Ordered vBreathe Tasman from Amazon.
Ordered vBreathe Tasman from Amazon.
First impressions, high quality exceptionally good looking portable air purifier.
After some time using it I discovered the following issues and had to return to Amazon who kindly agreed to accept the return and issue full refund.
1. When the device is in standby mode, it emanates a very faint but pronounced constant electric buzzing noise, to the point that you can't be in the room while the device is in the standby mode because it would just drive you mad.
2. When the battery is fully charged and the device is left completely turned off (not in a standby mode, but entire device is turned off), the battery mysteriously drains. I tested, it takes around 3 days for the battery to completely drain from full 100% charge while it is completely off. Something is draining the battery, perhaps an electric flaw.
3. The device always reports the air quality as amber (not the green). Green stands for Good, amber for poor and red for bad. In the beginning the device would always show my air quality as green. I know this as a matter of fact as I have a separate device that measures my air quality and it has always been good. After the firmware update, it started to show it as amber. No matter if I left the device running for hours or days, it would just simply not switch from amber to green. Nothing has changed in my room what-so-ever.
Overall this is an outrageously expensive device for what it is. The iOS app is very sluggish, slow and just not up to scratch with other devices that I have witnessed. This device is way too small to clean any reasonable space at home. They claim it takes 24-48 hours to completely clean the air in a 4m x 4m room I believe. You'll be subject to a lot of noise during this time and if you stop it, the whole cycle would have to start again. In fact I'm not too entirely sure that this device actually cleans the air as after running it for close to 12 hours in a 2m x 2m room, I didn't see a reduction in dust particles. You simply can't beat physics, for a normal sized home you'd need a much larger device to clean the air. Yes when you run vBreathe Tasman even for 30 minutes, you can feel the smell of their gel that one pops into the device but it only makes the room smell nicer which could be achieved with essential oil diffusers.
It is highly questionable that this device is fit for its purpose and that it is actually doing anything to improve the air at home.
My emails to vBreathe support were answered but when I reported the issues to them, they said that they will notify the engineers to fix those if possible in the next firmware upgrade. These were never addressed in the firmware update or by email. They would just say the same stuff.
The other seriously suspicious thing is that I came across several sellers on Alibaba who are selling exactly the same identical device for $30-40 dollars. So my suspicion is vBreathe never designed this device from the ground up, they likely found an existing manufacturer in china via alibaba and placed an order with them to produce these.
This device isn't being actively developed in a sense of active updates that give you more functionality or customisation.
The only positive I have about this device is that it is very elegant and beautiful to look at, especially the silver aluminium model, but that's about it.
I reckon if vBreathe was to create a V.2 to from the ground up, they could offer various sizes, add a round screen for core functionality, fix issues with battery drainage and improve the battery life, introduce a remote, integrate it with apple homekit and so on then it will likely sell much better.
At the moment I have returned mine, I will keep an eye on their website to see if they ever release a newer model at which point I may reconsider my options. I'm glad I have managed to return this device for a full refund. Hopefully this review helps someone in making a wise decision when it comes to purchasing one of these.