Briiv air filter review

An open glass jar, sitting atop a black base, housing a thick coconut mat beneath a spongy morass of forest inexperienced reindeer moss: you possibly can be forgiven for considering that the Briiv is a few kind of botanical experiment.

However it isn’t – it’s an air filter that’s trying to supply an alternative choice to the growing numbers of plastic elements and HEPA filters that find yourself in landfill yearly, with no strategy to be damaged down.

As a substitute of “greening” a home air air purifier that’s merely industrial tech made small, Briiv has provide you with a brand new strategy: utilizing biodegradable natural supplies for filters, over a low-wattage equipment (it’s simply 5W).

It’s a beautiful factor to take a look at, contact, and odor. The reindeer moss is so engaging, you end up choosing it up simply to roll it round in your fingers, so in case you have young children, beware. They gained’t be capable of go away it alone.

Let’s take a better look.

Arrange

• Briiv is barely bigger than a kettle
• Easy to arrange
• Connects through Wi-Fi

The Briiv consists of a black plastic base, three natural filters, a glass jar, a guide, an influence cable and an influence adapter.

Alex Greenwood / Foundry

The bottom measures 16cm in diameter. It’s wider than a home kettle, so that you want a reasonable-sized floor for it – it’ll greater than dominate a bedside desk, for instance, however it’ll do tremendous on a sideboard or chest of drawers.

This base is 11.5cm excessive, and has the USB port for the equipped energy adapter on the again. A black cloth filter wraps across the air output.

Into this base, you place the 10cm x10cm cardboard matrix filter that lasts three months. This filter, with an activated carbon accordion in it, can entice matter all the way down to PM2.5, together with tremendous particles and VOCs (unstable natural compounds: suppose emissions from paint, printers, glue, everlasting markers – that sort of factor).

The coconut filter goes on high. This lasts for one 12 months and is product of waste coconut husk that has been repurposed into filtration fibre. It’s a dense spongy mesh that smells faintly of toast, and targets PM5 particles, together with filth, mud and smoke. 

You then place the glass jar excessive, which comes down the facet of the coconut filter, holding it in place, and suits onto the bottom. It’s harking back to a Victorian bell jar.

Subsequent, you add the darkish forest-green reindeer moss, which is available in a woven hessian drawstring bag. This a part of the set-up feels splendidly medieval, as if you’re a 13^th century apothecary pulling out pure components for a poultice.

Alex Greenwood / Foundry

You get about 80 grams of moss, and it lasts for one 12 months. Briiv says it’s naturally grown, ethically harvested, and can take away PM10 particles like pollen and pet dander.

All these filters are biodegradable, which may be very a lot the purpose of the product.  

The whole peak of the Briiv is about 23cm, and it comes with a woven black USB cable, 140cm lengthy, which plugs into the bottom, so you may have some leeway over positioning close to an influence socket.

Operation

• Easy on-filter contact controls
• In-app controls

You use the Briiv via the touch-activated management zone on the entrance of the bottom or via the app.

The management zone on the entrance of the bottom may be very easy: a scale of 1 to 4 dots with a plus and minus level to scale up or down. Subsequent to that is the contact button for the one-hour increase, which is a cleanse mode that can clear a 6m x 6m area in an hour, though the filter will work at a most throughout this time.

Alex Greenwood / Foundry

If you wish to use the app, which is accessible for Apple and Android, you obtain it through your app retailer or scan the QR code within the guide. You arrange your Briiv account, supplying an electronic mail tackle and password, and also you’ll be despatched a verification code to your electronic mail. Then you may add the machine.

To take action, you press the one-hour contact button on the Briiv for 8 seconds to place the air purifier in configuration mode. You then navigate to your telephone’s Wi-Fi settings and join with the Briiv community that seems there. At this level, the app will ask you to key in your Wi-Fi community title and password and it connects the Briiv via your Wi-Fi in that method.

The app itself is easy and well-designed. There’s a button to show the Briiv off, a button to extend the output by 4 levels and a button to lower it. You may schedule the Briiv to return on and switch off at particular occasions and speeds on sure days, there’s a tab for filter well being, and a one-hour increase button.  

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

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Efficiency

• Briiv is just not silent in operation
• 4 velocity choices
• Distinct, pure odor

At dot one velocity, the Briiv is barely audible. You may positively sleep whereas this mode is working, and certainly, we tried it in a single day and it didn’t disturb us in any respect.

Velocity two is audible (Briiv says 45dB), with a slight buzz, and you may sense the air motion from 80cm away.

Velocity three is important. Velocity 4 is highly effective, just like a desk fan sound stage. On the Briiv web site, it’s categorised as being no louder than 70dB – the identical as a washer or bathe – which is fairly noisy. You may really feel the air motion from 120cm away.

A lot for the way it appears to be like and sounds. The query is: does it work?

Briiv’s declare is that the air filter is as highly effective as 3,043 medium measurement houseplants – besides, presumably, with added airflow. That is unimaginable to verify and never notably useful in case you’re making an attempt to determine whether or not to purchase this or one other air air purifier.

Within the web site FAQs, Briiv says that on its most setting it delivers 53 cubic ft per minute of purified air. This equates to a CADR of 90 cubic metres per hour. Our top-rated air air purifier, the Jya Fjord, has a CADR of 450m³ per hour, so the Briiv solely has 20% of its air cleansing energy.

When you burn a pan within the kitchen, it gained’t have the ability to rapidly clear the hanging smoke from your own home. However what it will possibly do is clean up a dusty or a stuffy room.

Because the Briiv doesn’t function any air high quality indicators, there’s nothing other than the odor and your sense of air motion to let you know that something is going on.

What we will say is that we examined the Briiv in a single day for a number of nights in a row, throughout winter with closed home windows, and located our sleep deeper and extra refreshing, and we wakened with out that muffled head you usually get when sleeping in a sealed surroundings with central heating on. We felt noticeably sharper, and clearer-minded, and this was in a testing surroundings with glorious exterior air high quality, so in case you reside in an city surroundings, the distinction could also be much more noticeable.  

Briiv’s filtered air makes your room odor as if it’s both outdoors or filled with crops. Throughout testing, we had a wide range of completely different views on it: “It’s a garden in Spring.” “It’s like strolling right into a florist.” “It’s seaweed on a seashore.” “It smells like making up a dangling basket” (that’ll be the moss). “It’s like strolling via a woodland in Could.” “It’s like one of many glass homes at Kew Gardens.”

You get the image. Suffice to say, it genuinely modifications the ambiance in a room.

Worth and availability

There’s no getting across the worth: the Briiv is an costly piece of package.

When you’re within the US, it prices from round $360 upwards (on the time of writing, Goop has the very best worth), with a 12 months’s price of alternative filters out there for $42.

Within the UK it typically prices £329, though the very best worth we’ve discovered is from Equipment Metropolis, the place it’s £299.99. Substitute filters aren’t too unhealthy at £34.99 for the one-year moss matrix set. This consists of one moss filter, one alternative coconut filter and 4 nano matrix filters (the cardboard sq. with the accordion in it).

When you’re within the UK, Briiv additionally makes a black version for VOC and odour elimination (Briiv, £334) It makes use of makes use of bamboo carbon blocks as a substitute of moss and may very well be a helpful different in case you have extra of a contemporary, industrial fashion in your house.

Verdict

The Briiv is beautiful. On all types of ranges. At this worth level, it’s positively a luxurious merchandise, however we do suppose it’s price it if what you’re after is mild air purifying. It’s fascinating to take a look at, it makes your room odor like a woodland dell, and it’s a very particular object to work together with – we couldn’t maintain ourselves from often touching the moss within the jar and choosing it as much as odor.

Furthermore, it performs into one thing deep down within the human psyche. We’ve been utilizing moss for 1000’s of years, and it simply feels weirdly proper to have some so close by, and to make use of this pure product once more at present. If the Briiv is an indicator of the way forward for “inexperienced tech”, we will stay up for some fascinating hybrid improvements. 

For extra air purifying choices and to see which home equipment we fee the best, take a look at our round-up of the very best air purifiers we’ve examined.