The air purifiers worth buying in Perth

This is the one most people should buy, and it earns that on performance, not price alone. In independent bench testing it clears a room in around 24 to 30 minutes, which is quick for the money, and the app handles scheduling and auto mode properly.

Two honest caveats. Levoit quietly stripped its "HEPA H13" claim in late 2023 after a complaint and never explained why, so take the grade on trust rather than the label. And the pre-filter is bonded to the main filter, so you can't rinse it without pulling the whole cartridge, which is a nuisance you'll notice in dusty Perth.

The best-suited unit here for a Perth summer. The 530 CADR is the highest on the list, so it pulls smoke down fast, and the SensAir sensor actually reacts when an advisory hits rather than sitting on green all day. Being a local brand, service and filters are easy to get, which matters more than it sounds when you need a filter mid fire season.

It isn't cheap, and Breville quotes coverage up to 138 m², which is optimistic in the extreme. Treat it as a large-living-area unit, not a whole-house one. Filters run about $100 a year.

Winix consistently outperforms Dyson and Coway on clean air per dollar in independent testing, and this is the coverage champion of the group. The H14 filter is a real step up from the H13 in most rivals, so if allergies or thunderstorm asthma are the reason you're buying, this is the filtration to get. Quiet enough to sleep next to.

PlasmaWave is bipolar ionisation. It helps a little with odours but can produce trace ozone, so if that bothers you, switch it off; the HEPA does the real work regardless. Winix also won't publish a clean CADR, which is a small black mark for a unit at this price.

The smart cheap buy for a small room. Cheapest to run of anything here, and the colour ring tells you what the air is doing without an app. Well built for the money.

Keep expectations in check. Coverage is small, there's no app or scheduling, and on independent tests Winix's budget models generally edge it. Put it in a bedroom or nursery, not the lounge.

The cheapest way in that still gives you an app and auto mode. Fine for a single bedroom and cheap to run at about $65 a year in filters.

It's a small unit and it behaves like one. Anything over about 18 m² and it's out of its depth, so don't try to make it cover a living room. If yours is bigger, spend the extra on the 400S rather than run this flat out all night.

A capable large-room purifier that is entirely about the price you pay. Good sensors, clean app, solid airflow. Catch it in the low $300s and it undercuts most rivals for the coverage.

At its $699 list price it's a poor buy, plainly. Don't pay that. It discounts hard and often, so set a price alert and wait. Filters sit at the dearer end too.

Lovely object, weak purifier for the money. Independent testing of Dyson's air purifiers is blunt: the cleaning performance doesn't come close to justifying the price. On the bench, a Dyson costing $745 managed just 89 CFM of clean air while a sub-$100 Levoit hit 140, and the carbon filters are too thin to do much beyond light odours.

The only reason to buy the HP09 is that it heats in winter, cools in summer and purifies year-round, so it replaces three appliances in one room. If you want that and the budget is there, fine. If clean air is the actual goal, almost everything above does it better for a third of the price.