Levoit Vital 200S-P / 200S Pro Air Purifier Long-Term Review – Nose And Ear Connection Cleared For Best Auditions
Levoit 200S Pro is a $189 USD air purifier designed to help you breathe more easily and to help clean the air in your room. Today we review the Levoit Vital 200S and explore how an air purifier can actually improve your experience listening to music, and what this all has to do with being an audiophile. This review has been written after 6 months of usage total, for me to understand the effectiveness of the air purifier, and it is a long-term review.
Introduction
Levoit is a company popular in the air purifier industries, and their products are available on Amazon, Aliexpress and general electronic stores, including hardware stores for building homes. Levoit has a long history of reliability, being currently in top 3 best sold brands for air purifiers on Amazon with over 680 patents under their brand, over 71.000.000 units sold worldwide, and over 1.900.000 reviews written about their products by users all over the world. This may make it look useless for us to review one of their products, but today we dive in on why an audiophile might need an air purifier in their listening room, as a recent relocation to the countryside made me realize some important things about human biology and our ability to hear music correctly. Amazon confirms that this is a very popular item with the green badge that confirms that this product has fewer returns than average and most customers who get it also keep the Levoit Vital 200S P.
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Product Link
Amazon – https://amzn.to/3XAEe9n
Build Quality – Design
Levoit 200S Pro is a smart air purifier, that you can use without the smart part, just plug into a wall socket and let it do its job. It has a large fan and can clean areas as large as 1875ft2, or 175m2, which is enough for most homes, and most certainly enough for a listening room. Part of what makes it smart is that it has inlets on all sides, front and bottom, so it can capture allergens in such a way that if you place it against a wall, it will work for the entire room, not just the air that is in front of it. This also means that you can literally glue it to a wall and hide it more easily, or palace behind furniture, where it will be inaudible even in higher operation.
Filtration includes multiple filter levels including 0.32mm high-density mesh that captures large visible allergens like dust, dander and hair, with a filtration layer that can capture 99.97% of tiny particles including mold, mites and pollen, and then the Multi-Carob filter that can absorb harmful gases including odors, VOCs and smoke. This all results in a clean and smooth air with no allergens. You can buy custom replacement filters that can more efficiently filter certain contaminants depending on where you live. This is super handy, because for example I found that in the countryside ambrosia and pollen can give you horrible allergies that can clog your nose and ears, while in the city you can purify air from smoke, vehicle exhaust and thick dust.
This is pretty much all of the information available on Amazon, but it is also worthy of mention that Levoit ships the Vital 200S P with a HEPA grade filter, it can operate in sleep mode and that it can also work in overdrive to quickly purify all the air in a room.
Subjective Usage, Air Quality and Audiophile Considerations
Pairings And Power Needs – Levoit 200S consumes very little power, and it produces very little noise. In fact, it is far quieter than the sound of my computer fans, sound of a mini PC, sound of a NAS, water pump and basically, if you set it to auto, it will start in max mode for a couple of minutes, clean the air in your room, then go to a whisper quiet that you can hear only if you glue your ears to it. The only consideration that I see as a negative is that the power adapter is rather short, so it has to be near an outlet. I tested it glued against a wall and in the middle of a room, but it basically absorbs air from front and sides, so leaving it in the center of a room does not improve air that much compared to having it glued to a wall. Fresh and clean air is pushed from the top, and the fan inside looks more like an air conditioner fan than that of an air purifier, which is both how it can move so much air and how it is so silent.
Overall Effects – I know that audiophiles are emotional people, as loving music also often means loving plants and animals, but our basic biology makes many of us allergic to either animals or the pollen of certain plants. I recently moved to the countryside and discovered that both me and especially Mary is highly allergic to pollen as well as the hair of certain animals, so moving in a space where there lived animals, she started getting horrible allergies, and during mid summer this also has affected me. An allergic reaction will give you a runny nose, similar to a flu or cold, and this also clogs your ears, which for an audiophile means that you won’t be able to enjoy any music. I thought I was done for, now that I couldn’t hear anymore, so I panicked and tried my best to find some solutions to this issue as things got so bad that at one point Mary could not sleep anymore due to her allergies. This resulted in a George who could not listen to music either, because I had a runny nose, clogged ears and my hearing was just not right.
Then I learned about allergies and how your nose and ears can clean up after you remove the allergens from your environment. With Levoit Vital 200S Pro Air Purifier, you can get a nice and clean air for your room, it cleans up everything, dust, smoke in the room, and basically every single contaminant as long as it is a reasonable thing. Speed of the fan is enough even for realy dusty rooms, but it settles once the sensors inside indicate that the levels of VOCs and contaminants have settled down. It simply works, no app needed, you can turn off the lights, set to autol use and forget for a year until you have to replace the filter. Filters are easy to remove, it is intuitive and easy to use. I moved it from room to room. Total space coverage is about 30m2 in practice, and I got it to work with larger space too, but with some caveats. For example, in my open door kitchen and hallway, it can clean them off but slower, and if you have one huge room 100m2, it will work wonders, but you cannot buy one, leave all doors open and expect it to clean the air in all the rooms of the house as there simply isn’t air circulation between those rooms.
Removal Of Dust – At the beginning I started noticing that there ain’t no more dust on my headphones, speakers, and PC computer. In fact, yesterday I had to switch rooms with Mary, so we moved everything, speakers, monitor and PC computer, and I opened my PC for the first time in 5 months, the period I’ve been using the 200S to clean my air, and there was just a tiny bit of dust, while before implementing it I would pull layers of thick dust from my PC. I thought to myself that this is wonderful, we finally don’t have to dust off the entire house once per week to have a decent space, it really filters the dust. As a little secret, I actually vacuum the dust off the filter once per month to refresh it, but as my vacuum has both dust bags and a fine filter, this works. If you want to do this, I believe it is not the correct procedure, but I anyways was more interested in filtering VOCs and allergens rather than dust with it.
Removal of Allergens – Mary couldn’t sleep, breathe or hear much during the peak of her allergies in mid summer, which aligned with the Ambrosia flowering time locally, so we got worried, went to the hospital and found that she is suffering from allergies. As anti histaminic medication generally has a couple of side effects, I decided to move the 200S in the sleeping room each night, and voila, she can sleep, breathe and hear normally, and forget about her allergies. Naturally, all effects come back once we open a window or go outdoors, but that’s the 2nd part of the story. As we have just one unit, we move it between the sleeping room at night, dayroom or my personal working and gaming room at night. I might buy 2-3 more units for each room, but that’s to be decided as I feel like it would be a bit excessive. I also got hit by a bit of an allergy towards the middle of autumn,
Cleaning of VOCs and Volatile Contaminants – This is an effect I most certainly was not expecting and most certainly loved a LOT. So we have walls with wood in them, basically softwood pine paneling in the entire house. This pine absorbs VOCs and slowly releases them, so the house we live in has a bit of a smell to it. Also, when cooking, because the kitchen, dayroom and main hallway are all open-space and connected, smoke and smell enters and permeates the entire house. Even more, we use a fireplace / wood based central heating to warm now that it is winter, and every time I add wood to the fire, some smoke escapes in the room and the entire house smells like fire smoke. The first thing I noticed with 200S was when we got a pretty bad case of smoke, and I thought about leaving the Levoit Vital 200s to clean the house, so I turned it on, it turned red, ran at max speed for about 10 minutes, and cleaned all smell of smoke, cooking oil and everything from the kitchen. The only smell I could feel was of clean, neutral and fresh air, which made me incredibly happy. It works equally well for perfume, and when I got a room perfume, 200S got angry red, started puffing at max speed until there was no more smell of perfume. This is because perfumes are VOCs by nature, or Volatile Organic Compounds and they get filtered the same way smoke does. It is so effective that it will clear all perfume from your skin too, so you will always have just the smell of fresh, clean air, nothing else as long as it is running.
Max Space Coverage – Max space coverage in my experiments has been 50m2, as that’s the max we have as an open space. Levoit Vital 200S does not clean the air of rooms, even with doors open, as there is no moving current and air does not move between rooms, so I recommend getting a unit for every space that is closed off. It works for huge areas, as long as they are open space and air can easily move between the rooms.
Noise Levels – One of the reasons I moved to the countryside was to have a bit of silence. I was wrong due to multiple reasons, as I have a neighbor that blasts music in his courtyard sometimes and this is horrendous for me, plus there are dogs barking randomly at night, but when there is nothing generating noise, the noise level of my room is -27dB dB-A Frequency Weighting. 200S does not add this measurement, and the noise it makes, while sounding like a very quiet breeze of air, audible to the ear if you push your ear to the Levoit Vital 200S, but is not registered on the dB Meter at 1 meter away, the way you typically measure things. My computer has fans that are quite audible to me, but they also increase the noise level of the room to just 30.7 dB, 1 meter away. Overall, you will not hear the 200S Pro once it finishes the first cleaning stage. This is because at first it ramps up at max speed to quickly clean your room. I would leave it on Auto, as it does a really good job at running controlled and not overdoing things, but also activating once it detects a contaminant like smoke or dust.
Filter Effectiveness – Generally, Levoit Vital 200s is the most effective way of removing allergens and improving your hearing / listening experience as well as quality of life, from an air quality perspective. It does not remove dust that has already settled, but it catches dust before it settles, it removes allergens from the air really well, it does not make any audible noise in normal operation and can clean all cooking smells from your kitchen / day room. Even bad smells like cooked fish, shrimp or burned food smell are gone in 2-5 minutes from when you start it. For me, it is essential in my listening room for keeping my throat and ears open and free of congestions caused by allergies, as well as keeping my space free of dust. While it is not an air conditioner, does not change temperature or humidity of the air, it does exactly what it promises and delivers results FAR above what I expected it to do.
Value and Conclusion
Here at audiophile-heaven, I always speak about the importance of minor details like acoustic room treatment, DAC resolution, AMP power, Speaker clarity, and sometimes even cable quality and digital component optimization, but both me and most people forget that the ear is a biologic organ that can be affected by the most trivial of organic contaminents, from wax to being simply clogged and unreliable due to its connection to the nose via the Eustachian Tube. For just 200 USD, less than what a good DAC, good AMP, good speakers or good cable cost, you can have clean and fresh air, a nice smell of nothing and clean in your room, less dust, less work to clean your equipment, and above everything, to hear better. This is incredibly useful and a need more than a want, especially if you own pets, or live in an area that has contaminants, basically anywhere in the whole world.
At the end of the day, I honestly did not believe that an air purifier could improve my listening experience and it always felt like a gimmick to me, but after having used one, I could never go back, this is essential and in the city you have VOCs, pet hair, and dust, while in the countryside you are very likely to be affected by allergens, dust and pet hair too, so an air purifier is a must for any audiophile who wants the best for their room and setup, and above everything, to have their ears primed to best hear music. There are other considerents for the quality of the air, like humidity and your own mood, but air quality and contaminants are most certainly an important aspect of enjoying music. At the end of the day, even if your air was already top quality, Levoit Vital 200S Pro will have the effect of removing dust, contaminants and making your room squeaky clean for your audiophile devices, which will mean less downtime, less cleaning and more enjoying, plus less changes of burning something up. For me, Levoit Vitality 200S Pro has been an excellent upgrade of environment quality, air quality, sleep quality and music enjoyment and I can fully recommend it to you for its effectiveness, price to performance ratio and I totally believe that it will help you in your audio journey more than you expect.
PROs
- Very quiet operation and you can hide it away
- Looks pretty and has an auto mode, can be left on auto forever
- Incredibly effective at removing pet hair, dust contaminants and VOCs
- Actually improves my quality of life, quality of sleep and hearing by removing allergens from my home environment
- Lights can be turned off so you can sleep with it in your room
- Portable and easy to move from room to room
- Can cover a larger space, tested up to 100meters, as long as it is an open space with open doors
- Removes dust, you will see less dust everywhere, floor, speakers, objects, computer
- Brilliant quality and support from Levoit
- Easy maintenance, everything is intuitive, you don’t need to install the app or do anything digital for it to work
- It works for everyone, every home, every environment, every setup, universally an excellent experience
Cons
- Power brick has a somewhat short cable for a hardware air purifier
- Replacement filters are quite pricey, and represent a big part of the price of the air purifier
Product Link
Amazon – https://amzn.to/3XAEe9n
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Full Playlist used for this review
We listened to more songs than those named in this playlist, but those are excellent for identifying a sonic signature. I recommend trying most of the songs from this playlist, especially if you’re searching for new music! The playlists are different for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube, and based on the songs I enjoy and are available on each!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_cjBXGmwSHSdGcwuc_bKbBDGHL4QvYBu
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5J3oloz8Riy9LxEGenOjQ0?si=979ba4f082414be7
https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/330fd544-8e5b-4839-bd35-676b2edbb3d5
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