Winix ZERO Pro Air Purifier. CADR 470 m³/h (up to 120 m²), HEPA Filter H13, Reduce 99.97% Viruses, Bacteria, and Allergies. With PlasmaWave Technology. HEPA Air Purifier for Home and Office.

 

This Winix is not as sophisticated or technically brilliant as my old Sharp FU-40S which even had an odour detection system but for which I can no longer get genuine filters.

It it is still a reasonably good Air Purifier but not as good as my old one. Very simple to set up straight out of the box and it is surprisingly light to move around too. It looks smart, has plenty of ventilation holes and side ducts too that will insure decent air intake over a wide angle.

The touch control panel is made of black plastic with a slightly rough surface, it’s clear and simple to use. It has a light bar to indicate how clean the air it is pulling in is. Blue is clean, orange is slightly dirty, and red is very dirty. The word dirty is not truly accurate but good enough for a basic description. There’s a ‘Power’ button, an ‘Auto’ button which selects the mode that you require the unit to employ (auto or sleep). I rarely use anything other than auto. It has a button to turn off PlasmaWave which is definitely worth doing (see further on and if you are interested in why, then also at the end of this review). There are four fan speeds controlled by a single button, each press of which selects a different fan speed from 1-3 and then ‘Turbo’. When pressed it will also override the Auto or Sleep settings. There is also a pre-set ‘Timer’ button which allows you to set the length of time before it shuts off, 1, 4 or 8 hours. There is also a light sensor which dims the LED on the control panel at night when using it in ‘manual’ or switches it to ‘Sleep’ if you are using it in auto as soon as the ambient light gets low enough. Finally it has a ‘Check Filter’ light, which will advise you when the filter needs changing, it has an accompanying reset button that needs to be pressed with a pin once filters have been changed in order to turn the light off.

What is annoying though, and it cannot be turned off, are the jingles it plays for certain functions. For example it will sound once it’s reached the end of the timer setting you specified, or when you turn the power off. It’s not a beep, it’s a little jungle and it get on my nerves. Of course it beeps too with button presses.

It is quiet, doesn’t bother me on the lowest setting whilst in ‘Auto’ at all but it is louder than my old Sharp was by quite a bit, so much so that when I first got it I kept checking it was not on fan setting 2 all the time. However, if I have the TV on I cannot really hear it on fan speed 2 either.

Power usage is low, free in my case especially on sunny days as it uses well below what my solar panels provide.

Now, regarding the PlasmaWave technology that Winix use as a selling point. If you read the in-depth description of it on a website called breathe quality, what it does and how it does it, it all sounds scientifically accurate, it sounds scientifically and chemically plausible – but I suspected that it wasn’t so I sent it to my nephew who has an IQ of very close to 200. I consider him a genius and he has an interest in the sciences, particularly chemistry and molecular physics.

His response is based on that description on that website which may not even be sanctioned by Winix, and while it may well be that PlasmaWave really does something, I very much doubt that their explanation is accurate of what it really does.

If you are interested in why he stated that this PlasmaWave is pseudo-science, then at the end of this review is a breakdown of some of the errors, should you want to read about them for fun or out of interest.

So to continue with the review then.
PlasmaWave technology is not the reason I bought this air purifier. I’m certain it doesn’t have an odour sensor like my Sharp used to have, a test I did and one which I used to show off to my friends and neighbours with on my Sharp, is to hold a freshly cooked food item like cheese on toast by the sensor and give a little blow, on the Sharp the red light came on and it switched to full power, but this Winix does nothing with PlasmaWave on or off.

But it is pretty good at removing odours all the same. These odours are more likely to be neutralised by the normal operation of the unit pulling in air and through the carbon filter than the PlasmaWave technology, and the remaining ‘particles’ in the air are taken care of by the pre-filter and True Hepa filter.

I really bought it to lessen the amount of dusting I have to do as I have black ash everywhere. I’m getting old and finding it difficult to do the dusting as often as I used to. I also wanted it to remove pollen and other fine dust and airborne contaminants that cause me to have runny/itchy eyes and a blocked nose and associated sneezes. These annoyances came upon me a few years ago despite never suffering with any allergies for all my life before that and was the reason I bought the Sharp. Unfortunately though, at least for me, the Winix does not significantly lessen these two problems, but I believe it does help with the worst of the symptoms, but definatley not as much as the Sharp used to do. I now take an antihistamine each morning as an aid to control it, instead of relying on this unit completely.

It certainly removes odours though, and light smoke from my occasional over enthusiastic grilling of toast or crumpets. I even burnt them once and it cleared the light smoke in a few hours so it does clean the air of this type of contaminant with efficiency. It turned the light red and upped the fan speed to max and went to work, as the smoke was cleared it turned to orange and lowered the fan speed until finally it went blue and set minimum fan speed – done.

It also turns orange and ups the fan speed if I open my front door and leave the living room door open! So it definitely works in that respect.

It does also reduce dust. I do still have to dust of course, one of these will not completely replace that need, but now it is once every two or three weeks instead of sometimes twice a week and always at least once a week.

For these two reasons alone I am happy to have bought it.

I’ve turned the PlasmaWave off now. I don’t expect it’ll save much in the way of electricity apart from the miniscule amount of power that the LED backlight uses to light up the ‘PlasmaWave’ logo. But I’d not hesitate to recommend anyone to buy one if these if they were looking for an air purifier.

OK here is the reply to my email from my nephew – debunking the PlasmaWave…

“Yeah, it makes no sense. It is bunk and pseudo-science. “.

Just for fun, let me break down some of the errors.

“PlasmaWave, unlike other ionisers, uses the electricity to create both negative and positive ions.” – a device can create one of those, but not both. Negative ions require giving electrons to a molecule while positive ions require taking them away.

“In Winix air purifiers, the process of PlasmaWave puts the air in a plasma state” – I would love to know how they do that without using incredibly high voltage or heat to do so. Plasma is incredibly hot (think the Sun, lightning or nuclear fusion). I would assume that you have not been turned to ash the moment it was turned on given that you have sent this E-mail. Either that or you have just confirmed that ghosts are real!

“[…] and strikes the water vapour to release the hydrogen and oxygen from their molecular bond.” – Ionising has nothing to do with molecular dissociation. Plus if this were the case, the heat from creating the “ions” above… Would result in quite a bang since the hydrogen and oxygen would immediately react again.

“The hydrogen and oxygen are now free to form alliances, and they will form a hydroxyl radicals (OH) ” – neither hydrogen nor oxygen will react with a hydroxyl free radical. The hydroxyl radical is negatively charged (it’s formula is OH), meaning it will want to donate electrons to become neutrally charged. Hydrogen (in either its base or in its molecular state) will not do that. It does want to receive an electron (generally speaking), but the hydrogen to hydrogen bond has a higher bond energy and so will be more stable. Oxygen will never accept electrons in this circumstance, period. It would not react with the hydroxyl ion under any circumstance. Both of these are moot points as it would not cause the water molecules to undergo dissociation anyway.

“The hydroxyl radicals are unstable molecules seeking equilibrium by stealing atom from the neighbouring molecules, thereby destroying them in the process.” – the hydroxyl ions want to give away an electron (they want to be chemically reduced), they do not want to receive more electrons. Nor, for that matter, do they want to “steal an atom” as doing so would not help balance their charge. Chemistry is all about electrons and the bonds created by the exchange of electrons and so on. No chemical reaction involves one molecule giving an atom to another molecule in the manor described there.

“And the neighbouring molecules, they are indeed the airborne pollutants that include viruses, bacteria, germs, odors, chemical gases and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).” – so now that we have established that hydroxyl ions are indeed bad, they are now saying that they will destroy those bad things… which means, what, that they are good?

He added, “perhaps they should sell the technology to the industry that is attempting to develop Earth-based fusion technologies. Winix have cracked several of the technologies that are proving to be roadblocks.”