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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure? We had one of the bigger Blue Airs (605) in Beijing and I didn’t like using it at all. When it was a 150-200 day, I would just run it before sleep with the windows closed. On worse days, we ran it all night, but it was loud and made the air smell like ozone, giving me a headache. I’m so glad I live in the Seattle area now and can open the window at night.

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Making the air smell like ozone means it’s probably doing something unhelpful/actively harmful in addition to filtering. Did it have an ionizer or similar?

No, it’s a Blue Air so doesn’t include an ionizer, it just when HEPA filter.

Huh weird, seems highly rated, too. If it was loud in addition to the ozone smell and there was definitely no ionizer, I wonder if the motor was faulty.

It could have been fake. I bought it in a Chinese mall after all. 6000 kuai also. But I doubt it, I think it could have just been the stale air in the apartment getting to me, you can’t open the windows when you are using it of course.

A real HVAC with air filtering will circulate air from the outside, so is quite different.

Where is the ozone coming from then? Something doesn't seem right.

It was just a smell to me. I don’t think there was any ozone in there.

Arcing from poor quality brushes in a DC motor.

A filter alone doesn't ionize the air though...

You'll be getting a headache from the excess CO2 buildup with the windows closed. If you want to effectively control and monitor indoor pollutants, you also need to buy a CO2+PM2.5 portable monitor. They cost about $80 on Aliexpress.

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