity.

Breville Easy Air Purifier

We ended up with the Breville Easy Air Purifier through a process commonly known as pure dumb luck. To be honest, it was the only air purifier left in the last shop I went into on a particularly ash-choked day in December. I literally took it out of the salesman’s hands as he was taking it to the shelf. I didn’t have time to research, I just grabbed, paid, and hoped I’d done the right thing.

Now that we have been using it for over a month, it’s time to share my thoughts, so that you might be able to make a more informed choice.

First Impressions

Like all Breville products I have used, the Easy Air Purifier looks good, feels well built, and is easy to use. The instructions are straightforward and the touch-buttons on top intuitive. I had it up-and-running within minutes of opening the box.

The biggest thing to look out for is the plastic packaging around the replaceable air filter, which comes already inside the Easy Air Purifier. It must be removed before first using the device, although there are plenty of warnings reminding you of this. There is even a sticker thoughtfully placed over the power button, so it should be pretty hard to forget this step. After all the packaging is removed, the Breville Easy Air Purifier is ready to use.

The Easy Air Purifier reminds me of an oversized smart speaker in its appearance. It is a reasonably large white cylinder, although not overly obtrusive when placed to the side of a room. At its lowest setting, the Easy Air Purifier sucks in air extremely quietly – I don’t notice that it is running. As the fan speed is increased, the noise does become more noticeable, although it is still not a significant intrusion until the fan is placed on the “high” setting. The highest setting is “turbo” mode. I tend to use the turbo mode to clear the room quickly when I first turn it on, before dropping back to a less noticeable fan speed. Sleeping with the Easy Air Purifier running, even on medium, has not disturbed my sleep, or my baby’s.

Quality

I have no way of scientifically measuring the air quality inside my house, so I can only base this on my anecdotal observations from my own use of this device. Keep in mind that there are many environmental factors that can have an impact on the results achieved with any air purifier, such as the size of a room, the quality of sealing around doors and windows, the proximity to pollutants etc.

The Breville Easy Air Purifier is designed to be effective in small spaces – rooms up to 25 square meters. That makes it ideal for bedrooms, which is where this purifier is mostly used in our house. When running, it appears to have a significant impact. These rooms often fill with the distinctive smell of bushfire smoke, and the Breville purifier greatly reduces, or entirely removes that smell.

The most scientific of tests that I have conducted is best described as the sniff test. This is where I stand directly over the top of the purifier, my face about 10 centimetres away from the fan and… sniff. The smell of the air escaping the purifier is noticeable in its absence – that is, the lack of any odour. It is strangely enjoyable. At night we usually close the baby’s door and run the Easy Air Purifier. Entering his room the next morning, the air feels fresh to breathe. On particularly smoky mornings it is a nice change from the awful smell that had slowly seeped into our bedroom through the night.

Sometimes we do bring it into the main living area. It would be unfair to judge the Easy Air Purifier in this environment, as it is clearly not designed for the larger space. Breville make two other devices better suited to larger spaces, as do other leading brands like Philips, Vornado and Dyson. That being said, something is better than nothing, and the purifier does seem to have some impact.

For instance, today is a particularly awful day for smoke pollution in my part of Sydney. As I have been writing this, the smell of smoke in my main living area has been very noticeable. The baby has been napping in his bedroom with the purifier running, and there was no hint of smoke when I went in to get him up. I now have the air purifier running on turbo mode about a metre away from where I am sitting, and the smell of smoke has definitely reduced. I think it is reasonable to say that the Easy Air Purifier appears to have an impact in a larger space, probably without being completely effective. As I said before, the Easy Air Purifier cannot be judged harshly on this performance, if anything, it punches above its weight.

Specifications

The Breville Easy Air Purifier uses a four-stage air purification process. A HEPA filter captures tiny particles, a pre-filter deals with dust, a carbon filter eliminates smoke and odour, and a shortwave light-based stage can be turned on to reduce bacteria and viruses. Breville call it a Microbe Shield and it’s a handy thing to have with sneezing kids around!

The Easy Air Purifier can circulate up to 92 cubic metres each hour and uses 12W power, which is similar to the power consumed by two LED lightbulbs.

The filter is disposable and replacements can be purchased at a RRP of $49.95. The pre-filter should be vacuumed at least once per month to maintain performance, and the filter should be replaced approximately every six months if used 24 hours daily, or twelve months if used 12 hours daily. The filter is extremely easy to remove and replace.

A timer can be set for two, four or eight hours. It is handy to have, but I don’t use it much. I just turn the purifier on when I’m in the room and off when I’m done. In the baby’s room it happily runs all night without any problems, and the low power consumption means that I don’t stress if I accidentally leave it running when I’m not around.

Unlike some of its competitors, the Breville Easy Air Purifier doesn’t come with an air quality indicator. I guess it doesn’t impact the performance of the purifier, but it would be nice to have that extra information.

Final Thoughts

The Breville Easy Air Purifier does its job well. It will happily sit in the corner of a room, sucking up the bad stuff and returning gloriously clean air, all day long without any fuss at all. Like every other Breville product I’ve purchased, it finds the sweet spot between build quality and price, making it a compelling option for purchase. If you are looking for a purifier for a small space, like a bedroom, the Breville Easy Air Purifier is hard to go past. If you need something for a larger space, like a living room, consider other options designed for the purpose.