Why are Sharper Image Ionic Breeze air purifiers so popular?

The Sharper Image Ionic Breeze seems to be ubiquitous – these ionic products are everywhere!  Ionic Breeze ads run on scores of channels, versions are sold in countless publications, and the products are sold in lots of stores, so it must be good right?

Well, not exactly.  The reason that the Ionic Breeze appear to be so popular is that its marketers are absolutely brilliant, and relentless!  The intensity of advertising these  purifiers gives it the appearance of popularity. And now there are competitors selling the same ionic technology with the same faults.

Here's what one of the independent product testing publication most recently had to say about the Ionic Breeze air purifiers: " it proved unimpressive" and that their tests "found almost no measurable reduction in airborne particles."  Sharper Image complained saying tests based on the industry standard for measuring clean-air delivery rate (CADR) were inadequate, and that Ionic breeze products are vastly different from the technology of other air purifier technology and would do better in a longer test. 

The publication re-examined its test procedures and had them reviewed by an independent expert. It then re-tested and reported that the Ionic air purifiers removed very little dust in a test lasting over 100 minutes.  They surmised that if it performed at that level for 100 minutes, it wouldn't become more effective, just by running it longer. Generally, it didn't come close to the performance of other air purifiers tested. 

How it works: The Ionic Breeze air purifiers use a charged plate electrostatic system. It works much like the Friedrich C90B except that it has no fan.  The Ionic Breeze is counting on the electrostatic plates to move the air though the air purifier.  To some extent it does move air as you can see with the wiggling ribbons on TV.  What they fail to mention is that it moves very little air.  The typical air purifier that we sell moves 200 to 400 cubic feet of air a minute.  If you put the little ribbons from the ionic breeze air purifier commercial on these they would be blown off.  To put this in perspective, 400 cubic feet is contained in a a room with 8 foot ceilings that is about 9 foot by 6 foot.  The "real" air purifiers move all of this air in ONE Minute.   The little wiggling ribbons probably move a couple of cubic feet per hour not enough to call the ionic air purifiers "real" air purifiers.

The Ionic Breeze probably does some good, and it is a nice design.  It's compact too. Plus the company typically offers freebies with your order and a good payment plan.  But if you have serious allergy or asthma problems, you are probably better off going with a less well advertised but more substantially performing air purifier.

UPDATE: On May 8, 2006 The Sharper Image introduced the Hybrid GP version of the ionic breeze.  This unit uses a fan and appears to have about a 125 CFM output.  This is very poor for a $400 unit.  The  Hybrid GP has a device that gets rid of almost all of the Ozone that is dangerous.  Would you buy an air purifier from a firm that has sold millions of non-fan, non-working units that produce Ozone to the American public?
 Ionic Breeze is a Registered trademark of the Sharper Image company.  ClearFlite is not associated with the Ionic Breeze product or Sharper Image.