Best Air Purifiers for Wildfire Smoke

Perry Santanachote

July 2, 2021 at 3:11 PM·6 min read

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Every year raging wildfires create hazardous air-quality conditions across the U.S. As of early July, wildfires have burned close to 1.5 million acres across the country, an uptick when compared with numbers from the same time last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Smoke from a wildfire can cause your eyes to burn and your nose to run. And the microscopic particles in smoke can get deep into your lungs and cause illnesses such as bronchitis, asthma attacks, and even heart attacks and strokes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency.

These fine particles have even been linked to premature deaths among people with heart and lung disease. Children who breathe in wildfire smoke can experience chest pain and tightness, wheezing, coughing, dizziness, and trouble breathing.

If you live in an area prone to wildfires, it’s important to keep your indoor air as free of smoke particles as possible, and an air purifier can help. Our tests of air purifiers with HEPA filters show they can get rid of these harmful particulates.

Choosing an Air Purifier for Wildfire Smoke

Not all air purifiers do a good job removing smoke particulates. The most effective against smoke have a HEPA filter, which uses a fan to force air through a fine mesh to trap particles.

The very best air purifiers fitted with HEPA filters can reduce particle concentrations by as much as 85 percent, according to the EPA. If you want to get rid of the smell of smoke in addition to particles, you’ll want an air purifier that also has a large carbon filter to absorb odors.

HEPA air purifiers can range from $50 to more than $1,000. Our experts advise against buying one that is marketed for rooms smaller than 150 square feet. These models tend to perform poorly in our tests, plus you’ll always get better results with a unit that is rated well for a larger space than you have. Purifiers for rooms larger than 350 square feet are much better at removing smoke. Most of CR’s recommended air purifiers fall into that category.

“If you look at any of the top-rated air purifiers tested in our labs, they’re physically big because of the big HEPA filter inside of them,” says John Galeotafiore, associate director of product testing at Consumer Reports. “That’s the one thing they all have in common.”

To test how well these machines trap small particulates from smoke, we inject cigarette smoke particles into a sealed room and use a particle counter to measure the number and size of particles, as small as 0.1 micron, in the room as an air purifier works. Because air purifiers typically have a number of speed settings, we test for smoke removal both at the highest speed and at a lower speed. (Some models that perform well at high speeds don’t do as well at low speeds.)

We also measure noise levels at every speed a machine has because you’ll need to run it 24 hours a day for it to be effective. We also calculate annual operating costs, which include filter replacements and energy use.

For more information on air purifiers, check out CR’s air purifier buying guide. Read on for ratings and reviews of five air purifiers from our tests that work well at reducing wildfire particulates. But note that because of high demand, we’ve seen these models go in and out of stock in recent weeks.

Below, we have more tips for how to keep your home’s interior smoke-free, whether or not you’re running an air purifier.