Fellowes AeraMax DX55 Air Purifier review

This post brought to you by Fellowes . All opinions are 100% mine.

In the past few months, my family and I moved into a condo. Our old house was the dustiest house in the world, but we didn't have any pollutants from nearby houses. In the condo, we are in a building that's occupied by other people. Although the heating/cooling system ductwork is set up so that units are isolated from each other as much as possible, I know there's some air seeping into my unit from the surrounding ones. Since my daughter has asthma, I don't want to risk having her breathing in cigarette smoke or other airborne pollutants from another unit, so I wanted an air filter for her bedroom. I was happy to be selected to give the Fellowes AeraMax™ DX-55 a try.

The AeraMax DX55 came with a simple, one page manual.

The DX55 is made of white ABS plastic with a black vent on the front and black touch-panel controls. The unit measures 20.5″ tall X 13″ wide X 7.23″ deep.

Both sides of the unit have silver vent panels, as seen here. This side, behind the control panel, is where the filters are accessed. The other side looks similar but doesn't have a removable filter holder.

The back has a built-in carry handle, which you see at the top middle of the unit. It also has the power switch.

The DX55 has two filters. The white filter is made of paper. Fellowes says their " true HEPA filter with AeraSafe™ antimicrobial treatment safely removes 99.97% of airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns, including pollen, ragweed and other allergens, viruses, germs, dust mites, mold spores, pet dander and cigarette smoke." They also claim it is "extremely effective at capturing influenza virus from indoor air (based on independent testing)". I don't have the flu, but I do have a head cold, so I’m hoping this will protect my family from my germs. That's one of the reasons I decided to test the unit in my room before putting it in Rachel's room.

The other filter is a carbon filter that is designed to remove odors and capture large airborne particulates.

Certifications

The DX55 is designed for medium-sized rooms up to 195 square feet. Rachel's room is about 130 square feet, so it's well within the specifications for this air purifier. I started out testing the unit in the master bedroom, which is 185 square feet, so that I could see and hear how it works.

I removed the plastic from the filters, then plugged up the DX55 and flipped the power switch on. When it first turns on, the unit evaluates the air quality in your room. After the evaluation, the DX55 automatically selects fan speed to most efficiently clean the air. The unit always powers on in auto mode, but you can adjust the fan speed manually by tapping the fan blades icon (5, in the following image). You can return to auto mode at any time by touching the auto icon, located between controls 3 and 4 in the following image.

The AeraSmart Sensor (3, in the image above) shows blue (good), amber, or red (bad) to indicate air quality. Control 4 is the Aera+ Mode; turn it on during peak allergy season to increase air turnover rate by 50% versus low fan speed setting to remove more allergens from the air.

Two indicators, identified as 6 in the above image, turn amber then red to let you know when you need to change the HEPA and carbon filters.

The PlasmaTRUE Technology control (7, on the above image) "creates an ionized field to help safely remove airborne pollutants."

When it first started, the AeroSmart Sensor was blue, indicating good air quality. It selected the lowest fan setting. At the low speed, the DX55 is whisper quiet. I manually selected the four fan levels and found the two lowest are quiet, the third level produces a noticeable sound, and the highest level is loud. I think the highest level might even be too loud for my daughter to use as white noise to help her sleep, and this is a girl who sets the volume of her little white noise generator so high that it sounds like she has a diesel engine idling in her room.

After checking out the sound levels, I set the air purifier back to automatic, and I left the Aera+ Mode and the PlasmaTRUE Technology modes turned on. I find that the DX55 runs at the lowest fan speed and the AeraSmart Sensor shows blue most of the time. I have noticed the unit kick up to higher fan speeds, usually only in the mornings. I finally determined the cause of the early-morning air quality problems a couple of days ago. It kicks up to higher speeds when we’re spraying deodorants and hair spray in the attached master bath.

I’ve had the Fellowes air purification unit for a short time, but I thought I’d power it off and inspect the filters before writing this review. I can't see anything building up on the white HEPA filter yet, but I do see some lint on the black carbon filter.

I don't have any way to test the air quality of my room with and without the fan running, but I have seen that it detects the perfumy odors of the toiletries we use in the morning, and I have seen that it ramps up the fan speed and quickly removes those odors from the room. I hope it proves as effective at removing my cold germs from the air as it is at removing those odors. The Fellowes AeraMax DX55 Air Purifier is quiet and doesn't use up a lot of floor space in your room. If you are looking for an air purification system for your medium-sized room, I think you’ll like the DX55.

The Fellowes AeraMax™ DX55 starts at $189.99 at BestBuy.com.