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The COVID pandemic—and in much of the country, smoke-filled air caused by rampant wildfires—has renewed interest in a formerly sleepy sector of the gadget universe: the air purifier. The best models can not only remove odors from the air, they can protect your health by cleansing the air of harmful vapors and particulate matter.

To find the model that’s right for your needs, you should first consider the size of the room you want the appliance to treat. These are our top picks according to general room size. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this category of product and see some of the other factors we take into consideration in our reviews, scroll down the page a bit.

Updated September 6, 2022 to add a link to our Clorox Alexa Smart Tabletop Air Purifier review.

This powerful air purifier provides up to 1,200 square feet of coverage, and it will fit into your smart home ecosystem, too. It uses four types of filters to clean your air–three of which can be washed and reused–and its CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rates) of 332 to 369 cubic feet per minute are best in class. You can connect this smart appliance to your Wi-Fi network and control with voice commands, but NuWave’s smartphone app merely duplicates the touch controls on the device itself. We’d like it even better if we could program it to operate on a schedule.

The Jya Fjord is rated to clean the air in rooms up to 667 square feet, with a CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) of 265 cubic feet per minute. A small OLED touchscreen displays a small amount of information, but you can use the SmartMi Link app on your mobile device to get additional details and to control this excellent air purifier. This appliance is unusual in that it supports Apple’s HomeKit ecosystem in addition to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. It’s a very good value, especially while it’s for sale at its introductory price of $319, including a free air filter, but read our in-depth review for all the details as to how we suggest you purchase one, if you’re of a mind to.

Coway’s Airmega 150 a pretty ideal air purifier for modest-sized spaces. Its minimalist design blends with any decor, and it is intuitive to operate right out of the box. While it doesn’t offer app control or integrate with other smart appliances, it also doesn’t have any of the attendant connectivity and interoperability hassles. The fact that it accurately monitors and responds to changing air quality, so you’re always breathing your best, is another reason for us to give it a strong recommendation.

Here’s a guide to some of the key operational features in the category. You might also want to check out our buyers’ guide to stand-alone air-quality monitors, which can keep you informed of the quality of air inside your home. Since most air purifiers are best deployed in a single room, you can easily move a less-expensive air quality monitor from room to room to track the quality of all the indoor air you breathe.

Most air purifiers use multiple filters to trap increasingly small airborne particles and typically include a HEPA filter and a activated carbon filter to neutralize odors. This particular filter is used in some Blueair air purifiers.

In recent years, however, the EPA has reported that the typical air quality indoors (where we spend about 90 percent of our time) is much worse than it is outside, with some airborne pollutants two to five times more concentrated in the home than outdoors. These pollutants include combustion byproducts, pet dander, mold, pesticides, ozone, natural gasses like radon, and the all-encompassing category of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which include everything from formaldehyde to trichloroethylene to chloroform. (These gasses can be 10 times higher indoors than outdoors.)

And none of this stuff is healthy to breathe.

Do air purifiers protect you? The experts (including the EPA) say that HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filters are effective at reducing airborne contaminants of all types—including viruses—but are careful to note that on their own they are not enough to protect you from viruses and bacteria, and that you should still practice the standard battery of safeguards even if you have a great purifier on hand. That said high-quality air filters are effective at reducing (but not eliminating) indoor pollution.

While we don’t have the facilities to scientifically test the pollution-reduction claims of each purifier, we do report on the manufacturers’ specifications on that front.

Christopher Null is a veteran technology and business journalist. He contributes regularly to TechHive, PCWorld, and Wired, and operates the websites Drinkhacker and Film Racket.