Electrolux Flow A3 review

One-minute review

Many households are warming up to having air purifiers in their rooms, whether it’s a larger one for a common family area or a smaller one for individual bedrooms. The Electrolux Flow A3 is a fairly compact air purifier that’s great for an individual room or small space. It’s stylish enough to not immediately look like an air purifier, though its grey appearance may make it stand out a bit more.

It’s deceptively easy to set up – just unpack it, add the filter, and turn it on. The Flow A3 automatically adjusts its fan speed in response to particles and allergens in the environment, and a unique spiral airflow method ensures that clean air is distributed as quickly as possible.

The minimalism continues to its interface as well, which sports very few buttons to keep things as easy as possible. The Flow A3 is quick to leap into high gear when it detects smoke and other aerosols in the air, so you know that you’ll be breathing clean air in no time.

Of course, this simplicity comes with the caveat – the Flow A3 isn’t smart-enabled in any way, so there’s really no way to track just how good your air quality has become. While there is an air quality indicator on the unit itself that tells you roughly how good the air quality is, that’s all you’ve got to go off. For a kid’s bedroom or a small studio space the Flow A3 would do a good job, but for larger rooms or smart integration, you’ll want to look at much larger models than this one.

Price and availability

The Electrolux Flow A3 is available now, and is priced at AED 699.

Design

he Flow A3 exudes the minimalist traits of Swedish design, and once out of the box looks very ordinary. We would have preferred if this came in a shade of cream or beige instead of grey, as the grey look makes it a little bit harder to blend in with your existing furniture.

The shape of the Flow A3 is sort of a squat cylinder, with vents at the bottom to take in air and a special spiral pattern at the top to circulate clean air through your room. The top is also where you’ll find the control buttons and status lights, which too are minimal. There’s a central power button to turn the unit off and on, which is next to an air quality LED. This LED cycles through red, orange, green, or blue to indicate how good or poor your air quality currently is.

There’s also a button to switch between three fan settings, as well as another to toggle between the unit’s sleep mode and Auto mode. The Flow A3 keeps things as easy to understand as possible, so you can have it up and running within minutes of removing it from its packaging.

Inside the Flow A3 is a single multi-stage HEPA filter that can collect dust particles, odours, and other harmful substances in the air. The filter itself is easy to replace, and Electrolux estimates the lifespan of the filter at 12 months – this will of course vary based on your use and overall air quality. You can also take out the filter and clean it with a vacuum or cloth, in order to prolong filter life and ensure consistently good airflow.

The unit itself weighs around 2.5kg, but it still fairly easy to relocate to another room or area of the house.

Performance

If clean air is what you want then clean air is what the Flow A3 will deliver. From the moment you turn it on, it only takes a few seconds for the Flow A3 to quickly analyse the surrounding air and whip into action. Depending on your air quality, it most likely will operate at fan speed 2 or 3 (if using Auto mode), but after a while will drop down to speed 1.

Regardless of what fan speed its operating at, the Flow A3 is deceptively quiet. At its highest speed it’s no louder than the gentle hum of a central air-conditioning unit, so it won’t come in the way if you’re talking with someone or watching TV.

When placed in a living room with an open-plan kitchen, the Flow A3 was quick to spring into action when we started cooking, working quickly to eliminate odours and smoke from the kitchen. We found that leaving the Flow A3 running on Auto mode produced the best results, rather than manually adjusting the fan speed. Overall, the Flow A3 kept the air in our apartment clean and dust-free, no matter where we positioned it. It’ll work best in a single, smaller room, but you can position it in larger rooms as well, which may take a bit longer to purify properly.

The Flow A3 also has a sleep mode, which turns off any status lights and runs the fan at a very low speed. Frankly speaking, we didn’t think this  mode was necessary at all – the LEDs on the Flow A3 aren’t very bright to be a distraction at night, and we’d much prefer it continue its purifying cycle throughout the night.

Final verdict

The obvious downside to the Flow A3 is its lacks of smarts. There’s no smart integration or app support, so there’s really no proper way to monitor whether the Flow A3 is doing a good job or not. If you just want a no-nonsense air purifier that does what it says on the box, then the Flow A3 will surely be welcome in your home. It’s best suited for small rooms such as a bedroom or even a studio apartment, and is quick to distribute clean air around. But if you love looking at graphs of data and strictly monitoring your air quality, then the Flow A3 won’t be the best fit for you.