Winix 4-Stage PlasmaWave® Technology Air Purifier

UPDATE 3: . Nov 17 2023, and about 9 months in, I just changed the filters, using genuine Winix filters. The HEPA filter was pretty clogged, as heard from the higher, noisier airflow after changing it. The filter change light had come on a few days ago. I have blown out the HEPA filter several times but I guess a 6-month change is going to be ideal for our home, with all the pet hair and dander. . The unit continues to run flawlessly on speed '3', 24/7, and noticeably reduces the amount of dust in the living room. The air quality LED is always blue. I read that the sensor only senses odors, not dust, which is probably why. The only exception is when it picks up my freshly applied cologne! . Definitely a recommended air purifier, though I'm also going to try the Coway Airmega AP-1512HH in our bedroom since there is an Amazon deal. It is also a highly commended and comparable air purifier. It senses dust level, though the carbon filter is inferior. . UPDATE 2: . 6 weeks in and the purifier is definitely reducing the dust in the living room. I have cleaned the filter elements a couple times and noticed a couple issues. The screen has two snap-in features halfway up the sides. If you don’t ensure they are pushed in fully, dust will bypass the screen, as shown by a gray build-up on the carbon filter at those two areas. Those snaps also cause a problem when removing a dirty screen. The screen vibrates as you pull it out and the snaps disengage with some force. The dust on the screen falls off and makes quite a mess (see photo). You cannot stop this from happening. Other than these, the purifier is working well. . UPDATE 1: . It's been a week and the dust level in the living room is noticeably less, as seen by the much fewer particle count on the surfaces. It's also helping in the adjacent dining room. It's been on speed 3 24/7, only on Turbo when I vacuum. I've already rinsed the prescreen filter and used a damp cloth to wipe the light accumulation from the mesh on the carbon filter. About 3 days in, I researched the best location for an air purifier. I found some articles that recommended raising the unit 2 to 3ft off the floor. So, I placed my Winix on the side table. It seems to be working well. While I can't prove it's any more effective, it will certainly improve the room air circulation, being more in the center of the airspace. This should also capture more airborne particles. . The LED bar has only once changed from blue to red. It was because of my cologne!! I had just showered and applied my cologne. As I walked into the room, I saw a red bar. A few minutes later it went back to blue. I got my cologne bottle and sprayed it a few feet from the air purifier and it immediately turned red. The sensor certainly picks up odors! . I'm still very pleased with the Winix 5500-2 and my daily electricity consumption is not noticeable. Being an engineer, I have a spreadsheet to record my daily kWh year-round! ;-) . ORIGINAL REVIEW: . We have 2 dogs and a cat, in a 100-year-old home with air heating blown through old wooden and rusty tin ducts and floor spaces. So, there’s lots of dust. In my research, I saw that dust is never eliminated by air purifiers but can be reduced if it’s suspended in the air and near the filters. It never hurts to have clean air to breathe either. . The Winix 5500-2 seems to have good performance reviews and at just $145 is excellent value, especially since it contains an activated carbon filter with pelletized carbon within a honeycomb and mesh housing, and not the thin impregnated fabric, which has little absorption capacity and does little. The replacement filters aren’t too expensive when you consider the carbon and pre-screen filters are both washable and will extend the time between filter replacement. The power consumption is low too at only 13.2W on Speed 3, the most practical setting in my opinion (see later). 1kWh of electricity is only consumed after 76 hours, or 3 days, of use. So, in a month, running 24/7, you’ll only consume just under 10 kWh; just over a $1 where I live. Not bad at all. . When you first plug the unit in and turn it on, it will start up in AUTO mode and it will cycle through the colors on the air quality LED bar as well as play a little tune. On subsequent uses of just the power button, the cycling does not occur and the chime plays, though the color might change as it samples the air quality. It always starts in AUTO with the PLASMAWAVE function on. You have to manually turn that off if so desired. NOTE: the air quality sensor just senses odors, not dust or pollen particles. It’s very limited in its usefulness. I have a nose to tell me if there are odors! I’d never seen anything other than a blue bar in my living room. Neither the smoke from a single match near the sensor, nor the scent of a candle burning in the room, changed it from blue. However, my wife made a Grilled Cheese sandwich in the kitchen and when I went into the living room, the LED bar was red. Interesting, as the smell was very minimal! I switched to AUTO mode to see if the fan would spool up to Turbo mode, as it should when indicating red. It didn’t. Then the bar changed back to blue. Not sure if it was a software glitch or what. I see little use for the sensor with its limited sensing. 1 Star lost! ☹ The lights are very annoying even in a brightly lit room and absolutely blinding in the dark. They are so bright yet cannot be turned off. The only time they do go off is in the dark, due to the light sensor, but only if the mode is on AUTO, or if you manually select SLEEP mode. The Auto and Sleep mode white light indicators remain on all the time and are still bright. In AUTO mode at night, if the sensor doesn’t detect any odor, as mine doesn’t, the speed is at miniscule SLEEP speed as that is the predetermined setting for nighttime, which is basically of little use. So, for effective air purification at night in your bedroom, either enjoy the room-illuminating, blue backlight with the fan speed set at 1 or 2, or place a piece of thick card over the lights. This is a bad design feature and loses another Star in my rating! ☹ . For noise levels, Max. level 4 (turbo mode) is very noisy. Just like a simple, cheap window fan. In my living room, it’s not practical to have it running on 4 while watching TV. If you like lots of white noise, this is the setting for you. On setting 3, the TV is watchable and you just get a low-level, pleasant fan hum. My video tries to capture this, and the bright lights. It’s perfectly acceptable at level 3 and has good air cleaning performance. Levels 2 and 1 are very quiet, but of course you are sacrificing fan speed and performance. Speed 3 is half the cleaning power of speed 4. My heating air vents make more noise than speed 3 when the heating is running. I just leave the air purifier on speed 3, with PLASMAWAVE on, cover the LED display with cardboard and run the Winix 24/7. Initially, I did run at speed 4 for an hour, along with teh ceiling fan, to clean the air after vacuuming. This is useful whenever you see lots of floaters, or you have smells in the room you want to eliminate quickly. . The exhaust flow from the top vent is biased toward the right, when looking at the front of the 5500-2, by about 30 degrees. This is because the fan is a hamster wheel design, sucking into the center, blowing out radially, and there are baffles inside the exhaust chamber below the top vent, directing the air out of the fan up and to the right side. That is actually useful to develop a circulating airflow around the room, especially on speed 4. . Per Airpurifiersfirst, CADR scores for dust are 243, pollen 246, and smoke 232. Fan airflows are… sleep mode 35.3 cfm speed 1 70.6 cfm speed 2 91.8 cfm speed 3 123.6 cfm & speed 4 (turbo) 240.1 cfm . I did not receive the wall-mounted caddy for the small remote. Not happy about that omission, but I wouldn’t have used it anyway. So, no biggie. The remote is limited in its functions (no Plasmawave or timer control), and it’s not that necessary in my opinion. I rarely change the settings and I’m up anyway when I want to. You may like having it. . CONCLUSION: . The Winix 5500-2 seems to be working very well. It sits in a 15ft x 16ft x 10ft high (2400+ cubic ft) carpeted living room, with a staircase and a 7ft wide opening into an adjacent 14ft x 14ft x 9ft (1770 cubic ft) hard floor dining room. After vacuuming, dusting and running for an hour in turbo mode, then setting it to speed 3, it’s been running 3 days and the air is actually pretty dust free. This afternoon, the sun was shining in the window and that’s when you see all those particles floating in the air. I saw nothing, literally. Only when the dogs walked through the sunlight did the shedding dander show up in their wake. I could actually see some particles float into the air purifier, some simply landed on the carpet. No air purifier is going to get everything and hair will still pile up on the floor. Turbo mode will get more, certainly not all, but at the cost of excessive noise and energy. The surfaces in the room usually collect a fine dust layer very quickly, one you can write in! So far, after 3 days, I have negligible dust settling compared with before the purifier, and just a few larger particles on the glass TV stand, for example. So that has been a pleasant surprise. 😉 Looking at the front face of the black carbon filter, I can see that fine dust is collecting on the mesh. It’s a lighter shade than the back face. That material is really fine as it has managed to get through the pre-screen. It’s good that this filter is washable! At $145 for this level of performance and filtration (go see Airpurifierfirst’s comprehensive reviews), I do think this is an excellent buy. It has its faults with those annoying lights and a limited sensor. If those were addressed, this would be an absolute winner. I might well buy a second unit, but will see how it performs longer term, and report back. Fingers crossed I don’t need to invoke the 2-year warranty!