The Blueair 411 Auto is a sleek, modern looking air purifier for the home that you just might
have seen across your Instagram feed earlier this year. Right before allergy season here in the US,
I saw ads for this thing everywhere online and I ended up getting one.
So I'm going to take you through what it's been like to use the Blueair over the past six months,
the top features, downsides, and if I recommend getting the Blueair 411 Auto.
First, let's talk about design and why you would want a device like the Blueair 411 Auto.
Air purifiers have been around for a while now but have recently taken off due to the
Covid-19 pandemic because they clean your air and some are rated to specifically kill viruses,
and bacteria and to be used in medical settings. The Blueair 411 Auto follows a similar setup to
a lot of good air purifiers out there. It has a fan that draws air into a filter which will catch
particulates from the air and then it releases clean air out through the top of the unit.
What makes the Blueair 411 Auto so different from its competitors with its design
is the small footprint this device takes up and how quiet this air purifier runs.
The design overall is very clean and minimalist. It sort of reminds me of the two-tone design
of the original Google home with the prefabric filter at the bottom and the white plastic top.
The pre-filter fabric also has a very nice velcro area at the back that allows you to
hide the power cord of the unit. Now, Blueair is headquartered in Stockholm,
Sweden and the company prides itself with its Swedish design prowess. So
with the products it makes, you get this really great simple modern aesthetic.
But it's an air purifier, who cares about aesthetics you may ask? Well, I argue that
aesthetics do matter in this case, because in order to work properly, typically air purifiers
need to be out in the open so you want them to blend in with your home's furnishings. And I think
Blueair did a really good job making a device that can do that. When you order a Blueair 411 Auto,
you'll get the default gray fabric prefilter, but you can also choose to switch that out for
a different color and they're rather inexpensive and can be found on places like Amazon for $8.99
here in the US and I've linked those down in the description below in case you're interested.
Now, even if you tuck your Blueair into a corner of your room, it has a 360 degree air intake.
So generally it'll still work in that scenario though, I would not recommend putting it so close
to a wall or another object that they're touching. The Blueair has a three-part filtration system
using the fabric prefilter on the exterior of the unit, which is machine washable.
Then, a filter on the inside, which is a combination of a particle and carbon filter,
which can help eliminate odors from cooking, smoking, and pets. As far as maintenance goes,
the LEDs on the top of the unit will glow red when it's time to change the filter on the unit,
which should last anywhere from six to nine months according to the company.
And so far after six months of use, I have not had to change my filter yet.
Replacing the filter and fabric prefilter is easy. Just un-velcro the power cord and unplug the unit,
twist the top of the unit off, take the prefilter fabric cover off, which will
then reveal the unit’s filter and then remove the filter from the filter ring to put on a new one.
The filters for the 411 auto cost $18.69 cents here in the US when
you subscribe to Blueair filter replacements subscription offering,
otherwise they cost $21.99 for a single and can also be purchased on sites like Amazon. Now,
one of the big differentiators with this air, purifier is the auto part of its name.
Blueair brought a one touch auto mode to this air purifier which automatically adjusts the fan
speed based on the real-time conditions, reported by the integrated particle sensor on the unit.
The LED light on the front of the unit will tell you the current status of your air quality:
blue for good, yellow for moderate, and red for poor.
In the six months I've had my Blueair 411 Auto, the situation's where I’ll see it ramp up the
fan are when I fluff my duvet and that typically puts more dust into the air, which it picks up,
or when I'm cooking and that puts more particles into the air or even when I sneeze
and I didn't quite make it to my elbow, it'll ramp up the fan up in that situation as well.
Being able to just set and forget about the air purifier and have it monitor your air quality
is a huge advancement in how these things work,
compared to what you had to do before, which was just choose a fan speed for the purifier.
The top of the 411 auto has a single button that you press to turn on auto mode or set,
a specific fan speed tap it once for auto mode and all three LEDs on the top, will light up
it again, for low fan speed/night mode where the LEDs will fade out,
tap again for medium, and then again for high, which is the setting where you can really hear it.
But on medium, and especially on low, which is usually where this unit sits when it's in
auto mode, I can't even hear the fan. It's dead silent.
One reason Blueair is able to achieve such a low noise operating volume is thanks to its HEPAsilent
technology which is exclusive to Blueair products. What this technology does is combine electrostatic
and mechanical filtration together which allows Blueair to use filters that are less dense,
so the air purifiers are typically smaller and don't use true HEPa filters,
but still have similar performance and also allows them to run almost silent on their lowest setting.
Now, that information comes directly from Blueair and with air purifiers in general,
because you can't see what they're actually filtering in the air with your own eyes,
I think it's important to check out third party sources to see
how well these air purifiers have been tested and how well they're performances
against the competition. Sources, like Wirecutter, CBC News, and Consumer Reports.
Because there are a lot of air purifiers on the market today that cost less than
the Blueair 411 Auto or cost way more that do not perform the way you think they will.
Thankfully Blueair purifiers were found to perform well against the competition by all three sources
I just mentioned and are recommended by both Consumer Reports and Wirecutter
and a I’ll link those reports in the description below. Now, you'll notice that some publications
only tested other Blueair models like the 211 Auto for example. The main difference
between the Blueair Auto models are the square footage of the rooms that they're rated to clean.
The 411 Auto can filter the air at a rate of five times an hour or about every 12 minutes in a 190
square foot room to help lower particle levels and maintain a comfortable environment in a room,
like a small bedroom or home office. All right, and that's a little bit about how the Blueair
411 auto works, and the features I like about it. Now, let's talk downsides and recommendations. And
the only downside I found with this device is with its night mode. I wish it was automatic.
If you want to turn the LED off, so it's not on where you're trying to sleep,
you have to manually move the air purifier out of auto mode to the low fans setting.
It would have been better if Blueair had built a light sensor into this device.
That way the device could sense whether or not it's in total darkness, and then if it
is, it could just shut off all the LED lights, no matter what mode its set to.
Other than that, I haven't experienced any other downsides.
So now let's talk recommendations. Do I recommend getting one? Yes, over the past six months I've
used my Blueair 411 Auto extensively, mainly in my bedroom, but also in places like my garage where
my car battery died and the cars windows were down and I couldn't get them rolled up and then there
was this funky smell in the garage. So I put the Blueair there and it was able to eliminate that
funky smell in the garage thanks to its carbon activated filter. In fact, I was so impressed
with the odor elimination features of the Blueair, I bought a second 411 Auto just for our laundry
room, to keep down some musty smells that can come in from time to time during the summer.
I would recommend getting a Blueair 411 Auto to anyone who wants a small air purifier for small
sized rooms, like a bedroom, office, maybe a small kitchen, or a laundry room, even your
garage. And if you need an air purifier for a larger sized room, then I'd recommend looking
at the Blueair 311, and 211 Auto products, and I've linked them in the video description below.
Now, Blueair also has some really intriguing other air purifier lines as well like their
new DustMagnet air purifiers set to come out later this year, that are designed
to catch airborne dust before it lands on your furniture. Which should down on the
amount of dusting you have to do in your home and then there's their HealthProtect line of
air purifiers that are specifically designed to protect against viruses and bacteria.
If you have any further questions on the Blueair 411 Auto, make sure you leave a comment below.
I hope you found this video helpful and informative. And if you did and liked it,
make sure you hit that thumbs up button below. And subscribe to the channel to see more 6 Months
Later Reviews on tech and home products like our Roomba i7 robotic vacuum cleaner review,
or our review of the Chromecast with Google TV and don't forget to check out our monthly newsletter
that shows everything we publish each month, plus some great text stories and that's linked
in the video description below. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.