Neoplants Neo Px Review: This Plant Isn't as Good as an Air Purifier

Neoplants has an charismatic pitch: a surviving alternate to an aerial purifier bioengineered to escaped the location of those toxic vapors known arsenic volatile integrated compounds, oregon VOCs. Its archetypal product, the Neo Px, claims to beryllium 30 times much businesslike astatine air purifying than a regular houseplant. It arrived astatine my location successful a sturdy cardboard box.

These are large claims successful a small box. At astir a ft tall, the works strategy is touted arsenic “the archetypal bioengineered aerial purifier for your home.” From the company’s Instagram and selling materials, I thought Neoplants had genetically modified the Pothos plant, supercharging its phytoremediation quality to region pollutants from the air. Scientists have done this, but the Neo Px uses a regular Marble Queen Pothos. It’s the “Power Drops”—the microorganisms that are meant to unrecorded successful the soil—that are bioengineered.

A Self-Sufficient Plant

The beige ammunition that comes with the works is made retired of a thermoplastic polyester polylactic acerb (PLA) and has an unobtrusive plan that easy blends with a assortment of interior styles. PLA is derived from earthy sources, and the Neo Px’s ammunition comes from flax.

It’s biodegradable successful concern composting settings, similar the ones offered to New York City residents, but it won’t interruption down successful a backyard compost and PLA rots astatine astir the aforesaid gait arsenic integrative successful landfills. The planter is engineered for maximum airflow some from the apical and the vents astatine the shell’s bottom, though each clip I moved the Neo Px, a tiny magnitude of ungraded escaped done those vents.

As per the instructions, I filled the h2o good and coaxed the delicate h2o gauge backmost into the planter. Next, I cosplayed a botanist, mixing the h2o and Neoplants' Power Drops successful my Neo Px solid beaker with the solid wand, and past I poured the potion connected apical of the soil. The full process took astir fractional an hour.

I had to determination the Neo Px to respective antithetic locations to support my cats from nibbling the leaves. The Pothos is toxic to pets and tin origin irritation successful the mouth, occupation breathing, and gastrointestinal pain. I ended up putting aluminum foil astir the works to support them astatine bay.

The Claims

Is the Neo Px an alternate to an aerial purifier? To start, the works is incapable to filter particulates retired of the air. Unlike a HEPA filter that employs regulated accordion folded filters, the works cannot region smoke, pollen, and particulate on with those invisible tiny particulates, PM 2.5, that tin crook the entity orangish and get into the deepest parts of the lungs. (A regular HEPA filter cannot seizure vapor oregon gases, but it tin erstwhile combined with a c filter.)

The Neo Px is touted arsenic having the quality to filter retired VOCs, targeting 3 vapors: benzene, toluene, and xylene. This is done done the usage of the company's bioengineered Power Drops. Each Neo Px is promoted arsenic having the aerial cleaning quality of 30 plants, and successful the company's property materials, website, societal media, and emails to me, Neoplants cites the astir four-decade-old NASA works study arsenic proof. In short, the NASA works survey recovered that plants successful a closed chamber, smaller successful size than a bathtub, were capable to escaped the aerial of VOCs implicit a definite magnitude of time.