(Image credits: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express/WideCare)

A couple of weeks after Diwali, North India is usually breathing easy, thinking if the air looks clean it should be fine for your lungs too. No such luck. It is the first week of December and most parts of NCR still have AQI levels well over 200, over three times what is supposed to be the normal range. So when I got the Samsung AX46 air purifier for review, there were some shocking numbers on display in my living room.

The Samsung AX46 is a large air purifier that is meant for large living rooms or office spaces. If you need something smaller, you can opt for the AX32 with pretty much the same technologies. The AX46 has a very neat design, one that shows it means business. It sucks in air from the front and pushes out clean air from the top and two sides. This means it can be kept in any corner of the room and has no issue being close to a wall. The air purifier has wheels at the bottom and is easy to move around despite its size.

The Samsung AX46 is a large air purifier meant for large living rooms or office spaces (Image credits: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express/WideCare)

Operating the Samsung AX46 is simple. There is a power button on top, along with auto, fan and sleep buttons. Plus there are touch buttons for setting a timer and checking the filter status. Just above the strip of buttons is an LED panel that shows your AQI level along with indicators for whether there is any gas (anything below PM2.5) in the room and if the WiFi is connected.

The WiFi indicator means the Samsung AX46 can also be controlled using the Samsung Smart Things app. The setup there is easy and you can see the AQI levels inside the room and switch the fan speeds or modes. There is also the ability to schedule the air purifier to work at certain times of the day. I also liked how the app shows how much energy the device and consumed till now.

The WiFi indicator means the Samsung AX46 can also be controlled using the Samsung Smart Things app (Image credits: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express/WideCare)

During the two weeks I had the Samsung AX46 air purifier for review, not once did it start to a green indicator showing the air was okay in the room. Early mornings when I would switch on the purifier in my living room, the AQI levels usually showed close to 300. After about 15 minutes of running, the purifier could bring this down to under a hundred. You can tap the AQI indicator button to toggle between PM10 and PM2.5, which usually was a bit lower than the former.

The Samsung AX46 can be quite silent, especially if you are running it in sleep mode. But I got used to running it in full blast till the AQI level came down, before moving it to a more silent mode so that I could listen to music or watch the FIFA matches of the night without much distraction.

The AX46 has a multi-layer structure with a washable pre-filter for larger particles, followed by an activated carbon deodorisation filter that neutralises gases and smells and a dust-collecting filter that captures most types of dust. These are easy to install and change without any help. Samsung says the filters are good for at least a year with about eight hours of daily running time.

The AX46 has a multi-layer structure with a washable pre-filter for larger particles (Image credits: Nandagopal Rajan/Indian Express/WideCare)

In the auto mode, the air purifier has both dust and gas sensing which I could see in action every time the front door opened or when the piped gas in my open kitchen was left open for a few minutes before the hob was lit. In fact, one evening when we had guests over, the AQI levels on the air purifier shot up to 999, more because we were cooking stuff in the open kitchen than the pollution outside. This also shows the importance of an air purifier in the urban household, even if it blocks out a lot of the pollution and dust outside.

At Rs 32,990, the Samsung AX46 is a good air purifier option for those with large living rooms. I will not recommend this specific model for smaller rooms because of its size. If you are a Samsung smartphone user, this connected device will offer additional value. This is at the moment, one of the best options available for the home and office.

News Article Source:- Indian Express