The best air purifiers for cigarette smoke

According to the CDC, 11.6% of all adults in the U.S. smoke cigarettes and 3.7% smoke cigars; if that’s you, then you most likely don’t mind the odor, but that potent smoke can travel far.

Cigar and cigarette smoke can enter your home from neighbors or even from one person smoking as they walk by. The smell is pervasive and can make it hard to sleep or spend time in a room where the smoke has invaded.

We all know the dangers of secondhand smoke. Still, smoke particles from cigarettes can even cause thirdhand smoke, a residue of toxic particles that becomes embedded in furniture, carpet or walls. Thirdhand smoke particles can last for years and remain toxic as long as they are in your home. 

While there are things you can do to clear smoke from a room, a long-term, effective solution is to get an air purifier. This will allow you to remove smoke particles and odors before they cause harm.

Cigarette smoke is one of the hardest pollutants to remove, so I included only air purifiers that excelled across all our tests and have filters packed with activated carbon pellets.

1. Best overall: AC Infinity CLOUDLINE S8 fan with refillable carbon filter

A specialist device with a refillable filter packed with 16 lbs of activated carbon.

To remove the gases and smells from cigarette smoke from your air, you need to look beyond traditional air purifiers. Standard models usually use gas filters with a small amount of charcoal that will become saturated quickly in spaces with high levels of VOCs. For serious cigarette smoke issues, I suggest you build your own odor-busting device with parts from AC Infinity.

2. Best traditional option: Austin Air HealthMate

An air purifier made in the USA with a filter packed with 15 lbs of activated carbon and zeolite mix.

If you’re looking for a traditional air purifier that offers both odor and particle filtration, the HealthMate from Austin Air might be just the thing. Unlike the AC Infinity DIY unit above, the filter in this model also has a layer of HEPA filtration that will remove allergens from the air.

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3. Best cheap option: AirFanta 3Pro

An air purifier powered with quiet and energy-efficient PC fans and packed with 1.3 lbs of activated carbon.

The AirFanta 3Pro is a small box with a plastic base, one filter at each side and four PC fans on top, inspired by the design of the Corsi-Rosenthal box. You can buy one without carbon for 165 bucks but if you stretch your budget to $180, you can get four bonded filter with particle filtration on one side and pelleted carbon on the other.

READ MY FULL REVIEW ➜

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Units we don’t recommend for cigarette and cigar smoke:

• PuroAir 240 – This is a hyped unit that simply lacks the performance to back it up. Smaller devices like this have very low CADR and small amounts of carbon so will lose effectiveness quickly with a pollutant like cigarette smoke.

• Levoit LV-H132 – I was shocked to see this device recommended for smoke by a well-known magazine. While it’s cheap, its performance in our particle removal test was very poor. It took 1 hour and 38 minutes to make our test room clean. It is underpowered for most situations, but it would be dangerous if you relied on it to remove smoke.

• Okaysou AirMax 10L Pro – A super popular air purifier thanks to its slick use of TikTok influencers, but it failed to match our expectations. It cleaned our test room in 4 minutes, longer than the much cheaper Core 300, and it made claims about its 5-in-1 filter technology that weren’t true.

• Jaspr – This is a big air purifier with a CADR of 353 cfm and one pound of (or 453g) or carbon, which isn’t bad but won’t be enough to help with cigarette smoke. The main reason why I don’t recommend it is that it costs nearly $1,200 to buy and you can expect to pay an additional $704.36 per year in electricity bills and filter replacements. Way too expensive for what it is.

• Levoit LV-H128 – At less than $40, this is a great price but a terrible air purifier as it took 2 hours and 42 minutes to clean our test room of 728 cubic feet of particle pollutants measuring at least 1 micron. It will be totally useless for any-sized room to deal with smoke from cigarettes and cigars.

• Molekule Air Mini+ – You have probably seen adverts for this good-looking device from Molekule. We were a little suspicious of its PECO technology, and it took almost an hour to bring down the levels of PM1 to breathable levels. At this price level, it’s just a total waste of money, and you are better off with any of the other air purifiers we recommend. There is even a class action settlement in progress for devices sold by this brand.
  

What to look for when buying an air purifier for smoke

1. A minimum of 5 air changes per hour in your room

Many air purifier manufacturers overstate the room size they can work in. While the EPA recommends a minimum of five air changes per hour, many brands will give the room size for 1 air change. 

Be very wary of manufacturers who don’t provide a CADR rating or don’t send their devices to AHAM for testing, as we have seen many of these devices exaggerate their performance when we test them ourselves.

One air change is almost useless, especially with something as pervasive as cigarette or cigar smoke. 

That is why when we list room sizes, we always base them on their reported CADR and the maximum size when providing at least 5 air changes per hour. 

To make things simpler, we produced a tool that tells you the CADR in CFM you need for your room size – enter your room size and adjust the ceiling height if required and our tool will let you know what CADR is needed:

2. A serious amount of activated carbon

While HEPA and MERV 13 filters do a great job of removing particles from the air, these filters can’t do anything against odors and gases from cigarette smoke. Instead, you will need a gas filter with a large amount of activated carbon that can adsorb and remove gases and odors from your air.

When it comes to activated carbon, bigger is better, which is why the top two choices we recommend for dealing with smoke are to measure their carbon filters in lbs. 

Look for activated carbon filters that use pellets instead of impregnated fabric, as they will last longer and will be more effective at removing odors.

Wrapping up

Whether you found the unit that sounds right for you in this guide or will keep browsing the internet for other options, make sure to check if the one that catches your eye has the right CADR to clean your space and comes with enough activated carbon to actually be helpful in removing cigar and cigarette smoke from the air.

If you have any question that I haven’t covered in this guide, please from a comment below or send me an email to danny@housefresh.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.