Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan Is Smart, but Too Big
An air purifier can greatly improve the air quality in your home by reducing allergens and dust—as long as it’s the right size for your space and you change the filters often enough. And smart air purifiers should have two big advantages over traditional “dumb” purifiers: they can tell you exactly when to change filters, and they can tell you exactly what is being removed from the air. The Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan ($269.98), like the Dyson Hot+Cool I reviewed last year, tries to do everything an air purifier should do while being a fan at the same time . While all of the Dreo’s features work quite well, I’m reluctant to recommend it based on two factors: size and price.
Dreo is big, but the app is easy to use.
Dreo stands nearly four feet tall and has a silver fin and a rotating turret. It’s not that it’s unattractive, it’s just impressive. Air purifiers, like fans, work best in the center of the room, but you don’t want to put this in the middle of your living room—not only is it big, it’s also heavy, weighing almost 18 pounds. . (More on this later.) No assembly was required, however; it was ready to go as soon as I removed the plastic. At this point, I simply plugged it in and paired it with the Dreo app and the pairing process went flawlessly. Additionally, you can add Dreo devices to your Alexa or Google Home hub. While many new products use Matter to connect products to HomeKit, Dreo is not currently compatible with HomeKit. (I found some tips online for workarounds to get Dreo to work with HomeKit, but I haven’t tested them.)
The Dreo app interface uses a lot of white space and doesn’t try to do too much: it simply tells you the air quality, temperature, and remaining filter life. You can view data for the last twenty-four hours or thirty days. The app allows you to set a schedule and turn the tower on and off by activating the fan, purifier, or both.
With products like this, sometimes it seems silly or unnecessary to have extra smart features, but being able to turn the purifier on and off remotely from another room or even away from home does have some benefits. Yes, you can use them in an automation system to react when air quality exceeds a certain threshold, but the ability to turn them on and off remotely means you don’t have to go into the room where the purifier is running – and that means you don’t have to keep track of all those tiny remote controls. This is a real advantage over the Dyson Hot+Cool (not smart) as there are several functions that can only be activated using the remote control rather than the buttons on the faceplate.
The second reason the smart app proves its worth is that it tells you when to replace the filter. As a general rule, purifiers should be replaced every six months, but this is just an estimate. If it was particularly smoky or dusty, filters would be more useful; if it was clear, you may be replacing them too early. I was a little horrified to see that my filters were 75% charged after just a month of use, meaning I’d have to replace them far too infrequently. ( Filters for Dreo cost about $39.99, by the way.)
Where the application fails
Here’s where the app falls short with this purifier: Dreo only offers very basic μg/m3 measurements, which is a common way to express the degree of air pollution. As I write this, Dreo is reporting 10ug/m3, which it considers “excellent.” This means that there are ten micrograms of pollutants per cubic meter of indoor air. What it doesn’t do is tell you what that contaminant is made of. In comparison, the Dyson Hot+Cool isn’t smart, by which I mean there’s not much you can do with the app – you control it with face buttons or a small remote control that you’ll probably lose (at least I did did so). . But Dyson tells you on the front of the machine what actually makes up the pollutants it filters, such as gases, particulates and volatile organic compounds. I didn’t consider this a major Dyson feature until it disappeared in the Dreo.
One evening, for example, the Dreo app reported “poor” air quality in the room when the up/m3 reading jumped to 270. I’d like to get to the bottom of why this happened, but without more information about what Dreo was pulling. out of thin air, I can only assume it was related to the dinner I was preparing in the next room. However, you can get some additional information from the PM rating it provides, which relates to particle size (specifically particle material). I placed the purifier in my office because I was doing drywall work there, and I could see the purifier significantly reduce PM levels from the moment I turned it on until several hours later, and I could even see how much cleaner the air was afterwards.
It has a quiet fan that creates the feeling of a real breeze.
I’ve tried a few new Dreo products and one of the aspects that I really like is the quality of the wind the fan creates; it doesn’t look like a fan, but like a real breeze. This is likely due to the two motors driving the Dreo fan, which is also very quiet even at maximum fan and purifier settings. Dreo reports the tower’s maximum output to be 38dB, and I’ve never been able to measure its rise, but in sleep mode it drops to 25dB.
What I especially liked about the Dreo fan interface is that you can adjust the power from 1 to 10 using the slider, and the power does not jump, but smoothly transitions to the next value. There’s a sleep function in case you’re not scared of that monster in the bedroom, or you can set it to automatically turn on and off yourself. The tower can swing at an angle of up to 120 degrees.
Is the size of the Dreo justified?
I’ve been looking at Dreo a lot over the past few weeks, trying to figure out where it would fit. Maybe the dentist’s office or classroom are large spaces where large appliances won’t be obvious and the design may appear industrial. and cool. But this is where the main problem I had with Dreo became apparent: when dealing with purifiers, you need one that’s rated for the size of the room you’re using it in. This is important because the purifier is essentially replacing the air in the room, and you want this to happen often enough for it to make a difference to the people moving through the space. A small purifier will eventually clean the air throughout your entire home, but clearing the air in a single room will take much longer than cleaning the air in a single room. If there is a wildfire burning nearby and smoke is a big problem, you need a purifier that is the right size for the room where you will need to ventilate the air every thirty minutes or less.
Dreo didn’t list a recommended room size for this purifier, so I asked them directly and they said “150-300 square feet.” I asked for clarification because there is a big difference between 150 and 300 square feet, and in any case it is an incredibly small area for a purifier of this size. I have five purifiers at home from companies like Medify, and they are effective for large spaces in a significantly compact size; but these are just purifiers (not fans), so maybe that’s not a fair comparison. The Dyson is designed for space at the higher end of this equation (290 square feet) but takes up a third of the footprint, while also having a heater on board. Both Dreo and Dyson filter down to 0.03 microns, which is average for purifiers, although some, like Medify, filter down to 0.01 microns, which is important for fighting viruses.
Dreo is good, but you can do better
Dreo works great. The fan operates easily, the air purifier cleans particles from the air clearly, and the price is not bad at $269.98. But you just can’t help but notice the size of the device; this is a serious obstacle to the functioning of the home. It feels like a unit designed for more industrial spaces, but it’s not designed to handle that kind of square footage. While the Dyson Pure line tends to be more expensive, at under $100, you can get the Dyson Pure Cool Gen 1 ($365), which is just a fan and a purifier. However, if you have some extra cash, for $749 you can get the Dyson Hot+Cool , which I often use year-round because it functions as a room heater, fan, and air purifier all in one. .