Home Health and fitness

Airdog X5 air purifier review

REVIEW – I have allergies and sinus issues 24/7 365 days a year. My nose is almost always a little sniffly. TMI? Sorry. But I know that I’m not the only person who has these types of issues. While several people on the team have reviewed air purifiers, the Airdog X5 is the first one I’ve tried and the first one I’ll be reviewing. Why have I waited so long to do a review in this product category? I didn’t want to deal with replacing (and buying) HEPA filters. The Airdog X5 has no consumables so I was happy to accept the offer to review it. Let’s check it out.

What is it?

The Airdog X5 is an air purifier for your home or office that uses ionic wind filtration technology to filter pollutants like pollen, pet dander, hair, allergens, bacteria, and viruses out of the air that you breathe.

Hardware specs

Can purify a 300 square foot room in 20 minutes
Size: 22.5(H) x 10.7(L) x 10.7(W) inches
Item Weight: 22.5 pounds
Shipping Weight: 28.9 pounds
CADR(PM2.5): 200CFM
Noise Level: <63dB(A)
Power: 100-240V~ 50-60Hz

What’s in the box?

  • Airdog X5 air purifier
  • Collecting plate
  • IR remote

Design and features

The Airdog X5 air purifier is a free-standing unit with a white and black plastic housing that stands 12 x 12 x 25 inches tall. The top of the unit has a fan grill and there’s a display area on the front that shows an air quality index reading with a green, yellow, or red LED below it while the unit is powered on and not in sleep mode.



Unlike many air purifiers on the market, the Airdog X5 does not use a HEPA style filter that has to be replaced on a regular basis and offers better filtration than traditional HEPA air purifiers. The X5 removes microscopic particles (down to 14.6-nanometers) from the air including viruses like the flu virus.

Instead of replaceable filters, the X5 has a large module with metal fins. This is the collector plate.

This collector plate module slides into the back of the unit.

The cool thing about the collector plate is that it can be washed either by hand or in your dishwasher when the front display shows a C which means it’s time to clean it.

The top surface of the Airdog X5 is where the clean air comes out. It’s also where the power button and panel of status LEDs are located.


The Airdog can be controlled with the included remote control or you can use the multi-function power button on the unit itself. Either way, you can control the airspeed, toggle the child lock, and toggle WiFi on and off if you want to use the mobile app.

App


The app will let you see the air quality status of the X5 no matter where you are and you can control it via the app by turning it on/off, putting it sleep mode, auto mode, change airspeed, or toggling the child lock. You can also set timers of when to run it and see a graph of the air quality index readings over the last 15 days. Since you can do everything with the included remote control or on the device itself, (except setting timers) I don’t find the app all that useful.

Take a nice deep breath of clean air

Setting up the Airdog X5 is quick and easy. All you have to do is find a wall outlet, plug in the power cord, and press the power button on top of the unit. After a minute or two, the front display will show the AQI (air quality index) reading that is based on the particle numbers that the sensor inside the X5 measures in the air (range is 0-500).

AQI less than 50 is Excellent (green)
AQI between 50 and 100 is Good (yellow-green)
AQI between 100 and 150 is Moderately polluted (yellow)
AQI more than 150 is Hazardous (red)

I’ve been testing the X5 air purifier for a few weeks and have not seen any numbers over 50 thus far. Most of the time the readings hang around 7-12 or so.

The unit doesn’t make a lot of noise. You can hear it in a quiet room but it’s not going to bother you or disrupt the ability to hear a TV or others talking. I’ve been testing the unit in our basement living room and haven’t had any issues noise wise. You can set the unit to sleep mode which runs the unit at a lower fan speed and turns on the display. This is a good setting if you use the X5 in a bedroom as it won’t disrupt your sleep.

In auto mode, the unit is very power efficient compared to traditional air purifiers and only uses about 0.5 kWh per day.

What I like

  • Easy to use
  • Relatively quiet
  • Makes the air smell clean
  • No filters to replace on a regular basis
  • Can wash the collector plate in the dishwasher

What needs to be improved

  • Longer power cord

Final thoughts

The main thing I noticed about the Airdog X5 after only an hour or so using it is that it does make the air smell cleaner. It’s not a forest after a rainstorm type of clean smell, but the air has an obviously cleaner smell to it. I hesitate to say it smells like a hospital because that doesn’t sound like a good smell. But it does smell clean and healthy. That said, my house apparently has pretty clean air as indicated by the AQI readings and LED status light on the front. I’ve yet to see anything other than a green light. That’s good though, so I can’t complain that I haven’t seen bad readings.

After using the X5 for the past 3 weeks, I took the collecting plate out of the back of the unit to see if it looked dirty yet and so far it looks exactly like it did when I installed it. I plan to continue to use this unit and will report back after more time has gone by so I can include a picture of the collecting plates to show what they look like when they are ready for a cleaning.

You might be wondering if my sinus and allergy issues have cleared up while using the Airdog X5. I really can’t say that they have. Does that mean the X5 is useless? No, I don’t think so. I can’t expect that sitting in the same room with an air purifier for a few hours a day will be the antidote to my sinus and allergy issues. I will say that while I’m in the same room as the Airdog X5, that I feel like I’m breathing easier and better. Placebo? Could be. But as I mentioned, the air just smells better while it’s running, so it has to be better too right?

Price: $549.00
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Airdog.

More from The Gadgeteer

Papago GoWatch 770 review

Jabra Elite Sport earbuds review

Garmin vivofit activity tracker review

Iron Chest Master review

fitbit one and fitbit zip review

Wahoo Fitness Tickr X review

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged: , ,

Airdog X5 air purifier review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 25, 2018 at 12:00 pm.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

Track the water you drink with Zak Designs HydraTrak tumblers and bottles

NEWS – The New Year is coming soon, and you may be thinking about your resolutions.  If drinking more water is one of your goals, you need to consider one of the water-tracking bottles or tumblers from Zak Designs.  The bottles and tumblers have silicone rings around them that help you keep track of your water consumptions.  You can transfer a band to your arm for each glass of water you drink, or you can simply move the bands up to the top of the tumbler, as shown here.

Zak Designs offers the HydraTrak line as tumblers like the one above made of Tritan plastic or stainless steel, in a variety of colors.  All are double-wall insulated to keep your water cold.  Some have screw tops and some have straws.  All are BPA-free. Sizes range from 16 to 32 ounces.

The Zak Designs HydraTrak line ranges from $8.50 to $20.00 at Amazon.

More from The Gadgeteer

The Nima Peanut Sensor allows you to test food for…

Emily Rothschild USB Medical Locket

GTX GPS Shoes Can Protect Alzheimers Patients

Tagg now tracks your pet’s activity, or lack…

This water bottle can play your favorite music and…

The FitBark – a wireless activity monitor fo…

Filed in categories: News

Tagged: ,

Track the water you drink with Zak Designs HydraTrak tumblers and bottles originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 21, 2018 at 2:01 pm.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

VivaLNK Vital Scout continuous wellness monitor review

REVIEW – Fitness tracking devices used to only be available in form factors that strapped to your wrist or around your chest. Now we have fitness trackers that you can wear on your finger as a ring or in a patch that you stick to your chest like the Vital Scout continuous wellness monitor from VivaLNK that I’m going to talk to you about today. Let’s check it out.

What is it?

The VivaLNK Vital Scout is a wearable wellness monitor that uses medical-grade EGC sensors that track your heart rate, respiration, stress, recovery, and sleep quality 24/7.

What’s in the box?

  • VivaLNK Vital Scout monitor
  • Charging case
  • micro USB cable
  • 10 adhesives
  • Instructions

Design and features

The Vital Scout stores in a small white plastic case when it’s not being used to track your heart rate, stress level, sleep quality, and breathing.

This case doubles as the charger for the wearable monitor. The monitor is made of soft flexible plastic. It has an oval shape with two round nodules that stick up from the surface and a large square protrusion in the center.

When you flip the Vital Scout over, you can see two small electrical contacts which are used to charge the patch and three larger contacts which make contact with your skin through a thin layer of adhesive to track your fitness data.

Before you can begin using the Vital Scout patch, you need to charge it first. This is easily done by placing it correctly in the case and using the included micro USB cable to plug into an AC adapter or a USB port on a computer. While the patch is charging, a large LED on the case glows red.

Once the patch is fully charged, the LED will glow green.

The next step is to attach the patch to your chest using one of the included Hydrogel adhesives. The Vital Scout comes with two packs which each contain 5 adhesives. Additional packs of adhesives can be purchased for $5.99/pack of 4 adhesives.

The adhesives have three sections which are numbered to make them easy to identify. You obviously remove tab #1 first.

Once the protective tab is removed, you can see the thin silicone film surface of the adhesive.

The Vital Scout patch sticks to this area and then you can peel off tab #2 and stick the patch to the upper area of your left chest. You can also stick it in the center of your chest.

I opted to put it in the upper area of my chest. Once stuck in place, you can peel off tab #3 and you’re ready for action. There is no worry that the patch will fall off. The adhesive is strong and water resistant. You can even shower with it.

I have to tell you that I immediately had flashbacks of 2011 when I had a port in my chest for chemo treatments. I had the port for over a year under the skin in the same area as shown here. You can even see one of my 6 tattoos in the photo above. It’s that little black dot to the left of the patch. The tattoos were for the radiation treatments that I had after the 2 rounds of chemo. Anyway, the reason why the Vital Scout patch reminded me of the port is that it sticks up and gets in the way with some activities like wearing a seat belt or a with the strap of a messenger style bag.

I was a little concerned when I agreed to review the Vital Scout because my skin sometimes has an allergic reaction to adhesives. Back when I was going through treatments for breast cancer, they would put an adhesive film called Tegaderm over the port with the needle attached to it to keep out germs during treatments. That type of adhesive would make my skin itchy and red and would leave an exact mark where it had been for days and even weeks later. I’m happy to report that I had almost no issues with the adhesive included with the Vital Scout. I had just a tiny area where it became itchy and red when I removed the patch after wearing it for a couple of days, but the irritation cleared up quickly.

Using the Vital Scout the app

As you can see, the patch does not have any type of display, status LEDs, speakers, etc. To see the data that it collects, you have to pair the patch with an app on your iOS or Android device.



The app is easy to use and has a main dashboard screen as you see above that gives you a quick way to see your stats for the current time period, including your current heart rate, respiration, 24hr stress level, recovery level, activity level, and sleep quality.

Stress – a normal physiological reaction to physical or mental load. Not all stress is bad and can be caused by a variety of positive and negative factors such as working, training, commuting, anxiety, excitement. The goal is to moderate the amount and intensity of stress over time and to ensure sufficient recovery to balance the stress. General guideline according to VivaLnk:

• > 60% = More than usual
• 40- 60% = Normal
• < 40% = Less than usual

Recovery – The calming of the body, and helps to balance stress. The majority of recovery occurs during sleep, but day-time recovery is also beneficial and can occur in a variety of situations such as relaxation, meditation, and enjoyment. General guideline:

• > 29% = Good
• 20 – 29% = Moderate
• < 20% = Low

Activity – When the body is in a physically active state such as walking, running, exercising etc.

Sleep – The amount of time spent in sleep. General guideline:

• > 7hrs = good
• 5.5 – 7hrs = moderate
• < 5.5hrs = poor




Tapping any of the boxes under the main dashboard graph will let you drill down into each category such as Stress, Recovery, Activity, and Sleep to see more info.


The same goes for the heart rate and respiration info. Heart rate is determined by beats per minute and respiration is determined by breaths per minute.

You can also see graphs that bring Stress, heart rate, respiration, Activity, and Recovery all together in one graph to give you a better overall picture of what’s going on with your body during the day.

I found that the Vital Scout patch and app did a good job tracking my times of stress/activity and recovery. Vital Scout uses heart rate variability (HRV) which is the variation in the time interval between heartbeats and is used to determine stress levels. I could easily see the times when I was recovering was when I was vegging out on the couch in front of the TV and the times when I was “stressed” was when I was moving around and active.

The Vital Scout app will also allow you to export your data in CSV format so that you can archive it or share with a doctor.

Sample data:

Date Time HR RR Stress %% Recovery %% Activity %% Calories Burned Sleep?(Yes/No) Sleep Quality Notes
2018-12-12 00:00:00 65 15 0 51 0 1 No 0
2018-12-12 00:01:00 57 12 0 99 0 0 No 0
2018-12-12 00:02:00 62 13 0 90 0 1 No 0
2018-12-12 00:03:00 61 12 0 96 0 0 No 0

Battery life

A fully charged Vital Scout patch will collect data for around 72hrs or 3 days before needing to be recharged. Of course, recharging the patch involves removing it from your chest, which means you have to remove the adhesive and use a new one to apply it back to your chest after you’ve recharged.

What I like

  • Stick it and forget it continuous monitoring
  • 72 hour battery life
  • Helps you see your stress levels throughout the day so you can better manage them

What needs to be improved

  • Replacement adhesives are too expensive when they have to be replaced every 3 days
  • Would be nice to include step tracking too
  • Patch needs to be thinner

Final thoughts

I like how easy it is to use the VivaLNK Vital Scout. You basically charge it, and stick it to your chest and forget about it (sorta). No one will see that you’re wearing it unless you wear a tight-fitting thin shirt.

I also like that it is continuously recording your heart rate, activity, stress, respiration, and sleep info every minute and that you can go back and look at that data or export it into a spreadsheet that you can share with your doctor.

The only “bad” thing I can say about the Vital Scout is that you have to buy the proprietary adhesives and they are too expensive at $6 for 4 adhesives which will only last you for 12 days if you plan to wear the Vital Scout all the time. That said, I can see that this device would be fine for occasional use, but not 24/7, 365 days a year. The consumables are just too much money for continuous use.

Price: $149.00 MSRP
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by VivaLNK.

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged: ,

VivaLNK Vital Scout continuous wellness monitor review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 18, 2018 at 11:00 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

The Expain heated neck & shoulder massager looks as good as it feels

NEWS – The holiday shopping season is upon us and so is the tension and stress that can come from a long day at the mall. This Christmas give your sore muscles the gift they deserve with the Expain heated neck & shoulder massager.

Inspired by Nordic design, the massager not only soothes your sore muscles, it looks good while doing it.

This heated neck and shoulder massager has four rotating heads with two angles which give a hard massage or soft massage depending on the rotation direction of the massage heads. And the massage heads are gently heated to help soothe sore muscles.

Removable hand straps allow you to control the amount of force the massager puts on your neck and shoulders. You can even use it to target your calves.

 

A built-in rechargeable battery allows the massager to operate cordlessly for up to an hour.

The Expain heated neck & shoulder massager sells for $120 and is available from The Grommet.

Filed in categories: News

Tagged:

The Expain heated neck & shoulder massager looks as good as it feels originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 24, 2018 at 8:00 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

ClipDifferent Pro automatic fingernail clipper review

REVIEW – When was the last time you thought about nail clippers and their worthiness as a gadget? Never, right? I’m going to change that with this review of the ClipDifferent Pro automatic nail clipper. Let’s check it out.

What is it?

The ClipDifferent Pro is an electric powered fingernail clipper.

What’s in the box?

ClipDifferent Pro
AC power adapter

Design and features

The ClipDifferent Pro is a round white plastic device that has a large easy to toggle power switch on the top back edge.

On the front is a narrow slightly curved slot with blades inside it. The clipper part is made of surgical quality stainless steel blades which are designed not to dull. Below the cutting slot is a small drawer that holds the nail clippings.

On the back is the power cord socket which you use to charge the internal batteries which will run for months on a charge. On the bottom is a non-skid base. The unit is pretty basic as far as design and style, but it feels well made and is heavy enough to stay put on a table without sliding around.

Let’s get clipping!

I like to keep my nails very short, so for me, the nails in the image above are ready to be clipped. I usually use a cheap pair of Curell clippers purchased from Walmart. Clipping my nails with traditional clippers works fine, but I have to do it over a trash can and I have to see what I’m doing to make sure that I don’t trim them too short, at the wrong angle, etc.

With the ClipDifferent Pro automatical fingernail clipper, I just flip the switch and stick my nail in the slot with the blade that is continuously moving up and down. You can only insert your fingernail in the slot until the flesh of your finger presses against the front of the unit. As you do, that section of the fingernail is clipped and the clipping is deposited in the clipping drawer inside the unit.

You slide your fingernail side to side in the cutting slot to round off all the edges, and then switch to the next finger, and so on until you’re finished. It usually takes me several minutes to manually trim my nails, but with the ClipDifferent Pro I was done in less than a minute and there wasn’t anything to clean up.

Here’s the same hand as before, but with freshly clipped nails. I’ll admit that my fingernails do not look like I’ve gone to a nail salon, but I was surprised that the edges of the freshly clipped nails did not feel sharp or snaggily. You really don’t need to use a file to smooth them, but doing so doesn’t hurt anything.

Then when you’re finished, you can pull out the little clipping drawer and dump the clippings in the trash can. That’s one of the nice things about using the ClipDifferent Pro – there are now rogue clippings on the floor after you’ve clipped your nails.

What I like

  • Very easy to use
  • Portable – has rechargeable batteries
  • Safe, won’t cut your fingers
  • Can use even if you can’t see
  • No clean up

What needs to be improved

  • Pricey

Final thoughts

You might wonder why anyone would pay $150 for a fingernail clipper even if it does clip automatically. Well, what if you have arthritis or other dexterity issue and can’t use a clipper without pain? What if you’re blind and don’t want to ask someone to clip your nails for you? What if you only have one hand in the first place? These are just some of the reasons why the ClipDifferent Pro Automatic Fingernail Clipper is a useful product. It might be expensive, but it’s built to last. I’ll definitely follow up with updates as time goes by.

Price: $149.00
Where to buy: ClipDifferent and Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by ClipDifferent.

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged:

ClipDifferent Pro automatic fingernail clipper review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 23, 2018 at 12:00 pm.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.