Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier review

While my kitchen was being torn apart and rebuilt, there was no shortage of dust floating around the house, and I was having some trouble breathing; that is, until I fired up the Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier. 

Able to remove everything from dust and soot to odd smells and allergens, the Clorox air cleaner’s three stage HEPA filtration system quietly works in automatic mode by sensing the amount of cleaning needed and adjusting its operation. To see if it was worthy of inclusion on our list of the best air purifiers, I put it to the test for two weeks under some pretty harsh conditions. Read the rest of our Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier review to see how it fared.

Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier review: Price and availability

The Clorox air purifier I reviewed (model 11010) is made for rooms up to 1,500 square feet, and costs $129. A similar “smart” model that’s Wi-Fi connected and works with Alexa costs $166.

A model for rooms up to 1,000 square feet (10030) costs $99; the Wi-Fi-connected version of this model sells for $112.

Last, a model for small rooms (up to 200 square feet) costs $49, with the Wi-Fi-enabled model selling for $69.

Replacement filters for the model I tested cost $49 on Amazon.

Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier review: Design

At 19 x 10 x 10 inches (HxWxD), the white and black air purifier may look large at first but is actually petite compared to the 21 x 11.2 x 11.2 inch Dreo Macro Max S Air Purifier. Its 11.6-pound weight means it’s easy to carry from room to room as needed. 

Its two-part display starts with a square touchscreen on top inside the system’s output louvers that shows its fan setting or automatic operation as well as the current particulate level. It has a timer for automatically turning it off; if the unit is tipped over by a pet or small child, it automatically turns off.

The second part is the vertical LED bar up front that shows at a glance the level of 2.5-micron particulates per cubic meter in the input air with six different color-coded levels. Green stands for a safe — 0 to 12 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3) — while yellow is for between 13 and 35 µg/m3 and orange for 36 to 55 µg/m3.

Red and purple correspond to unhealthy air at between 56 and 150 and 151 to 250 µg/m3, and maroon shows that the particle count has risen to between 251 and 999 µg/m3, meaning that it’s a good idea to leave the room.

Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier review: How it works

The unit’s fan pulls the room’s dirty air in from its periphery and forces it through the device’s three-stage filtration process. Its prefilter pulls out large particles, followed by the unit’s High Efficiency Particulate Area (HEPA) filter. Capable of removing up to 99.97 percent of particulate matter as small as 0.1 micron, it can trap common bacteria, pollen, viruses and all sorts of things you shouldn’t be breathing. The final stage is an activated carbon filter that absorbs everything from cooking odors to smoke to volatile organic compounds. 

Able to continuously clean the air in a room of up to 1,500 square feet, the Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier is recommended to cover up to 320 square feet, where it can exchange the air five times an hour. I used it in my slightly smaller 25 x 12 foot office over the course of a month, where it worked well, cutting the dust level significantly during my kitchen rebuild and beyond.

Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier review: Performance

Everything came set up, ready to filter the air. All I had to do was plug in the unit’s AC adapter, the air purifier’s power port, press the power button and set the main screen to Automatic mode. While the dust in the nearby kitchen seemed to come out in clouds, the Clorox air filter kept my work area free of dust. While it was quiet and sedate for most of the time, it occasionally would go at full blast when the renovations were particularly intense and grubby, like when the old tile floor was being broken up. 

Most of the time, the LED glowed green but several times hit yellow and orange. Surprisingly, the unit’s HEPA filter never clogged up; there’s a warning light for when it’s time to change it. Clorox does suggest wiping or vacuuming the device’s exterior monthly.

The proof of an air filter’s performance is its Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR), a measure of the device’s cleaned air flow. At between 206 cubic feet per minute (CFM) for smoke to 232 CFM for pollen, it’s half the Wyze Air Purifier’s 464 cubic meters per hour, which can clear the air in a larger room.

Able to create a 4.9 mile per hour (mph) vertical breeze of cleaned air, measured 36 inches from the vent, the Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier moves a lot of air. That said, it fell short of the 7.6 mph and 6.8 mph that the Wyze Air Purifier and Dreo Max S were capable of, making the Clorox device second best for all-out air flow.

While it’s running at its lowest setting, the Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier was barely noticeable at 41.0dBA of fan noise at 36 inches; the room had a background noise level of 39.1dBA. At full blast, that rose to 36.1 watts and an annoying 58.7dBA.

At its lowest setting, it used 3.6 watts of energy; that adds up to a $5.10 a year estimate of electricity costs, or about one third less than the Dreo Macro Max S. This assumes it’s running all day and night in auto mode and you pay the national average of 15 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity.

Unlike the five-year warranty that comes with the Wyze and Dreo air filters, Clorox covers the air cleaner for three years. Plan on needing a new HEPA filter every six months or so, depending on how dirty your air is. While others, like Wyze, sell different filters for solvents, pollen and smoke, Clorox has one $60 all-purpose filter for its Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier. Others sell replacement filters for $35 to $50. Sadly, there’s no way to automatically order replacements on a periodic basis from Clorox.

Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier: Verdict

The Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier worked well for two weeks of demolition and construction as well as a month after that under less strenuous circumstances. In automatic mode, I didn’t need to dust the room as often, which for me is as close to magic as it gets. 

On the downside, the 11010 version I used to clean the air at home was a basic model that lacks a remote control or the ability to connect via Wi-Fi; it costs $150. The $170 11011 model adds Wi-Fi but no app, although it can be controlled via several Alexa commands. It’s on a par with the $170 Wyze Air Purifier and much less expensive than the more powerful $220 Dreo Max S air filter. Both have Wi-Fi and apps for monitoring and operating the filters. 

It may not be the most powerful HEPA air filter or have a phone app to control it, but the Clorox Large Room True HEPA Air Purifier is like a breath of fresh air. Quiet and inexpensive, it’s a clean air winner for me.