Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier review – a side of art with your purified air

REVIEW – I’ve reviewed and purchased air filters for nearly every room in our house since we live in a place that has occasional spikes of horrendous air pollution (most of the year our mountain valley is fairly clear but in certain winter conditions air becomes trapped in an inversion and pollution concentrates to frightful levels). We have a little toddler that we’re worried about, but even without him the bad days often result in migraines and sinus issues for me and my partner. The Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier caught my eye because of the art faceplate option (and high airflow capacity), so I volunteered to test it out.

What is it?

The Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier is a stylish air purifier for larger rooms (or smaller rooms where acute air scrubbing is needed like for allergy sufferers). The front panel has quite a few options with famous artworks to pick from when ordering. The filters feature a “BioGS® HEPA filtration system” and activated charcoal layers, as well as a customizable layer (germ defense, pet allergy, toxin absorber, or odor remover). I selected a toxin absorber customizable filter to use in my office where I’m frequently 3D printing. The fumes from FDM 3D printers ranges from slightly smelly to straight up toxic, depending on what filament you use. Even the types advertised as safe haven’t been studied in depth for potential long term health hazards, so having a filter to remove stuff from the air is a must. I’ve been using a smaller (and much cheaper) filter for a few years and can still detect a plastic smell during and after printing so I was excited to use the Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier to see if it does better!

What’s in the box?

• Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier
• Pre-filter
• Medium filter
• Activated Carbon filter
• BioGS HEPA filter
• Your choice of customized filter
• Wall mount kit including bubble level
• Detachable power cord
• User manual
• Quick start guide
• Wall mount guide
• Warranty card

Hardware specs

Design and features

The Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier is a pretty standard form factor for an air filter apart from the colorful front plate, with intake and the filters located up front, output vents up top, and a control panel on the top-front. The art panel pops on and off with magnets to allow easy access to replace the filters (though you shouldn’t have to do this for up to a year depending on amount of use). The protective film shown above gives a nice guide to what the different touch-sensitive buttons mean, and once you peel it off you might have to guess or refer to the manual (I figured them out when I forgot simply by trying buttons to see what happened, then verified with the manual and with the smartphone app). It would have been nice to have the text on the panel rather than on the removable film.

That said, the buttons are easy to remember, especially the ones you’ll most often use – the manual fan power is just to the right of the power button, and the auto-level which is the next one (to control how strong the filter runs either manually or on auto mode).

On the back are mounting points for the included wall mount hardware. I didn’t have a need to wall mount it, but it looks very easy to do, and is something I haven’t seen in other air filter models.

The side view shows the 8.4″ depth, which is fairly slim for a 1000+ sq. ft. capable air filter.

The large central fan does the heavy lifting, sucking air in from the front through the filters, and pumping cleaned air out of the top. Most of the exterior build is plastic and feels well made.

Speaking of filters, the four provided filters are conveniently labeled and easy to install (you have to remove plastic on some of them before use).

Setup

Setup of the Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier is as simple as following the quick start guide in the box. This consists of removing plastic off  the filters and reinstalling them, and plugging in the unit. If you’re wall-mounting it, there’s a guide for that as well which looks like you’re simply mounting a bar on the wall that the filter attaches to. I installed the smartphone app and tested on Android (available on iOS as well). The app is not required and the filter is fully functional without the need to connect it to the internet if you don’t want to.

The app seems to be well done with no typos that I noticed, and intuitive user interface screens.

The Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier requires a 2.4 Ghz wireless network, which is pretty common for IOT devices.

Once set up and connected, the controls available in the app are pretty convenient, at least for me. You can view the air quality, adjust fan speed or auto mode, change the mood lighting (or turn it off)…

…and tweak other settings like schedules, timers, and child locks. The filter lifetime bar is nice to have, I’ll know when to pony up the ~$115 for a new set of filters when it runs out – hopefully in a year or more. I also found the timer function to be extremely helpful: I know how long each 3D print that I run is going to take, so I can set the Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier to run for an hour or two longer than the printing time to fully clean the air during and after the print. This feature should extend the filter lifetime for me, and allows me to rest easier at night knowing I’m not pumping our house full of weird plastic fumes while we sleep.

Performance

The Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier seems to work as advertised. At max settings it moves a lot of air, while at the lowest settings I can’t tell it’s on at all, the fan can be whisper quiet.  During 3D printing with strong materials like ABS (toxic fumes) I ran the fan at the highest level, and still couldn’t stay in the room, but within an hour of the print being finished I could barely detect any hint of the plastic (with the older air filter it would take hours to clear up). The timer function is hugely useful for me, and the schedule feature would be great if you’re using this in a common room that’s only used during the day or in a bedroom where you only need it on at night.

What I like

• Many art patterns to choose from to fit a variety of home decor
• Everything seems to be high quality, 5 year warranty should mean it’s got good parts
• Slim form factor is nice to not eat up floor real estate (and can even be wall mounted)

What I’d change

• It’s pricey
• The choice of placing art prints on a home appliance is polarizing, an informal friends/family poll had mixed results on if people loved/hated it.

Final thoughts

Personally, I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d pony up this kind of money for an air filter. There’s a wide variety of competing non-art-covered models available for a fraction of the cost, but if you’re looking for something that will pop as an accent piece with a bit of famous art on it then your choices are much more limited. The ability to easily wall-mount the unit could be another feature that sells it for you. I have been in homes where a humdrum boring air filter would stand out like a sore thumb and maybe this Rabbit Air Artist Design Series air purifier would meet the elevated level of decor and design. I love it in my office, and look forward to years of clean air with it!

Price: $769.95 ($749 without an art front panel)
Where to buy: Rabbit Air
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Rabbit Air. Rabbit Air did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.