Behind the scenes at Wirecutter for an epic duel of air purifiers

Tim Heffernan lights five matches with a single stroke and waves them up and down to spread the smoke. He sets them on a dinner plate as the small conference room fills with the smell of burning wood.

He checks his particle meter to make sure the room is sufficiently smoky, then steps around the table to turn on an air purifier on the floor. This is no ordinary air purifier. It is the Coway Airmega Mighty, the longtime top pick at Wirecutter, where Heffernan serves as the chief reviewer of products that clean our air and water.

This is a big moment for the Mighty. This test, followed by identical procedures for other purifiers over the next two days, will determine if it retains the crown it has held since 2014. Heffernan will test seven purifiers, including the Mighty and its new sibling, the Mighty2. It is down the hall still packed in its original box. It will be tested tomorrow.

“Yeah, man,” Heffernan says with a hint of sarcasm. “This could be the end of an era.”

Flaws, not dealbreakers

Wirecutter is headquartered in an unmarked black building in Long Island City, New York, that also serves as a laboratory and photo/video studio. Ben Frumin, Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief, likens the office to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory — full of energy and oddities. Much of the testing happens on the lower level, in big rooms filled with everything from living room chairs to robot vacuums. Upstairs is a studio where stylists assemble artsy photos of axes and nail clippers and the 39 best gifts for your mother-in-law.

Wirecutter employees are invited to take part in many of the tests. In one room, eight mattresses are lined up in two rows. “WELCOME TO MATTRESS TESTING!” says a sign on the wall. “Grab a pillow and a disposable pillowcase! Get comfy!” In another room, six massage guns are displayed on a table for staffers to test. The instructions say:

Indeed, device weight and button placement are important considerations for Wirecutter testers because they are representing us, a nation of consumers that doesn’t have time to lie on eight mattresses or use six massage guns before we decide what to buy. Wirecutter testers are our surrogates in a confusing economy, helping us choose the best stuff.

Wirecutter could be seen as a web-savvier knock-off of Consumer Reports, the granddaddy of review publications that was especially popular with your granddaddy. But instead of publishing pages of complex charts as Consumer Reports does, Wirecutter narrows recommendations to a few top choices. It tells you “the best office chair for most people” while also revealing “flaws, but not dealbreakers.”

It was founded in 2011 by Brian Lam, a former editor from the technology site Gizmodo, and relies largely on affiliate revenue, fees paid by retailers such as Amazon when customers click through to buy products. Wirecutter also earns money from advertising.

The New York Times bought Wirecutter in 2016 for $30 million as part of a strategy to increase reader retention with products beyond news. It’s joined by cooking, games, and The Athletic, and the strategy has paid off: Far more subscribers buy a Times bundle than just news alone. Frumin says being part of the Times has enabled Wirecutter to more than double its editorial employees, from about 80 when he arrived in 2019 to 180 today. He says traffic has more than tripled in the past few years, to 15 million readers per month.

Product guides such as the one for air purifiers are the Wirecutter staple. But writers also publish essays such as “The Victorinox paring knife has been our favorite as long as Wirecutter has existed,” Heffernan’s ode to a $7 kitchen tool. Frumin says the publication has a distinctive voice of “your obsessed helpful geeky cool friend.”

Wirecutter employees emphasize their respect for Consumer Reports and the rigor it brought to this unique form of journalism. “They are the OG,” Heffernan says. “Anybody doing this stuff owes an awful lot to them.”

As he says this, a woman across the big room is moving from bed to bed, testing the mattresses.

Impressed by the Blueair

Heffernan’s tests could have dramatic consequences for the Mighty’s long reign, but they are quite boring to watch. He goes through the same steps for each one: lighting the matches, waving them up and down, checking his particle counter and then switching on the machines. He leaves the room for about 30 minutes and returns to check the meter.

He typically does two tests for each machine — one at a high setting that he calls “when you burn dinner” and one at a setting that is just below his quiet-room level of 50 decibels,

Over the two days, he tests seven machines, including the Windmill, the Winix 5520 and the Dyson HushJet. (Wirecutter has evaluated more than 70 purifiers over the past decade, but Heffernan only retests models that have become picks.)

Heffernan says an air purifier is wonderfully simple, just a fan and a filter. The fan sucks in air, moves it through a filter and blows out the cleaner air. “One thing we’ve never figured out how to do is make a video of an air purifier test because it is so boring. It literally is just a machine sitting alone in a room.”

The tests are rigorous and will play a big role in his final ratings. But his choice will also reflect subjective aspects such as ease of use, style and whether the device has design problems such as lights that glow too bright at night.

The classic Mighty performs impressively in Heffernan’s tests. In the burned-dinner test, it reduces particulates by 99.6%. He also is impressed by the Blueair’s large Blue Signature. “Good lord!” he says after he sees the results. “That was an effective air purifier.”

As the testing continues, it becomes clear that his choice has come down to a battle of the siblings: the Mighty vs. the Mighty2.

“I need somebody to write about shovels”

Heffernan, 48, is well-suited for this unusual job. He has a degree in economics and is a seasoned journalist who has written for publications such as The Atlantic and Esquire. He also is a do-it-yourselfer who loves building and fixing things. In addition to writing for Wirecutter, he publishes a monthly DIY column in the Times on topics such as “Let’s learn how to paint furniture” and “Let’s restore all your rusty metal.”

He has a goatee and rectangular glasses and wears the same thing pretty much every day: jeans, a T-shirt or sweatshirt, and a yellow knit cap that he rarely removes. He has two identical caps because one has a hole. A former colleague recommended him for the job, which led an editor to recruit him. Heffernan remembers the email as “I need somebody to write about shovels.” (Heffernan had just written a piece for Slate about how much he loved his coal shovel for clearing snow.)

His reviews show his versatility for assessing air and water purifiers, as well as door locks and artificial Christmas trees. (“If you’re planning on sticking with a tree for a long while, the unlit Balsam Hill 7.5-foot Unlit Classic Blue Spruce looks great and lasts for years.”)

Unlike many of his readers, Heffernan is not a big shopper. “I don’t want more shit in my house,” he says.

He is passionate about great devices and frustrated by lousy ones. He marvels at the smart design of the O-Cedar Quick Wring Bucket (“everything you could wish for in a mop bucket”) and he adores the Cuisipro Surface Glide 4-Sided Box Grater (“makes quick work of fussy tasks that would take me much longer if I used my knives”).

Heffernan can be equally passionate about the worst products. Don’t get him started about the Molekule purifier, which was so loud that he could hear its “jet-like whine” from 40 feet away on the other side of a heavy door. (He disliked the Molekule so much that he removed its innards and repurposed it as an umbrella holder now at Wirecutter’s main entrance.)

He takes his work seriously and emphasizes his independence. Although Wirecutter earns money when readers click links to the products he and other writers recommend, he says he feels no pressure to recommend or criticize anything. He doesn’t talk with people on the business side of Wirecutter and has no idea how much the company earns from his reviews.

Surprised by the new design

The new model is something of a gamble for Coway, the South Korean company that makes the Mighties. The original has been Wirecutter’s top pick for 12 years, so the new model risks being a flop like New Coke or Caddyshack II. But the original Mighty has become dated because of its rounded corners and round buttons and a big round intake that looks like it came off a jet engine on an old Boeing. The time has come for a fresh design.

Heffernan cuts open the carton and lifts out the new model. He removes the wrapping and steps back to take a good look.

The Mighty2 is boxy, with sharp corners and less prominent buttons. The air intake is still round, but it lacks the almost cartoonish look of the original. The intake on the Mighty2 is subtle and less garish.

Heffernan is surprised by the new design. He puts the old and new Mighties on the table in the conference room. They are about the same size, but the rounded corners of the original make it look dated compared to the sleek design of the new one. For Heffernan, it is like an old friend has suddenly appeared at his door looking lean, clean-shaven and well-dressed. He says this “is more of a moment than I expected it to be. It kind of just feels wrong.”

He puts the Mighty2 on the floor, plugs in the cord and then goes through his routine lighting the matches and turning on the purifier. As it comes to life, it makes a few gentle beeps and a blue light comes on. He leaves the room to let it do its work.

When he returns about 30 minutes later, he notes the particle count and does some quick math. In the burned-dinner test, the Mighty2 has reduced particulates by 99.1%. It is essentially no different than the Mighty, which reduced it by 99.6%. That means his decision about the top pick will now depend on other factors — the buttons, the lights, noise and ease of use.

The new model “clearly is going to get strong consideration,” he says, laughing at his own serious answer. “I mean that seriously. I need to think more about it. I need to live with it longer.”

“Exceptional, efficient and easy to live with”

On May 4, Heffernan’s review was published on Wirecutter’s home page. A headline shouted the news: “For the first time in 10 years, we have a new favorite air purifier.”

Heffernan’s review got right to the point: The Mighty2 outperformed its older sib and was the new top pick. “It’s quieter, more energy efficient, and easier to adjust and maintain than the original Mighty it’s based on.”

Heffernan praised the new model’s modern style, energy efficiency, its intuitive control panel, the easy removal of its prefilter, and its new sound. “It’s a special kind of quiet…pleasantly reminiscent of cabin noise.”

After the review was published, Heffernan discussed what it takes for a company to have a top product for so long. “The original Mighty is a great machine and had just proven itself time and again,” he said. “It’s a machine that does pretty much everything well and does it reliably for a long time.”

Heffernan said Coway listened to feedback over the past 10 years and methodically addressed the problems that bothered its users. “They really took their time to come out with a new one — and I think it shows.”