Toshiba Smart Air Purifier with Alexa Review
When looking for a good smart air purifier, some of the features you need to look for are how it monitors and cleans your air, whether is it easy to use, the size of the unit, how it monitors the air, coverage it provides, fan speeds, the cost of the filters, and whether is it quiet when it runs. Many smart air purifiers can be loud when they clean your room’s air. We recently tested a new smart air purifier that was easy to set up and use, had nice features, and was a little big but was quiet when it cleaned the air. It was Toshiba’s Smart Air Purifier with Amazon Alexa (CAf-Z40US) and here is what we found from testing this smart air purifier in a real home with normal connectivity for the past two months.
What is Toshiba Smart Air Purifier with Alexa Voice control?
Toshiba Smart Air Purifier (CAf-Z40US) is a smart air purifier that works with the Amazon Alexa voice platform via a Wi-Fi connection. It comes with real-time air quality monitoring, a visible filter lifespan progression bar, and an indicator light that alerts users when to replace the air filter. And speaking of air filters, this smart air purifier has two: an H13 True HEPA filter and a carbon filter to help remove airborne contaminants down to 0.3 microns in size, including pollen, dust mites, mold spores, viruses, and more.
Toshiba Smart Air Purifier also comes with 3 easy-to-use fan speeds and modes (auto, sleep, and Turbo). It also has timers that can be set 12 hours in advance and a smart night mode which can be activated in the dark. But the one feature most users will like is how quiet this smart air purifier can be when cleaning your room. Toshiba’s smart air purifier comes with a DC Brushless Motor which can operate at a sound level as low as 30dB (in sleep mode).
Another nice feature of this smart air purifier is a child safety lock which can turn off the air purifier when the front grill is removed when operating. This is good to have since the device is rather tall. It is 26.8” tall and 12.2” wide enough for little toddlers to easily pull themselves up on this device.
Other key features include AHAM Certification, Energy Star Rated, ETL certified, and compliant with California Air Resources Board (CARB) which is important for our California users.
How big a room will Toshiba Smart Air Purifier clean?
When buying a smart air purifier, it’s important to know the size of the room you plan to install this smart device. There is nothing worse than getting a smart air purifier that is not powerful enough to clean the air in your home. Toshiba Smart Air Purifier can clean the air in any room up to 483 square feet in 12 minutes or 7 times per hour when on Auto mode. How big is a 483 square feet room? It’s a nice size room. 483 square feet can be a room that measures 20’x24’ that depending on your home, could be a den, bedroom, or maybe your living room.
How do you install the Toshiba Smart Air Purifier?
Installation of this smart air purifier is quite easy. It’s as close as you can get to “a plug-and-play” device. Unbox the smart air purifier and download the TSmart Life app on either the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android). Then make sure your smartphone is connected to your home Wi-Fi network and you are close to the appliance. Then follow the instructions in the app to set up your smart air purifier. It should take you only a few minutes to get up and running.
How much does Toshiba Smart Air Purifier Cost?
This smart air purifier that works with Amazon Alexa has a list price of $299.99 and is available on Amazon. It’s only available in white and replacement air filters cost $49.99. Is this a good price? GearBrain has tested many smart air purifiers and Toshiba’s Smart Air Purifier falls in the middle of the pack in terms of price and room coverage. So, the price of $299.99 is market level.
Smart Home Integrations
Toshiba’s new smart air purifier works with Amazon Alexa as well as Google Assistant voice platforms. It also works with If This Than That (IFTTT). To set up these integrations, go to Settings in the T Smart Life app and select either. The app will help you set them up.
The integrations vary by voice platform. For instance, with Amazon Alexa-enabled devices, users can use basic commands like “Hey Alexa, turn on the air purifier” or you can select modes. With Google Assistant-enabled devices, there is only one voice command you can use, on or off. For IFTTT applets, we found 34 applets but none are for their smart air purifier. But you can create one if adventurous.
Performance
Our testing was done in a large room (24’x24’) over two months. We found setting this device up extremely easy and quick. All we had to do is unboxed the unit and installed the filters. Then downloaded the TSmartLife app, set up an account, and added the new air purifier. Then we connected it to our home Wi-Fi network which was fast. It did help we had the main router in the same room as the smart air purifier. Then we tested the device on Auto mode for two months. Everything went as planned. We had no issues with the purification or running of this smart air purifier in the room.
The Toshiba Smart Air Purifier works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant-enabled devices, and IFTTT. We found these integrations to be limited and rather basic. For instance, the Google Assistant integration only allows users to turn the smart air purifier on or off. For Alexa, you can do a little more. Users can ask Alexa to change the fan speed or the mode of the air purifier. And IFTTT had no applets for their smart air purifier so you would have to create one.
Therefore, If you are looking for a smart air purifier to work with other smart devices, this might not be the one for you unless you can create IFTTT applets. But if you want to be able to turn your smart air purifier on and off or change modes with voice commands, Toshiba’s smart air purifier can perform these orders with Alexa.
Another nice feature we found in this Toshiba smart air purifier is its filters. This smart air purifier comes with two filters to help clean 99.9% of the particles in the air. It has a pre-filter, an H13 Ture HEPA filter, and a carbon filter. We haven’t seen two filters in a smart air purifier we tested before, but this one worked well. But note the replacement filters are expensive. The True HEPA filter costs $49.99 per filter.
The last issue you need to deal with is the size of this smart air purifier. It’s not small but it is tall for a smart air purifier. Many smart air purifiers we tested like Coway Airmega are small square-shaped units. The Toshiba Smart Air Purifier is tall and thin, like Afloia smart air purifier. Depending on what you have in the room, you will need to find a large enough space to place this smart air device. But don’t worry about aesthetics. Toshiba’s smart air purifier is well-designed and will not be an eyesore in the room.
Summary
Toshiba Smart Air Purifier is a nice smart home device to have these days. With all the germs flying around and if you have a dog, Toshiba’s smart air purifier will clean the air in a room or two, depending on how big your rooms are in your house, office, or apartment. It will not cover the entire floor of a house, but it might do a good job on a big den, a nursery, a small apartment, or even a home office. Since our testing was done in a large room, we were able to see how well this device worked. And it didn’t disappoint.
We did not like the owner’s manual and some of the displays in the app. For instance, it had a lot of numbers showing air quality ratings. It would have been nice to know if the number displayed was good or bad. Also, since it was smart, it should have been able to notify us when we should maybe change the mode. It did have a feature for letting us know when our air filters were ready to be replaced though.
Overall, if in the market for a smart air purifier that works with Alexa and is for a large room, Toshiba Smart Air Purifier would be a good device to consider. It’s easy to set up and use. And this smart device can keep your room’s air healthy 24/7 and has a good design. Just make sure you have a place to put it because it’s big.
Pro
- Easy setup
- Child lock on the filter
- Quiet when operating
Cons
- Size
- Lacks information in the owner’s manual and on the website (FAQs)
- Limited smart home integrations
