This is the appliance I'll be using all winter to keep my house healthier - and it's under £100
Lakeland's Dehumidifier and Air Purifier is more than a breath of fresh air - it's a room full of it
This already compact model covers air purifying and dehumidifying for under £100. It's a godsend for small homes, but isn't yet up to the task of larger rooms.
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Combines two appliances into one, compact model
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Inexpensive, but still good quality
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Simple and easy to use
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Only suitable for smaller rooms
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It’s exactly that time of year when everything in the house feels a little bit damp. Naturally, we all seal up our windows to keep as much heat in our homes, but that leaves us with less well ventilated air. Sometimes, it feels like there’s just no winning.
I emphasise sometimes, because I think Lakeland has a pretty nifty way to banish both of those issues in one. The Lakeland Air Purifier and Dehumidifier simplifies lots of the work done by the best dehumidifiers: working effectively at taking moisture out of the air in cupboards, bedrooms, bathrooms, and even when drying clothes.
At the same time, you can switch on an air purifying function, which will take some of the nasties most commonly found building up in the air from cooking, cleaning, and applying sprays and products in your daily routine. I’ve been putting this to the test across both functions and I have to say, I’m impressed. It's as good as some of the best, dedicated air purifiers on the market too.
Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier: specifications
- Dimensions: 19.5 X 21.5 X 31.5cm
- Capacity: 1-litre
- Filter: HEPA13
- Weight: 3 kgs
- Power: 45 watts
Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier: unboxing
The Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier is only little. This means that it comes packaged in a perfectly petite box that’s light and easy to carry around. Inside, you’ll find the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier nestled into some plastic packaging. In an ideal world, Lakeland would use materials that are easier to recycle, because this is a layer that’ll almost definitely end up in landfill. However, it does a good job of protecting the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier in transit, as mine arrived in perfect condition.
In the side of the machine, there’s a slot that you’ll need to open to remove the plastic from the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier filter. Then, at the back, you have your 1-litre reservoir which will collect water for you when using the dehumidifier mode. There’s nothing you need to do here before getting started, which is good news. All in all, it’s a very simple process.
What is the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier like to use?
You’ll see the simple controls on the top of the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier. These will let you turn the machine on or off, set the air purifier onto two speeds, and toggle the dehumidifier too. It will also automatically shut off when the dehumidifier reservoir is full, which is a great feature for safety as well as practicality.
These are all really responsive, if not a little small for those of us who need reading glasses, but they’re straightforward for navigating between.
Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier: dehumidifier
The Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier is best suited to rooms up to 9 metres squared , so I tried to stick to testing this on those kinds of areas. I have a bedroom in the basement of my family home, which, as you can imagine does have some damp issues. It fits the brief, so I sat this in the bedroom and had it running constantly for a week. In that time, I had to empty the Lakeland three times, which is pretty impressive when you think about how small this is. I didn’t notice any changes in the room myself and there’s no humidistat integrated into the Lakeland, so you either need to trust it or invest in one yourself if you want to moderate your personal levels at home. For me, someone who tests dehumidifiers for a living, my humidistat registered a drop in humidistat of 5% over the week. It’s not dramatic, but it’s also not something to be sniffed at.
I also put the Lakeland by my sheets, which were rather ambitiously strewn over my heated airer to see whether it could offer a helping hand in getting those dry.
The normal bathroom that I test dehumidifiers in is a little too big to be a fair test for the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier, so I put it in a smaller wet room. Here, it absolutely excelled at clearing the mirrors and whisking the dampness out of the room. I actually turned the fan off in my bathroom to see how effective this really was. I’d say that the conditions post piping hot shower were restored to normal in five minutes. Impressive, right?
Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier: air purifier
I put this through all the same tests that our air purifiers go through: taking away the scent of a burning candle, restoring air quality after spraying perfumes, working in a kitchen when cooking, and running overnight in a bedroom. My take away is that this is better on the smaller tasks: it eliminated the smell of the candle almost instantly and did a reasonable job at lifting the smell of the perfume. I would say that it was ever so slightly there still after ten minutes and it lingered in the room, but the Lakeland certainly did a big chunk of the work.
When it came to the bigger tasks, such as maintaining good air quality in a sealed bedroom overnight and keeping the air clean when I was cooking a roast dinner, things were a little less effective.
As with the other function, the Lakeland doesn’t give you feedback on how it things the air quality is looking, so you’ll need to rely on intuition or investing in an air quality measuring device.
The most obvious test in the kitchen is burning toast and seeing how well the burnt toast smell is removed from the air. I had to repeat this test, because the Lakeland is too small for my kitchen really. On the other side of the room, it did nothing, in the middle of the room, it didn’t do much again. However, when placed beside the toaster and within a 2m radius, I had much better results. As I burnt the toast, this diverted the smell of toast and took it straight into the Lakeland.
Similarly, overnight, it’s really hard to tell whether an air purifier has worked or not when it doesn’t have a measuring device. I ran the Vitesy on the other side of the room and checked my graph in the morning. You can see that it kept things at a pretty steady level, which is great.
Cleaning the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier
The Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier is refreshingly low maintenance. They recommend replacing the filter every 8-12 months and you’ll also want to make sure that you’re up to speed on how to clean a dehumidifier. Beyond that, I didn’t notice this showing dust in a particularly dramatic way, nor was it dirty.
You'll see the auto shut-off function which means that the dehumidifier reservoir doesn't end up overflowing. It's a very useful extra feature to have. When full, the dehumidifier reservoir is easy to pull out and empty, if not a little stiff at first, but it gets smoother, easier to remove, and the water pours out easily too. It's really simple.
Should you buy the Lakeland Dehumidifier and Air Purifier?
If you want an inexpensive appliance that combines both cleaning your air with taking moisture out of it, this is perfect. Lakeland's neat model is compact and efficient, although perhaps better suited to smaller, more simple tasks.
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