Skip to content

Who writes this

Jean-Benoit Buisson

Every page on this site is written and signed by one person. This page says who, how the judgments are reached, and — just as importantly — what he is not.

How I got here

This site began with a question that has nothing to do with any one appliance and everything to do with how they are all sold: why does the room this thing was bought for still feel wrong? Every page I found while looking for an answer had the same shape — a ranked list, a score out of ten, an affiliate button, and not one figure I could check. None of them said what clean air delivery rate actually meant against a room-size claim, what a replacement filter cost, whether a single-hose unit was quietly pulling warm air back in, or that the fix was usually a €15 filter rather than a new machine.

That is the whole subject. The equipment in this category almost never fails outright; a filter clogs, a hose kinks, a seal on a window kit never sealed, and then the whole appliance gets blamed and replaced. A portable air conditioner arrives with a window kit built for the wrong kind of window. A dehumidifier's headline liters-a-day figure is measured at a temperature most homes never reach. A humidifier is chosen on price rather than on what hard water will do to it within a season. None of that is on the front of the box, and all of it decides whether an appliance earns its place or ends up back in a cupboard by autumn.

So this is the page I wanted and could not find. I read what manufacturers publish, I check every product reference market by market, I follow what things actually cost rather than what they are listed at, and I say plainly when a figure is not published at all. That last part matters more than it sounds: most of the disappointment here comes from a number nobody printed.

I keep notes — the honest specification of each family, the place where the manual contradicts the sales page, which filter fits which unit, and the buying mistake each category invites. This site is those notes, put in order, in five languages, because the same question is asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian and gets a far worse answer in four of them.

I am not an HVAC engineer, and I do not pretend to be. What I can do is read carefully, compare honestly, and tell you which figure the maker left out.

What this site covers

Everything listed here is taken from the catalog of this site, and each entry links to its own page. When the catalog changes, this list changes with it. It is a list of what is covered — not a list of what I own.

What I care about

Three convictions, and they run through every page. The number that gets quoted is usually the wrong one — a purifier sold on room size rather than on CADR measured at the speed anyone actually leaves it running, a portable AC sold on BTU/h rather than on what a single hose quietly undoes, a dehumidifier sold on liters a day measured in a warm test room rather than a real one. What the thing costs over three years decides more than what it costs today — filters, cartridges and hoses are wear parts, and on entry-level models they can outrun the machine or simply not be stocked. And the thing that matters most is rarely on the specification sheet at all: noise at the setting people actually run overnight, because that is what decides if an appliance stays switched on or ends up back in a cupboard.

What I am not

I am not an HVAC engineer, a building services technician or a doctor. I hold no qualification in any of them, I have never worked for a manufacturer or for a retailer, and nothing here rests on any professional title. Nothing on this site is a health verdict: where an air quality monitor reports a CO2 or particulate reading, this site explains what the sensor measures and stops there. In particular, nothing here is medical advice or a diagnosis — a stuffy room, a damp wall or a reading on a screen are not turned into a health conclusion anywhere on this site; that is a matter for a qualified professional and, where relevant, your national health or housing authority. There is likewise nothing here about allergies, asthma or any other condition. If you are looking for someone whose authority comes from a job title, this is not that site — what each judgment rests on is stated on the page it appears on, and you can read how a conclusion is reached here in full.

How I work

  • Every figure names its source: a manufacturer specification, a manual, a standard, or the weight of long-term owner reports.
  • No price, product reference or specification is ever invented. Where a figure is missing, the field is left empty and the gap is stated on the page.
  • Product references are verified against Amazon before publication, per market. Where a model is not sold in that store, you are sent to a local search rather than to a page that does not exist.
  • Where the cheap option wins, the page says the cheap option wins — and where the honest answer is a €15 replacement filter or a five-minute descale rather than a new machine, it says that instead.

Why this site exists

Because this equipment is sold on the wrong numbers. A purifier is advertised on a room-size figure rather than on the fan speed that figure was measured at. A portable air conditioner is sold on BTU/h and says nothing about the window kit that decides whether that BTU/h means anything once it is installed. A dehumidifier is sold on its price and not on whether its filter is stocked. And the parts treated as afterthoughts — the filter, the cartridge, the hose, the remote — are usually the actual fix.

There is also a part of this that is not about buying anything. Most appliances that get replaced were not worn out; a filter clogged, a seal dried out, a hose kinked behind a curtain, and nobody had written down the ten minutes and fifteen euros that would have fixed them. A purifier that has gone quiet, a portable AC that "used to be colder", a humidifier leaving white dust on the shelf. Those problems are cheap to fix and almost never written down. That is the subject a page full of new machines is guaranteed to skip. It is not skipped here.

Correcting me

If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it and date the correction on the page. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · Paris, France

Prices quoted in these summaries are dated readings. The live price is shown next to each product.