Axiom STRATUS Air Cleaner

I really really want to like this unit more than I do. It’s very high quality and moves a lot of air - which is great. It’s too heavy to move easily - which isn’t so good. I put mine on a furniture dolly which solves the mobility issue. The design is sound but you have to keep in mind it will pull in particles from the floor to about 4 feet. I’m sure it recirculates air in the shop given the sheer force of the blower which blows straight up. I’m just not seeing the results on the filter. I had an “oops” with a shop vac and blew a lot of sanding dust into the shop which visibly hanged in the air from ceiling to about 2’. The Axiom Stratus ran on High (3 speeds) for 4 hours in my shop which was about 400 square feet with 7 and 8’ ceilings. It effectively blew the dust towards all 4 walls and trapped almost no visible dust on the filter. After 4 hours there was no noticeable difference in the shop versus not running it. I’m in a new shop now that’s about 3 times the space and has 15’ ceilings - I haven’t been able to do a comparable “test” in this location yet. Once I’m settled I’ll give it a go.

Look, I didn't want to buy a $600 air cleaner... there just isn't anything else out there that can do what this thing can do. I have a shop where we create a lot of fine plastic dust. We get most of it with our dust collection system, but I was paranoid about having this stuff floating around. The Stratus took care of everything, even the plastic smell.Before I bought this thing, I looked all over the web for something cheaper that would pump a similar CFM with MERV 10 - 15 filter. The best I could find was a ceiling-hanging unit retrofit with a $200 filter from Wynn Environmental. Total: about $550 and a bunch of time to hack something together. Even then, a floor mounted unit makes so much more sense than ceiling because *that's where the dust is*. Last I checked, dust weighs more than air, so it tends to sink.Overall, the unit is all it promises to be: portable (nice long cord), easy to change filters, and pumps a lot of air. It also looks the business in my production area, which counts for something, right?I have two improvements I'd recommend to Axiom:1. The touch button is really slick, but I'd prefer a continuous adjustment so that I could run it in a low-flow, quiet mode. It's pretty loud even at the lowest setting, which is pretty much the only one we use.2. I wish the unit would come on at the setting you left it on when you unplug it. Instead, it defaults to off. The problem is that I can't put it on an automatic or remote relay, which ends up being just another thing the guys on the production floor often forget.

I set this close to where I'm working and it helps reduce the airborne dust

Product arrived packaged to handle a drop from a 10 story building. There was almost zero setup and it is incredibly east to operate. It would be nice if it included a dolly to move it around the shop or an option for one. I ended up making one from an 18” diameter pine board that I bought from a big box store along with four2” casters. That allowed me to easily move it around the shop. I am selling my ceiling mounted air filter as a result of this purchase.

Expensive but looks great and works very well

It seems very well built, it is very easy to use, and interactions with Axiom customer service about quesyiins have been great. It's not noiseless, but it's a pleasant enough sound. I can run it my basement shop without having it disturb the rest of the house in any significant way. They can listen for it and hear it, but otherwise it goes unnoticed kind of like white noise. I've had it for almost 2 weeks so I haven't had to check or change the main filter, but I can see the larger particles the pre-filter is catching so it seems to be doing a good job of circulating the air.