Ionic Breeze?

[theodosia]

Does anybody have experience with the Ionic Breeze Purifier from Sharper Image? It sounds like it would be a Good Thing, because really we're up to here in cat dander in this house, not to mention general dust. I mean really, this is the dustiest house I've ever lived in -- even the apartments with forced hot air heating weren't in need of so much regular dusting. Of course, we didn't have three rather fluffy cats then, but still.

It's a wad of money (even if they have a buy-one, get another half-price deal going) all right, but one where I'm more interested in if the money is actually worth it.

How much trouble is it to clean the stainless steel blades -- do you have to take them out and wash them, or vacuum them or what?

I can go over to the Sharper Image that's over in the Pru mall near work tomorrow and look at them in person, but I'd sure like to hear actual user opinions here.....

Comments

[ajinamoto.livejournal.com]

I have one that I keep in the bedroom... when I remember. It's very good, but if you have a lot of dust and dander, you might need to keep it in the bedroom and freshen up smaller area. It's not hard to clean, but you have to make sure you dry the blades. You just use a sponge or a damp paper towel. It's very quiet, too. Yes, they're expensive, though.

When the blades get dirty it starts making a sort of static popping noise. Then I just clean them.

[sowilo.livejournal.com]

I think that debg has one, you should ask her.

[debg.livejournal.com]

I love my Ionic Breeze. I keep it in the living room and a small one in the sunporch, where there are two catboxes.

They actually do what they claim.

[makaidiver.livejournal.com]

I recently subscribed to Consumer Reports, and the Oct. 2003 issue covered air cleaners. Per their report, the Ionic Breeze has the best marketing, but is ineffective in cleaning air:

http://www.consumerreports.org/main/content/display_report.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=337559&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=333135&bmUID=1066703926899

(excerpts:)

THE RESULTS. The Ionic Breeze and the Environizer didn’t come close to the performance of the others. As the graph below shows, the Friedrich and Whirlpool have very high rates of air-cleaning. The Ionic Breeze and Environizer had very slow rates of cleaning, which did not improve over time; those two products never achieved the same low pollutant level that the Friedrich and Whirlpool attained.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The Ionic Breeze and the Environizer are quiet but ineffective. A comparable product, the Hoover SilentAir 4000, performed poorly in our standard test; we chose not to put it through any extended trials. Considering how slowly these three products worked, our advice is to avoid all three. There are much better choices.

Air-cleaning speed

The bars show the speed of reducing respirable smoke pollutants in our test chamber from 2,500 to 1,500 particles per cubic centimeter. The longer the bar, the better. The Friedrich and the Whirlpool (on low) were more than 25 times faster than the others [Ionic Breeze & Environizer] (on high)

[seainni.livejournal.com]

I dimly recall something about the problems of ionizing cleaners, but I don't remember what. Do they put ozone into the air one is breathing, or some such? Or maybe I'm thinking of a completely different sort of cleaner. (How unhelpful is that? :->)

[cindyamb.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention CR was underwhelmed, but I didn't think to have the cite.

[makaidiver.livejournal.com]

I'm loving CR these days. I bought the on-line service, too, when I was researching deck paints & stains. It's great.