Blueair HealthProtect 7470i review: high-tech air purifier is a brilliant way to breathe better air

The Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier looks like it means business and, based on its size alone, the appliance should be great for improving the air quality inside your home. It’s smart too, with real-time pollutant tracking of fine particles (PM1 - 2.5), which includes smoke, bacteria and viruses. 

It’ll also catch coarse particles (PM10) such as dust, pollen and spores. There’s voice control via Amazon Alexa and Google Home, or the unit can be controlled remotely using the Blueair app. It certainly warrants closer inspection.

This is a high-specification bit of kit, and able to purify rooms up to 62 sq m. It’s up there with the best air purifiers boasting features designed to let you get optimum use from the unit, enjoy cleaner air and have less to worry about upkeep-wise. 

Better still, the booklet-shaped filter has been so designed to avoid you having to touch the grubbier bits of the internals. So, if you’ve got a hatred of dust and dirt then the Blueair looks set to be a good friend.

Blueair HealthProtect 7470i: price and availability

In the UK the Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier costs £586.11 from Amazon and in the US it costs $639.99 for the 7440i model that is suitable for rooms up to 38sq.m. 

Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier review: design

You’ll know when the delivery driver has arrived with your Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier because they’ll be staggering towards your door with a very large box. This unit is beefy to say the least and it’s quite a task getting it out of said cardboard box, while the dimensions of the appliance itself are 30 x 30 x 69.1cm. Then there’s the weight, which is 12.5kg. Thankfully, once you’ve removed it from the packaging the unit has two wheels in the base, which allows you to tilt it on one side and move it into your desired position.

This being a product from a Swedish company, the Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier features a minimalistic Scandinavian-style design, which works rather nicely. The bulk of the casing is white, which is offset by the SpiralAir outlets that come finished in black. These are clever in that they create a spiral of circulating air that Blueair reckons will deliver better distribution around your rooms.

The power cable connects under the base of the machine and there’s a handy place to store excess electric cord down there too, so you only need to have enough to reach the mains socket. It’s a neat way of keeping the design fuss free.

All of the controls are located up on the top of the unit, with a really nice digital display that shows the various readings and settings you have configured. You can scroll through these using directional arrows either side of the LED readout. Beneath that, from left to right, is the On/Off power button, an Auto mode setting, airflow speed, GermShield filter and Wi-Fi icons/buttons, all of which come with touch sensitive actions. If you want to take a deeper dive into the settings and data the machine produces there’s a Blueair app for iOS and Android.

The Blueair features a smart filter equipped with an RFID chip that lets you know when it’s time for a replacement. These replacements are not cheap, so factor in another £100/$100 per year for new ones. 

Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier review: setup

As is the case with many air purifiers, the best thing about getting one set up is you can simply select the Auto option if you’re not too bothered about fine-tuning. The Blueair HealthProtect 7470i is no different. Press the power button on and then Auto and the unit springs into life and starts doing its thing without instruction. Powering it up for the first time the Blueair takes no time to become available and you’ll see startup progress displayed as a bar on the digital readout.

As you’d expect, the auto mode just gets on with the job and automatically controls the air flow depending on what its sensor detects in the atmosphere. The airflow speed features a 1, 2, 3 selection or 0 if you want it off altogether. Select the highest fan settings and the combined size of the unit and those blades buzzing means the unit is pretty full on. Dial back the airflow speed though and its more of a calming hum in the background. It's noticeably quieter than many other air purifiers we've tried.

Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier review: performance

It's notoriously difficult to properly test air purifiers' effectiveness in the home – you need a lab really – but the Blueair HealthProtect 7470i made short work of clearing the air of cooking fumes, and chemicals from cleaning sprays.

The 7470i packs HealthProtect technology. Blueair reckons that the machine can protect against viruses and bacteria even when in standby mode, which is quite something. Blueair also claims that the new line can remove airborne SARS-CoV-2 virus. We were not able to test this but independent third-party lab tests do support the claims, we are assured.

Assuming you’ve got lesser threats to worry about in your own home the Blueair unit is still more than up for the job. Blueair’s HEPASilent Ultra promises to use its combination of electrostatic and mechanical filtration to remove up to 99.97% of airborne pollutants. This includes all of the usual suspects, such as everyday dust, pollen, dander, mould, VOCs, odours and nanoparticles right on down to 0.03 micron. Topping it off is the removal of 99.99% of viruses and bacteria thanks to its GermShield technology.

We were left feeling pretty impressed by the noise levels produced by this air purifier. Using that HEPASilent Ultra filtration technology, which registers 30dB at it’s lowest and 65dB on the highest settings, it is quiet. We had no issues with it, especially at night. If you’re a light sleeper it’s especially good as long as its running at the lower levels.

One thing we were not so impressed by was the app. It takes too long to connect to the purifier, and there is an annoying lag when turning the power setting up or down, or activating auto mode. It's not the worst app we've ever used but it lacks the premium feel of the machine itself. Alexa and Google control works somewhat better, so long as you can remember the correct control phrases. 

Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier review: verdict

The Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier does look and perform like the high-end machine it purports to be. Although the data it collected looked impressive enough it’s always tricky trying to decide whether or not the air quality has actually improved with a purifier present. One obvious visual indication that the machine was doing what it needed to do was the way the sensor would change the colour of the illuminated bar along the top edge of the appliance.

Thankfully ours glowed bright blue for the most part, indicating excellent air quality. Interestingly, it would glow yellow if we did some toast out in the kitchen with the machine positioned in the living room. We even got a red, indicating ‘very polluted’ after someone visited the downstairs toilet. Presumably the Blueair was flagging up the fallout from the activities in the WC and, if so, we’re really impressed by its sensors.

The app gets a lot of bad reviews from users, and we can see why. However it is frustrating rather than unusable.

Aside from that, we love the clean lines of the design and the fact that it’s easy to carry out basic maintenance on the machine, such as vacuuming filter areas as and when it’s needed. The appliance will also tell you when its time to replace the filters, which is crucial especially if you suffer from allergies and top-notch air quality means everything. There are cheaper models on the market, but the Blueair HealthProtect 7470i air purifier oozes quality on all fronts.