Best budget air purifiers: 3 affordable options for allergies, pet dander and more – starting at $48

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Spring means cooler weather, and for some, extreme allergies.

Fortunately, air purifiers can help allergy sufferers find some relief. But regardless of whether you have allergies, it's good to have an air purifier on deck. It will help you get rid of dust, mold, pet hair, smoke and more.

To get you on the right track, we enlisted the help of Anna Chan, Billboard associate editor on the digital side — and resident cat lover — to try out some affordable air purifiers you can buy on Amazon and have overnight delivery if you're a Prime member (click here to start your free 30-day trial) .

Below, find our review of the three best air purifiers under $200. The following list includes options that can be perfect gifts for Mother's Day.

LEVOIT Core Mini Air Purifier

If you're looking for a smaller, no-frills, plug-and-play air purifier for a more comfortable room, this could be the winner. Installation takes minutes and the unit – which has three stages of filtration – is optimized with just one button: The power button.

Turns the unit on/off and controls the fan speed, which has low, medium and high speed options. It should also display: the fan speed and the “filter check” indicator, which turns red when attention is needed.

The fan is also quite quiet and is almost silent when on the lowest setting. The medium setting is quite soft and almost unnoticeable, even for this very light sleeper. The higher setting – for when your air quality isn't great – is noticeable but not distracting.

A nice little bonus is the built-in aromatherapy tray. Simply open it and add your essential oils to the small pad as needed. Don't want or need to use this feature? Pretend it's not there!

Advantages: This small unit fits beautifully on a bedside table or sideboard and takes up almost no space. It's also very light at just two pounds, so it's also easy to move around.

It's so quiet you won't even know it's on, making this a great air purifier for bedrooms. It comes with a built-in small drawer/aromatherapy pad, so you won't need a separate aromatherapy machine in the room.

Disadvantages: The lack of smart controls means you can't turn it on/off, adjust the fan speed or control the room's air quality remotely. And it's pretty small, so it probably won't be as effective for anything larger than a medium-sized bedroom.

Conway's Airmega True HEPA Air Purifier not only boasts the ability to help clean the air in your home, but it does so while looking stylish. (Think the extra-large iPod Shuffle in black or white.) The unit and its four-stage, three-fan-speed filtration system aren't huge — though they seem a bit big for a tiny New York apartment — but they seem to get the job done. minimal user effort. The control panel has an air quality indicator (blue = good, purple = average, red = unhealthy) and five buttons – power, fan speed, filter change reset, timer and ionizer, although the ionizer is not explained in the user manual, so the purpose of is unclear to this basic controller.

The air quality sensor seems quite sensitive, and for me, the unit turned on automatically after a minute of sautéing food in a cast iron pan, even when the hood fan was on high speed. Speaking of cooking, the unit boasts deodorizing ability thanks to its carbon filter, and while it does a little bit, it's no match for someone like me who uses a cast iron pan every day. A little oil and some eggs and hash is enough to leave a scent all day in this little apartment, despite the unit running all the time, although it's a little less noticeable than when I didn't have the Airmega.

To further demonstrate its sensitivity, the Airmega's fan speed also went from low to medium immediately after I put some hair wax in a nearby room, and completely skipped the medium setting for high alert/maximum fan speed when I just cracked the living room window open to me on the first fine day of spring.

While the fan's maximum speed is quite loud (about 53 dB(A), according to Coway), it has the added benefit of seemingly lowering the air temperature, which could be a bonus in the summer months.

Advantages: For those of us trying to be conscious of our electrical usage, the unit's Eco Mode is a great feature. After 30 minutes of “good” air quality, the Airmega's fan automatically turns off to save energy. And as soon as it senses a drop in air quality, it bounces back.

The air quality sensor seems to be quite sensitive, so it could be a good unit for anyone with allergies or other respiratory problems. And it's beautiful!

Disadvantages: The biggest downside for me was the unit's lack of smart controls. My apartment may be small, but I'm still sometimes too engrossed in my TV shows (read: lazy) to get up and turn the air purifier on or off. It would also be nice to be able to turn the unit on/off from my phone while away from home.

With con No. 1 noted, I should also point out that at maximum speed, the air cleaner gets loud, such as, turn up the TV volume wow loudly. (It also woke me up one night when the air quality apparently turned bad for some unknown reason, and the unit went into full gear. Alas, without smart controls on my phone, I couldn't turn it down without getting out of bed Notification Spoiler: I didn't get up.)

This unit definitely attracts cat hair! As I took the Airmega out and put it together, it seemed to gather all the fur of my little black cat from the living room into its enclosure, like it was Magneto grabbing all my silverware with a wave of his fingers. Unfortunately for me, my Airmega is white and my beloved feline is black.

The user manual is Really bare bones, causing a bit of confusion with the filters when setting up and doesn't explain how the eco mode or the ionizer works. Also, the cost of replacing the filter is quite high.

Good things come in smaller packages! The Vital 100S is a nice little unit that not only takes up little floor space and is fairly light, but seems to do a pretty good job of detecting air quality and improving it with its three-stage filtration system while keeping the fan noise-free. quite low. The 100S detects four levels of air quality and is color-coded on the stylish display at the top: very good (blue), good (green), average (orange) and bad (red). In terms of sensitivity, this unit kicks in quickly when I start cooking on the stove with a cast iron pan and within minutes of turning on my aromatherapy machine.

The Vital 100S is also available for homes with little furry friends running around. It has a Pet Mode, which, according to Levoit, “alternates fan speeds to keep your air clean and virtually odor-free with energy efficiency.” The U-shaped air intake is also supposed to help catch fur and other larger particles (perhaps human hair?).

Another highlight is the unit's VeSync app, which is quite handy and incredibly easy to set up. Once on your phone, the app allows users to turn the unit on/off remotely, displays your home's current air quality, and also alerts you when air quality drops and fan speed increases, and vice versa. It also shows you the history of your indoor air quality as well as filter life, lets you create a schedule and more.

Advantages: It is quite compact, attractive and easy to fit into homes with limited space. The app is extremely easy to use and adds a level of convenience that is worth the extra cost.

It's a very quiet unit and when you're in sleep mode, you won't even know it's on while you snooze!

Disadvantages: Like the Coway Airmega, the Vital 100S has odor control, but neither unit was able to eliminate essential cooking aromas. And while neither was great at it, the Airmega outperformed the Levoit in odor elimination by a smidge.

The app can show you the remaining filter life, but this can also be a drawback. After three weeks of testing, the life of the filter had already decreased by 5%.

For more product suggestions, check out our roundup of sustainable tech gadgets to shop beyond Earth Day.