- I'm Andru Edwards, and you're watching Gear Live.
(upbeat music)
A lot of smart home tech that we see these days
aims to reinvent common appliances
in a way that takes advantage of all the sensors
and connectivity that we have at our disposable.
Enter Molekule, a smart device
that not only looks to improve your indoor air quality,
but your quality of life as well.
What is going on TechSquad, Andru Edwards here,
editor-in-chief of gearlive.com,
and if you guys have been watching me
for any length of time,
you know that I am a big fan of smart home tech.
I'm a big fan of tech in general, obviously,
doing a tech channel for, like, 15 years now.
But I'm not just about tech that's cool
for the sake of being cool.
I really admire when I see a company take tech
and use it to not just give us something cool
or interesting to talk about or use,
but instead actually gives us something
that genuinely improves our lives
and makes our lives better.
That's why I'm such a big fan of the Apple Watch
and it's health features for example.
So, today we're actually talking about one such product.
Molekule reached out and asked
if I'd wanna take a look at their smart indoor air purifier,
and I took them up on the opportunity.
So, big shout out to Molekule for sending it over
and for sponsoring this video.
The Molekule unit comes in at eight
and a quarter inches wide by 23 inches tall,
and it weighs in at 18 pounds.
As you can see, it is a cylindrical unit
made of brushed aluminum with a leather handle attached,
making it easier to carry that 18 pounds around the house.
And the look of the device is one
that asks guests in your home to ask,
"Hey, what's that?"
It's eye-catching, it's curious,
and it turns into a discussion piece as well.
But that's not what Molekule is aiming for.
They're not trying to be a discussion piece,
they're to clean the air in your home,
and it does it in a different way
than your typical standard air purifier might do.
Now you've probably heard of HEPA filters before.
They're in air purifiers, they're in vacuum cleaners,
they're strong filters.
They've pretty much become the industry standard
in filters that capture pollutants in the air
and bring them into some sort of purification system,
or like I said a vacuum cleaner, et cetera.
And what the HEPA filters do is they capture,
literally trap those airborne contaminants
in the filter itself
but then the filters become dirty and full of contaminants,
mold starts growing, et cetera.
What Molekule is doing instead,
is using their patented PECO-Filter,
and PECO stands for Photoelectrochemical Oxidation,
and it uses nanotechnology to destroy pollutants
that are up to a thousand times smaller
than what a traditional HEPA filter can trap.
The membrane of the PECO-Filter
is coated with proprietary nano particles
and the filter's activated
by light shining onto that membrane.
This creates a reaction on the filter's surface
that destroys pollutants
by breaking down their molecular structure.
The PECO-Filter needs to be replaced about every six months,
while the Pre-Filter needs to be replaced
every three months.
Now together that's a cost of about $130 a year
or just under 11 bucks per month on average.
On top of the unit you're gonna find the touch display,
that's how you can control the different modes
and settings on a unit itself.
But being a smart home device,
you can also control the Molekule
from your smartphone or tablet.
The Molekule air purifier
can clean up to 600 feet of space
with 360 degrees of both air intake and output.
The touch display up top allows you to change modes
on a device as well as put the unit into and out of standby.
Now there are a few different modes,
so let's talk about those
and how each one differs from each other.
First up is the Auto Mode.
Auto Mode uses the settings that you put into the app
when you set up your Molekule,
so things like room size and if you have pets or not,
and automatically optimizes your filtration
for those settings.
Next up, there is Boost Mode, this is max fan speed.
Everything is firing on all cylinders.
The main goal and purpose of this mode is to clean
and move as much air through the Molekule as possible,
as fast as possible.
This works great if you're purifying a large area,
or if you have a lot of dust in the air at a given moment,
such as after vacuuming or doing a lot of dusting
in a particular room.
Next up is Silent Mode.
If you're trying to sleep, or you're trying to take a nap,
you don't want to wake someone,
you can put the unit into Silent Mode.
That turns the fans all the way down.
It still keeps purifying going,
but it's meant to not disturb you if you need some quiet.
Maybe you're on the phone,
maybe you're trying to take a nap, like I said,
it takes the volume level down to 30 decibels.
And last up is Dark Mode.
Dark Mode disables the lights on the inside of the unit
as well as dims the display in order to not disturb you
when you're using it in a dark room.
Similar to Silent Mode, maybe you're trying to sleep
or you just don't want light shining
in a room that you're in,
you can turn on Dark Mode
and the Molekule will go completely dim.
However, it should be stated,
you don't just wanna leave it in Dark Mode at all times
because that activated light filtration
that kills all the particles that I talked about earlier,
that requires the light to be turned on.
So it's still gonna filter your room,
but you do wanna use that light later on
to destroy any particles that have been found.
Now the question is, does Molekule work?
Does it actually provide a tangible,
noticeable difference in your home?
Now I'm not the only one that lives in this home,
but for me personally, what I found is that the Molekule
is really good at removing smell from the air.
So for example, let's say you cook something
that has a particular smell,
let's say fried chicken or some sort of fish
or really anything.
Usually when you cook at home
the food you make creates some sort of smell in the house.
What I found is that by turning on the Molekule
you can get the air to smell neutral again very quickly,
and that alone to me is very impressive
and I appreciate that very much.
I also have dogs here in the house
as you've probably seen in previous videos
and on my Instagram channel.
Again same thing, the smell in here,
it's odorless thanks to Molekule.
Now I personally don't have allergies,
so I can't really talk to the experience
of allergies pre and post-Molekule.
However, my wife certainly does have allergies.
Basically what we've been doing
is we've been using the Molekule downstairs
and then bringing it upstairs into her home office.
Again Molekule's 18 pounds, has that leather strap on top
to make it easier to carry up and down.
But still, 18 pounds up and down, back and forth,
what ended up happening is it got brought up to her office
and then stayed in her office,
and what she told me the other day was,
"We need to get another Molekule unit.
"We need to buy another one of these because it's so good.
"I love it so much in my office,
"I wanna have one downstairs at all times, as well."
So in her opinion,
as someone who does suffer from allergies,
she has found a difference when using the Molekule
in her home office versus when she didn't have it prior.
So in her opinion, as an allergy sufferer,
Molekule is well worth it.
Now of course, it should be said
that this is not a miracle cure for allergies,
but as we've experienced here,
it actually does make a real difference in the air quality,
a difference that you can actually sense when you use it.
Now that said, let's talk about the price.
The price of the Molekule right now is $799.
So, 800 bucks for the Molekule unit itself
and as I mentioned earlier,
the filters are about $130 per year.
In fact, Molekule offers an automatic set it
and forget it plan
where they send you the filters you need twice a year,
so every six months you pay them $65
and new filters show up on your doorstep.
That is obviously a premium priced device.
Again using new patented technology,
you can't really expect something like this to be cheap,
and $799 certainly isn't cheap.
I know that, Molekule knows that as well
and they do offer a monthly payment plan
which allows you to pay as little as $45 per month,
depending on your credit.
Now that said, when comparing the pros
and cons of any device,
when the cons of a home appliance
are just that it's expensive
and kind of heavy to carry around,
and you're weighing that against
the pros are that it's quiet,
it's controllable with your smart phone, looks good,
and has easily replaceable filters
that you can have automatically delivered,
to me, Molekule is a winner.
There you have it guys, that was your look at Molekule,
a smart air purifier to improve your indoor air quality.
If you're an allergy sufferer, if you're someone with pets,
if you live or work in an environment
that has a lot of dust, debris, or pollutants in the air,
this might be something for you to consider.
Any questions about the unit,
let me know down in the comments below
and I'll meet you there for further discussion.
Speaking of smart home tech, if you miss it,
I recently did a video talking about
my five favorite HomeKit compatible, smart home devices.
I will leave a link to that here,
as well as down in the description below.
Drop a like on this one if you enjoyed it,
and don't forget to hit that subscribe button and bell icon
so you're able to stay up to date on all future videos.
Till next time, thank you so much for watching guys.
I appreciate your support.
I'm Andru Edwards and I will catch you in the next video.
(Guitar rock music)