PuroAir 240 Air Purifier Review, Tested For 1.5 Months In My New York City Apartment

Sponsored: This article was produced in partnership with Puro Air.

When you live in a 123-year-old Brooklyn apartment, air quality is bound to be a concern. The basis of my concerns: lack of ventilation, close proximity to car traffic and dense population, and the wide range of toxic materials used over the last century (to name a few). 

My gas stove, for example, doesn’t have a functional ventilation hood. The light works, but because there is no exhaust pipe, I always crack a window when I’m cooking. But how much is that actually doing for my air quality?

Tired of hoping for the best, I decided to test out the PuroAir 240 Air Purifier to ensure the air I’m breathing isn’t nasty. 

PuroAir launched in 2021 with the mission to create commercial-grade air purification devices for the home. Despite the increasing number of air pollutants (e.g., wildfires and viruses), the brand was disappointed with the other options available on the market.

Before testing the PuroAir Air Purifier, my experience with air purifiers was fairly limited. The only air purifier in my apartment was in the bedroom, because I wanted to make sure the air I breathed while I slept was as clean as possible.

But I realized I was missing a massive area of potential toxicity: the kitchen. 

So many fumes arise in the kitchen, primarily from cooking with a gas stove—not to mention the odors from cooking. Add the fact that there is no working hood above the stove, and you have a recipe for nasty air.

I tested the PuroAir 240 Air Purifier in an approximately 600-square foot area. The space is a combo of a kitchen, dining room, and living room (but I was primarily focused on the kitchen). 

My apartment is located on the building’s garden level, which is for some reason the grimiest of floors. For non-New Yorkers, I find the garden level to be dustier, as it’s on the street level (I don’t have scientific research to back this up, but fellow New Yorkers can attest). 

As I mentioned earlier, the apartment was built in 1901, so there’s naturally more dust from crumbling bricks as well. 

Smells from cooking sometimes linger in my apartment for over 24 hours, which shows me that the airflow is also poor. 

The PuroAir 240 Air Purifier is designed for rooms up to 1,115 square feet, and targets cleaning out smoke, dust, VOCs, and pollen. The design is sleek and super easy to set up. 

All you have to do is remove the packaging, pop the filter in the purifier, and plug it in. When you start up the machine, it will automatically perform an assessment of the air quality, which can be read on the top of the machine on the automatic air sensor (red for poor, green for good, and yellow for the in-between).  

Polluted air can enter the machine from all sides (including the top), so it can handle more volume than you might expect. Given the device’s sleek and compact design, I was shocked to find out it cleans up to 1,115 square feet of space. 

For reference: The purifier in my bedroom is larger than the PuroAir 240 and covers a smaller square footage. This thing is small but mighty! 

When researching PuroAir’s filter technology, I found the device actually uses triple purification. There’s a pre-filter screen, then the high-efficiency PuroAir filter, followed by the high-efficiency activated carbon filter, which means it’s capturing all the way down to 0.1 microns. 

According to the brand’s website, “PuroAir can filter particles down to 700x smaller than a human hair,” which had me sold. 

The control panel (located on the top of the air purifier) has way more options than I was used to! There's a button to turn it on high, medium, low, or sleep mode (which turns the panel lights off) and there are also timer options (8, 6, 4, and 2 hours), along with an auto mode (my preference).

The best features, however, are the air quality indicator and the filter replacement meter.

The air quality meter is such a level-up feature on the PuroAir 240 Air Purifier because it provides me reassurance that my air is getting cleaned. As opposed to my bedroom air purifier, this machine is self-adjusting depending on what is happening in the room. I have real confidence it’s working. 

And the easy-to-read filter replacement meter allows you to forget about replacing the filter until it’s time. Simple as it may seem, every home has different air quality, so I like that this device doesn’t take a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to the timing for filter replacement. This takes out the guesswork!

Turning on the PuroAir 240 Air Purifier is super easy. You just hit the power button on the touchscreen control pad, and it’ll fire up. The air quality indicator will go through a calibration and then you’ll know the quality of your air. 

The first time I plugged it in my air quality was surprisingly green (meaning good), but it’s also the dead of summer here and I hadn’t used my stove that day.  

When I’m cooking rather smoky things (looking at you, steak), I pull the purifier up on the counter to get better access to the fumes. I love seeing the air quality meter turn from green to yellow to red and go into turbo mode (not the technical term) to address the sudden change in air quality. 

Within a matter of minutes, the meter reads yellow, and once the stove is off, we’re back to green in no time. It always amazes me how quickly the device cleans the air. 

For the month and a half I tested, I kept the PuroAir on auto mode so the device could adjust on its own. I can hear it kick into gear as I start using the stove. 

I’ll also note it’s a hot, hot summer here in Brooklyn, so I have a window AC unit running in the living room (which brings in air from the street), and we occasionally open the window in the evening on the rare occasion it cools off. 

One thing I was not expecting was how clean the room felt with the PuroAir plugged in. As I mentioned, there’s a lot of dust on the first floor of my apartment, and even with the daily vacuuming, it’s a constant dust battle. With the Puro running, however, the room feels cleaner and lighter.