Product Review:

The Sharper Image® Ionic Breeze®

After hearing all the rave, seeing the infomercials and advertisements, and fielding questions from our customers about The Sharper Image Design's® Ionic Breeze® Quadra® air purifier and trying to understand how it cleans the air with minimal power consumption, we were excited to get our hands on a unit and see for ourselves how it stacked up against other air purifiers.

We found it ironic that the Ionic Breeze® lacked the two things customers generally have the most concern for: noise and filter replacement cost. This immediately concerned us because, in their simplest form, air purifiers are nothing more than mechanical machines that are built to cycle the air in a one-room environment. The Ionic Breeze® has no fan to cycle air. Most of the noise and the power consumption of our other air purifiers generates from the fan. Simply put, you must circulate the air to clean it.

The collection rods on the Ionic Breeze® that are said do the heavy cleaning, fill up almost instantly. Once the surface area on the rods is full, there is nowhere for allergen and other particulate to go except back into the air.

Furthermore, it came to our attention that in a recent independent test, the Ionic Breeze® came in last. Our findings are concurrent with the independent test; the Ionic Breeze® is extremely ineffective in reducing airborne allergen and particulate from the air in your home.

Additionally, we found that Ionic Breeze® produces ozone. Unlike many of our competitors, we find that ozone generators produce harmful emissions and pose a significant deterrent to air quality. If our word is not sufficient evidence of the dangers of ozone generators click here to read what the EPA has to say about ozone generators that are sold as air purifiers. While The Sharper Image® dispels that the Ionic Breeze® is not an ozone machine, we frown upon any machine that dispenses ANY ozone into the air you breathe. (The only unit we offer that uses ozone is the Blueair 501 and 402, both of which use ozone as a pre-filter and effectively capture all ozone in the HEPA and carbon filters)

In summary, The Sharper Image® is a wonderful marketing company that does a excellent job of marketing consumer products, and in designing the Ionic Breeze®, The Sharper Image® did a great job of addressing the two most frequent customer concerns: noise and filter replacement cost. Unfortunately, while addressing the above concerns, they left out the two most important elements of an air purifier: a fan and a quality filter.

We are very pleased that The Sharper Image® has a 60 day return policy because we're definitely taking ours back, and we recommend that you do the same. If you have already purchased an Ionic Breeze®, we recommend you do what hundreds of our other customers have done and return it. If you are considering purchasing a quality, room specific air purifier, do your homework and do not purchase the Ionic Breeze®.

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