Blue Air is out with connected air purifiers that give you more control over the air quality in your home, which is needed now more than ever.
We’re big fans of air purifiers, even though it can be tough to measure their efficacy. Our home is brimming with air quality monitors that we use to determine how clear our air is and how air purifiers impact it.
Joining our collection is the Blue Air 211i Max, which isn’t the first Blue Air we’ve picked up.
Blue 211i Max review: An updated design
We’ve been using our Blue Air 211+ for years, and it has done an admirable job. But the design was a little dated, and the solid-colored pre-filter always looked dirty.
The new connected 211i Max has an updated appearance that we prefer. The bottom is a bit wider, allowing for more airflow against the filter and pre-filter, but it tapers slightly towards the top where the fan is.
Air is sucked in through all sides, through the pre-filter, through the filter, then exits out the top. This is a fairly standard airflow pattern among purifiers.
Directly on the top of the air purifier is a new touch-sensitive display. It shows the room’s air quality level, current fan speed, and Wi-Fi status.
With a tap, you can adjust the airflow for your room.
The top, with the fan and display, pulls free from the base, so you can’t lift it from there. The power cord is connected to this part, too.
Even though you can’t see it behind the stretchy pre-filter, the sides are an accordion filter that wraps around the structured internal support.
This is the filter you’ll replace every 6-9 months, depending on how much you run the air purifier. Blue Air’s filters claim to capture 99.97% of airborne particles, down to .1 microns in size.
It does this while being especially quiet. While certainly not silent when you crank the fan speed, it is one of the quietest air purifiers we’ve tried overall while still being especially powerful and suited for large rooms.
We have the grey pre-filter, but there are heathered colors in black, red, green, and tan, as well. None are vivid but rather are muted to help blend into your home.
For us, the pre-filters are key. After a month or so, we saw visible dust build up on this pre-filter, which we could wash and reinstall easily.
In other filters, these particles would quickly enter and reduce the filter’s effectiveness or even fail to be captured at all if the particles were too large. It also gives you a visual indication that the filter does something, even when you don’t see the small airborne particles.
Blue 211i Max review: Smart, but not smart enough
Maybe we have a chip on our shoulder, but no matter how good an app is, we’ll still criticize for lacking both Apple Home and Matter. It’s increasingly frustrating for companies to launch new products without integrating with other smart home products.
That’s the case here with Blue Air, and it is such a shame to have that omission on an otherwise standout product.
Realistically, you won’t need Matter or Apple Home. If left on auto mode, it spins the fan up and down automatically for you based on the room and that’s how we left ours.
Apple Home and Matter provide a simple way to manually adjust settings whenever necessary. Despite the absence of Matter and Apple Home support, this app is one of the best we’ve tested.
In the Blue app, your screen is split to show outdoor air quality from multiple locations. This includes your current location and the indoor air quality based on your air purifier.
The outdoor air quality section can expand, giving you a graphical view of the air quality index over time with month, week, and day views.
The indoor air quality summarizes your purifiers by location with their speed and the room’s air quality prominently displayed.
To quickly control the air purifier, you swipe to the left to toggle the power status or to the right to change modes. It’s a great UI effect that is quick and easy to do.
For granular control, you can tap on any of your air purifiers. On the detail page, a graph on top breaks down the room’s airborne particular matter, differentiating between PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 pollutants.
PM10 encompasses pollen, dust, and mold, PM2.5 covers fine dust, exhaust, and pet dander, while PM1 includes bacteria, viruses, smog, and smoke. We haven’t tested an air purifier that gets this granular in its air quality rating.
There are four fan speed settings for the air purifier, which can be set to auto or adjusted manually. There is a dedicated night mode that is very quiet and dims the top LEDs, and a child lock button to prevent mini humans from button mashing.
The app allows precise control over LED brightness and provides insight into filter lifespan. With the Blue app, you can create a custom schedule to switch modes, adjust brightness levels, and modify fan speed.
Blue 211i Max review: Clean your home’s air
At the moment, at-home air purifiers are more important than ever. If pet dander, allergens, cooking odors, mold, and bacteria/viruses weren’t enough to worry about, outdoor wildfires have been causing havoc to the air we breathe.
Here in Ohio, we’ve constantly had unhealthy air alerts for the outdoors, reaching an AQI of 230. It’s incredibly unsafe to breathe in for any extended period.
Your home will have an air filter for its HVAC system but it may not be cleaning that much of your air and must be running to work at all. As these environmental disasters appear to increase in frequency across the US, we’d prefer to cover our bases.
The Blue Air 211+ had been one of our favorites that we automated using an Apple Home plug and an air quality monitor. This is an upgrade for us with the 211i Max, which has its smart tech built in, a better design, and longer-lasting filters.
It’s easy to control, monitor the room, and replace. The accompanying app is fantastically well-designed, easy to use, and full of helpful information.
Our only complaint remains that we’d love to see Matter or Apple Home support so that we could control it from our phones or via our voice.
As long as you’re ok without that, be sure to check these out.
Blue 211i Max review: Pros
- Sleek, modern design
- Information-rich touch screen on top
- Multiple prefilter colors available
- Filters last a good 6-9 months and work in large rooms
- Easy to set up and control with accompanying app
- Great job keeping out air clean and odor-free
Blue 211i Max review: Cons
- No Apple Home or Matter suppot
Blue 211i Max rating: 4 out of 5
Blue 211i Max rating: Where to buy
Find the Blue Air 211i Max air purifier on Amazon for $349.
