Breathe in the air – Samsung’s AX60T5080 Air Purifier

If the shit-show over the last two years has shown me anything, it’s that there’s a lot to be said for sweet, clean, fresh air, even if telling the difference between a summertime pollen hayfever sneeze and the dreaded ‘Rona cough is a challenge. In short, Covid-19 threw the importance of clean air into sharp relief. This hasn’t been lost on the folks at Samsung.

Where air purifiers used to be a weird product category rarely seen beyond Southeast Asia, they’ve gained considerable profile in the pantheon of Western household appliances.

So, what exactly does an air purifier do? Put simply, they hoover up air and filter it to remove nasties, thus improving air quality. Is this just consumer electronics hocus pocus, or does it actually work?

The timing of my receiving the AX60T5080 air purifier couldn’t have been better. My wife, who’d recently attended a conference, came home with Covid, making it the perfect time to put the air purifier through its paces.

She isolated herself upstairs, so I put the air purifier in with her. With our place being both sunny and roomy, it often has windows open, so there’s usually plenty of good airflow. While good news for us, I was more than a little sceptical about its ability to improve the quality of the already good air at our home.

Doubts aside, the AX60T5080 finally arrived in a sufficiently large box that a Gambian hill tribe could have easily been hidden in it. Readying myself for an hour or so of cussing and fiddly assembly, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was already good to go. All that was needed was the usual RTFM (reading the flipping manual) and plugging it in.

If unboxing was simple, driving it was even easier. This comes down to an intuitive display with controls so you can adjust its fan speed. Its display showcases the quality of the air by showing levels of pollutants. These range from 10-nanometre particles (PM10) all the way down to 1 nanometre (PM1.0). It also has gas pollution tracking (which ranges from 4, which is bad, to 1, which is good). Best of all, it’ll scrub the air of large rooms (up to 60m2).

While the PM numbers are abstract, there’s also a handy multi-coloured light that glows in different colours to indicate air quality at a glance. When it is lit up in blue, all is good. Other colours can mean things are not quite so peachy.

The filtration capabilities are impressive, consisting of a three-stage process. The first filter traps pollen and pet dander (which is dead handy if pet allergies or hayfever are issues in your house). The second filter does deodorisation, so burnt toast or even gas fumes are dealt with. Rounding things out is a HEPA filter, which can pull fine particles such as bacteria, super fine dust and even cigarette smoke particles. Sammy’s bumf days that the HEPA filters are capable of 99.97 per cent particle removal at 0.3 microns.

The AX60T5080 has Samsung’s SmartThings compatibility baked in. While I couldn’t somehow log in to get the SmartThings app (it wanted to send a verification code to a Samsung phone I’d sent back to Samsung a year ago), you should (in theory) be able to use the SmartThings app to drive the purifier to get air quality updates, schedule operation, turn the air purifier on/off, and control its other functions.

So, how well did it work? While the air quality at our place is generally very good (a side benefit of living in Wellington, a city where anything noxious is blown away very rapidly, even on the calmest of days), the AX60T5080 did lend a cool, crisp feel to the air and my other half recovered from Covid swiftly. How much of her speedy recovery and my lack of infection from her has to do with the air purifier is tricky to say, but having the air purifier pull Covid bugs out of the air was a definite plus.

Interestingly, when the air purifier was running and I was cooking dinner on our gas stove, it quickly detected gas. It sped up the fan to increase air extraction and remove cooking odours. In my distinctly unscientific view, the air purifier worked a treat.

If that’s good, are there any catches? From a design perspective, the AX60T5080 is no shrinking violet. It is large, and as such, it does stick out in most homes like a set of dog bollocks. The only other issue I’d have is the ongoing cost of its operation. Its filters will need replacing every half year (assuming moderate to heavy use). This adds up to anything from $130 to just shy of $300 a year.

Neither of these issues is a deal breaker, especially given the difference the AX60T5080 made to the air quality in our place. If you or others in your home have asthma, hay fever or allergies, then Samsung’s AX60T5080 might make all the difference. Given its ability to filter bacteria out of the air, the air purifier is also ideal for anyone prone to catching colds. While there are more compact air purifiers on the market, few are as well featured as Samsung’s offering.

www.samsung.com