Every company says their product is great, but few have the data to back it up. Here we'll explore the lab and real world test results of Aspen compared to other leading air purifiers.
When we designed the Aspen, we wanted a unit that has ultimate particle filtration efficiency AND excellent efficiency in terms of how much air it moves for the power it uses. This is very difficult to accomplish, since in general, increasing one decreases the other.
Filtration Efficiency
The filtration efficiency can be expressed as the percentage of particles of a given size that are stopped by the filters. We've had our filters tested by third party laboratories according to IEST-RP-CC001.6 standards (a standard for high efficiency HEPA filters) to verify that our Microparticle HEPA Filters meet the following filtration efficiency:
Removes 99.99% of particles down to 1.0 micron @ 280CFM
Removes 99.97% of particles down to 0.1 microns @ 280CFM
This means that every time the air passes through the unit, 99.99% of all the particles 1 micron or larger in that air are removed. How big is a micron? A micron is about 1/70th the width of a human hair, which is much smaller than you can see. Our Microparticle HEPA Filter has the highest filtration efficiency of any residential air purifier that we know of.
Power Efficiency
An air purifier's efficiency, or power efficiency, can be defined as how much air it moves and cleans for the power that it uses. So we define efficiency as clean airflow per watt. Airflow is commonly measured in cubic feet per minute, or CFM. Below is a chart of Aspen's efficiency on each fan speed (in blue) vs the closest competitor's unit (in red).
You can see we've achieved a much higher efficiency than the closest competitive unit on the market, especially on the lower fan speeds - which is most likely where the unit will be set to most of the time. The efficiency gains are due to three main factors:
- Optimized airflow design
- Optimized filter design
- Quality German EC fan
Here is another way of thinking about efficiency.
The above graph shows how much clean airflow Aspen produces per watt that it uses vs the closest competitor's unit. This is important because watts are a measure of the power the unit uses, and you pay money for that power. You can see from the graph that in order to get 100 CFM of clean air you need to pay for about 70 watts of power with the competitor's unit, but only 10 watts with Aspen. That's a savings of over 85% with Aspen! So for every $100 in electricity that you would spend on clean air with the competitor's unit, you would spend less than $15 with Aspen.