Philips Air Performer 7000 review: I’d buy one

As a reviewer, you need to relent any ideas of minimalism you might have had. I love clear hallways, styled tables, and tastefully stacked shelving, but instead, I have multiple coffee machines on the bench, several bags of phones, three smartwatches waiting for their turn on my wrist, a tablet from a brand no one has heard of yet, a pint glass full of earbuds, and a partridge in a pear tree. There is no need for any additional tech in my home.

And yet within a couple of days with the Philips Air Performer 7000, I had decided to add to the eternal stockpile of devices and buy one.

Retailing at $799, the Philips Air Performer 7000 Series 2-in-1 Air Purifier and Fan is around the same price point as other premium hybrid products.

Genuine replacement filters will set you back $99, which is on the exier side. Although a filter should last you quite some time. According to the Air+ app, two weeks of testing has seen the filter deteriorate by 1%. Continuing at this cadence, a singular filter should last a little under two years.

These filters are simple to clean, you’ll just need to vacuum the build up from the sides.

Philips is spruiking the Air Performer as the first AI-powered Air Purifier and Fan, but I haven’t been able to test the AI functions.

Auto+ is a setting soon to be released through the Air+ companion app for Philips Air devices. This setting will use AI to analyse outdoor data, room size, and behavioural patterns in order to maximise the device’s performance. Right now it is in beta, but is not available to download.

According to an update on November 22 on both the App Store and Google Play, Auto+ mode will be released in winter 2022 for most Philips Air devices. With the timing, we can assume this refers to winter in the northern hemisphere. We will update this review with more information once these features are available.

Despite the lack of artificial intelligence, this is still a smart device. Even before my home was cluttered with various devices waiting to be reviewed, I have always been one for efficiency. Space is precious, and I don’t have enough of it to waste on single-service products. Hence the appeal of the hybrid fan and air purifier combo of the Philips Air Performer 7000.

Using an open-faced design made popular by Dyson, the Air Performer 7000 purifies the air while also blowing it back out as a fan, or circulating it through an air outlet at the back of the unit. As a fan, the device is powerful enough to replace the two fans usually set up in the bedroom to sleep, and to adequately cool my open-plan living/dining area. According to Philips, the Air Performer covers 70m2 which is Allowing for up to a 350-degree rotation, the fan part of the Air Performer is already more efficient than my current setup.

On to the air purification. A common question is whether air purifiers actually work, and without data to back that up you can understand why people would ask. Air purifiers that include detailed readouts come across as more trustworthy, and the Air Performer 7000 is among them. There is plenty of data in the accompanying app including air quality, PM2.5 readouts, temperature, and humidity. 

You can see these measurements on daily, weekly, monthly and yearly charts for both the area around the device, and outdoor data from your location. It can be helpful to identify little patterns, for example, I know that when I get home from the gym in the morning and leave the front door open the PM2.5 reading spikes, before evening back out around half an hour later.

Although what has been the most useful has been enabling push notifications. If the air quality or allergy risk shifts significantly, I'll get a notification on my phone of the change. It's a good prompt to take some antihistamines or to crank the air purifier up higher to compensate. Although auto-mode will do that for you anyway. As far as air purifiers go, it offers excellent data to back up its claims. 

I am, however, slightly disappointed in the smart home integration. While the app is excellent and allows you to control the unit remotely, schedule on and off times, and access a range of other features, the Siri shortcuts are buggy. Since I have Apple HomePods, any Siri command said in my home is transferred to them rather than housed locally on my iPhone. As the Philips Air Performer is not compatible with HomeKit I can’t use Siri to control it if I'm within earshot of a HomePod. This feels like a deeply specific problem, but I would love to see those kinks worked out. In some locations the device can be used with Alexa and Google Assistant, but we were unable to test this.

It took me a couple of days to decide that the Philips Air Performer 7000 was a keeper, and worth spending the money on. In part it is due to the sheer efficiency of the device being able to oust two fans and an air purifier in one product. But, also the transparency of information through the Philips Air+ app has bettered my quality of life.

Especially with the pollen count this year, being made aware of higher allergen times has huge benefits. Identifying patterns in air quality at home and within my local area also helps me to make smarter choices. But most importantly, the air actually does feel fresher. Since powering up the Air Performer there has been a noticeable change to the feel of the air in my home, even in large spaces.

While the AI functionality remains to be seen, even without it you can feel the difference.