Mithun and Divya were kind enough to loan one of their purifiers to me. Here are the results.
| Air Purifier | Make | Sharp |
| Model | FU-A80E-W | |
| Room | Room 2 | |
| Fan Speeds | various | |
| Where to buy? | Amazon | SHARP-Air Purifier (FU-A80E-W) |
Test 1 – Comparing Performance Under Varying Fan Speeds
| Test Time | Start Date | 20/11/2016 |
| Start Time | 20:00 |
I received the purifier with a prefilter. This was clearly not factory fitted. Something created out of a larger sheet of fiberglass, taped at the edges. But it looked to be doing a great job of keeping the dust from reaching the HEPA filter.
Conclusions
- PM2.5 came down from 200 µg/m3 to under 10 µg/m3 in half an hour. PM10 plummeted from 300 µg/m3 to 10 µg/m3.
- The device has a Plasma Cluster, which is a fancy name for an ioniser. As this manual states, the ioniser generates ozone (see page E-10). I would strongly recommend that you always keep this feature off.
- Auto fan mode mostly ran the fan on low, with short bursts of medium. You can see the corresponding wavering of the blue and red lines. This reduces resource utilisation (filter life increases, electricity use decreases). However, the final numbers tend to be higher than with the fan manually set on medium.
- Keeping the fan on high leads to faster cleaning. However, the final numbers are higher than for medium. This is expected, since HEPA filters are non-linear.
- The device has a shower mode. This runs the fan on high for the first half an hour or so, and then on medium. This is the best for constant use. If your filter is always on, just use it on auto and you’ll be fine.
Test 2 – Comparing Performance with the AC3256/20
| Test Time | Start Date | 20/11/2016 |
| Start Time | 21:00 |
While the Philips purifier was only a week old, the Sharp purifier had its filters changed a week ago. So, comparison between equals.
Conclusions
- The graph says it all. We have a winner. The Sharp FU-A80E-W now holds the trophy.
- I purchased this AC3256 a week ago. Just a week ago. My sorrow knows no bounds.
- I’m going to fashion a prefilter just like the one in this Sharp purifier. Then I shall compare again. We will put up a good fight!
Test 3 – Comparing Old and New Filters
| Test Time | Start Date | 21/11/2016 |
| Start Time | 09:00 |
The Sharp Purifier had its HEPA filter changed after nine months of use. The purifier did not run constantly during this entire period, but was used enough to ensure that air quality in the owner’s home was good at all times.
Conclusions
- Performance of both filters is nearly identical. The best that the new filter did was a PM2.5 of 7 µg/m3 and PM10 of 9 µg/m3. The old filter did a PM2.5 of 14 µg/m3 and PM10 of 15 µg/m3. This is nearly identical, and both are well within the range of good AQI by any standard.
- You need to check carefully before replacing filters. New Sharp filters cost ₹9,000 a piece. That is a lot of money wasted.
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