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I had decided on the Winix 5500-2 and in October of last year, when the price went down to $119, I purchased two.

I wanted one with a true HEPA filter, carbon filter, reasonably priced replacement filters or off brand options. The first filter, I regularly clean off outside, as it's reusable.

I don't need the auto mode, but find it useful, as it turns the filter on when it senses enough natural or artificial light, in the morning, and goes into sleep mode when the lights go out.

It controls odors well in my teen son's room, cooking odors, and rainy day dog smell on the rest of the first floor. My son's allergies are impressively non existent. He has a mild issue with dog dander and severe allergies. The filter has the dander under control and so far tissue and allergy med usage has dropped. We'll see how it does in the spring months as pollen count rises.

I would recommend this general approach as well. Any of the full sized ones with hepa, carbon, and dual sensors should be similar. I would buy whichever one you can get for the best price, as the prices seem to be all over the place.

I got the AM90 for $154, and while being able to connect to it from my phone is nice, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a similar model without that feature.

You are conclusion shopping, let's not do that.

Zero people on the planet can tell you anything as you buy purifiers based on the square footage served. You aren't purifying your living room, you are purifying every room in the house with an unopened door next to the living room to include going up and down the stairs. And if you are doing your bedroom, you must keep the door shut or the bedroom unit becomes a whole house purifier.

So, you need to state how many you are wanting and how many square feet the spaces are.

AustinAir is the BIFL brand.

I had a winix 5500 that is now relegated to a spare bedroom where my litter box is. Why? It developed a really annoying unbalanced fan that made this really annoying sound. I got a Coway next and it’s whisper quiet and true hepa.

Coway Airmega AP-1512HH(W) True... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01728NLRG?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

I really like how the Coway looks in my bedroom also. Keep in mind one downside is there is a blue led that you cannot turn off. The winix had a night mode where the lights turned off. The light personally doesn’t bug me but you could always put some tape over it if it bugged you.

I almost went with Blue air filter based on a YouTube video I watched a while back but decided against it simply because blue has these proprietary filters that aren’t true HEPA.

Have you considered upgrading the air purification of your HVAC system? It might be worthwhile and more cost effective in the long run than trying to do individual rooms one at a time.

5500-2 for cost efficiency and the fact that very good aftermarket filters are available that have performance equal to that of OEM.

Do keep in mind though that the 5500-2 and all of the models you noted are mainly going to handle particulate filtration (i.e., they remove particulate matter from their air through mechanical filtration). They will do very little for adsorbing odors, or VOCs, in general, as they have only a small amount of carbon, and they will have no impact on nitrogen oxides, so their chemical filtration capability is, like most purifiers, extremely limited.

None of the Winix models noted are BIFL. AirPura, AllerAir, and Austin Air make products that would be BIFL as these are using stainless steel bodies with commercial grade motors (these are also capable of tackling VOCs as they all use large carbon filters).