Review: Kent Aura HEPA Air Purifier

Kent Aura HEPA Air Purifier

Price: Rs 14,500 (Rs 13,000 on Amazon.in)

With the ever-increasing level of air pollution, the air we breathe is slowly becoming a serious health hazard. You can read more about the harmful effects of air pollutants and their ability to increase lung cancer risk in a study published over here. Just like water purifiers have been since many years, air purifiers are fast becoming a necessity today. Fortunately, many companies have already taken a cue and brought air purifiers in the Indian market. Kent has also got a few models and the Aura HEPA Air Purifier is its entry-level model that’s suitable for home use. Kent was kind enough to send across a unit for testing and here is how it fared.

Features

The Kent Aura HEPA Air Purifier is almost as big as a regular PC cabinet, with a height of 48.2 cm, width of 35 cm, and depth of 18 cm. The unit weighs around 5 kg. It is entirely made of white plastic, but appears to be durable. Rated at 45 W, this unit is meant for a room with an area of up to 270 square feet (25 square meter), which means it should suffice most bedrooms.

The front panel is adorned with beautiful floral art that enhances the appearance of an otherwise unattractive box. This panel is easily removable and yet firmly attached to the unit by a couple of magnets. The filters and fans are accessible after the panel is removed.

The unit’s control panel is situated at the top with all soft touch buttons. There is a power button (default is Off), fan speed selection button (Auto (default), Low, Medium, High), and Ionizer button (default is On). There is a Timer button to specify the sleep timer duration for the unit to switch off after the selected hours (none, 2, 6, and 8 hours), and this is unselected by default. Lastly, there is a Child-Lock button (Off by default), which when switched On, locks the rest of the buttons, thus preventing accidental change to any settings.

LEDs on this panel indicate several details such as pollution level indicated by the colour of the fan speed LED (Blue: Excellent, Pink: Good, and Red: Poor). A filter replace LED, which glows red when the unit detects that the filter needs to be replaced.

A small pedestal stand at the base keeps the unit standing upright. While it should not matter where you place the unit in the room, the company advises to place it at around waist height in order for it to be more efficient. Also, it just needs to be kept in one place and not moved around to purify air from the entire room.

How it works

The unit depends on a fan and filters to pull and purify air respectively. The fan operates at three speeds and can also be set to automatic speed, which automatically adjusts the fan speed according to the air pollution level detected in the air by the unit’s built-in pollution detector. It is also possible to manually set the fan speed if required.

The filter assembly consists of the two parts: the pre-filter and the HEPA filter. The pre-filter removes coarse and larger particles from the air being pulled into the unit. This, effectively acts to prevent such larger particles from reaching the HEPA filter as that filter is meant to remove smaller particles, thus balancing the load and increasing the life and efficiency of the HEPA filter. It also has activated carbon to absorb and remove odours and pollutants such as volatile organic compounds, cigarette smoke, and other chemicals.

The HEPA or High Efficiency Particulate Arrestor filter comes next. This stops suspended particles as fine as PM 2.5 (particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter), thus further purifying the air. The HEPA filter is also coated with an anti-bacterial coating that eliminates bacteria from the air being filtered.

There is also an ionizer unit that ionizes and refreshes the air that passes through the unit.

Air gets sucked from the openings on the sides of the unit and gets released from the opening at the top.

Performance

Before we move forward, I need to provide a brief intro about air purity measurement unit and what it means. Air purity is measured in terms of suspended particle mass density and the unit is micrograms per cubic meter or µg/m³. This is usually divided into three categories depending on the size of the particles: PM10 (particles that are 10 microns or less in diameter), PM2.5 (particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter), and PM1.0 (particles that are 1 micron or less in diameter).

Of the above three, we considered PM2.5 because that is the category where pollutants are more deadly and also more likely to occur in indoor air. As a rule of thumb, 0-50 µg/m³ is considered excellent, 51-100 µg/m³ good, 101-150 µg/m³ slight, 151-200 µg/m³ moderate, 201-250 µg/m³ heavy, and anything above that is considered as serious health hazard level.

For testing purpose, I used incense sticks to raise the PM2.5 pollution level to around 400 µg/m³. The unit reduced the pollution level to under 100 µg/m³ in the first 15 minutes, and it was reduced to 0 µg/m³ in around 45 minutes. This is really fast. In practice, the usual PM2.5 indoor pollution level you are likely to encounter will be anywhere between 50 µg/m³ and 150 µg/m³ and this will clear up within the first 15 minutes of using the air purifier.

The claimed clean air delivery rate is 180 cubic meter per hour, which is when the fan is spinning at the highest speed. The sound level is quite low and almost inaudible from a distance of 2 m when the fan is spinning at the lowest speed, but it does become noisy when the fan spins at the fastest (60 dB).

Power Consumption

The actual power consumption of the unit is lower than what the company advertises (45 W). The consumption at low fan speed is 24 W, at medium fan speed is 33 W, and at high fan speed is 41 W. When in the Auto speed, which is the default when you switch on the unit, the fan speed directly goes to the highest, but it soon adjusts to an appropriate speed after gauging the air pollution level in the room. In practice, the fan speed was seen to go to the low speed within 10 minutes of switching on the unit, which indeed means lower electricity consumption. Also, the timer feature allows you to automatically switch off the unit after 2, 4, or 8 hours of usage as per your requirements.

My Verdict

The Kent Aura HEPA Air Purifier not only looks good, it also makes the air in the room better and healthier. It is very easy to operate. The cost of Rs 14,000 (or Rs 13,000 on Amazon.in) may still seem be considered a bit on the higher side in the budget-conscious Indian market, and the filters, which cost around Rs 3,000 (Rs 920 for the composite pre-filter with activated carbon and Rs 2100 for the HEPA filter) and require changing after around 2000 hours of usage, add to the expenses. While I must say that the pricing should have been lower as for similar units in Europe, I will also say that lacking that option at present, it is still worth investing such money in something that will definitely improve the quality of your life. As someone who has been suffering from dust and pollen allergy since long, I have personally been able to experience the difference it makes with just a couple of hours of operation every night. I can definitely recommend that you can go ahead and get one for yourself.


Pros: Purifies air fast, Easy to use, Works silently most of the times, Consumes less electricity, Looks good.

Cons: Pricing could have been better, Could have benefited with a remote controller.

Ratings

Features: 4/5
Aesthetics: 4/5
Performance: 4.5/5
Value For Money: 4/5
Overall Rating: 4/5