Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I normally don't review products on Amazon, but there is too much going on here for me to resist. I buy this unit because I own a Medify Air MA-14 and am satisfied with that product. My mother also owns 2 of these MA-40 purifiers, and I had seen them in action. The main feature that appealed to me about this product was the Automatic mode that used an air quality sensor to determine the fan speed. When I purchased this unit, the seller had a video in the product description demonstrating this feature. Presently, there are still photos on the Amazon product page that show the LEDs used to indicate the air quality. Prior to receiving the unit, I received a 'welcome' email from the seller. Here is a quote from that email: "Running the unit on "Auto" speed will allow the unit to adjust its self as determined by the onboard particle sensor." When the MA-40 arrived, the first thing I did was plug it into the wall and attempt to set it to Auto mode. Lo and behold, there was no Auto setting on the panel. I checked the manual, and there was no mention of the feature. I double-checked my Amazon order to make sure I'd selected the correct model, and it was correct. I called my mom to check which model she had, and they both said 'MA-40' and both had the Auto setting. What the heck?! I went to the seller's website, and at the time, the product page for the MA-40 had an explanation that the model had been redesigned. They stated that they removed the particle sensor and auto setting because they found that the air immediately around the unit is treated quickly, causing the fans to cycle down prematurely. This left the air in the rest of the room untreated. It was better, they argued, to leave the fans on a constant speed. This explanation made sense to me, and does describe an engineering problem. One might think a good solution to this problem would be to house the particle sensor in a separate enclosure that can be located elsewhere in the room, then have the air quality data sent wirelessly to the fan enclosure. Wouldn't that be cool? Well, Medify's solution was to remove the sensor and sell the unit at the same price without changing the model number. For me personally, the sensor technology justified some of the price. Without it, you are basically getting a fan and a filter in a plastic box. $270 seems a bit steep for this, especially given the apparent lack of quality control (see my points further down). I think it would have been smart to change the model number to something like MA-45 or MA-40a so folks are aware of the change. This is the main thing that upset me about the product. If you've made it this far, and $270 sounds reasonable to you for a fan and a filter in a plastic box, below are my other thoughts apart from the lack of air quality sensor. -As many other reviewers have mentioned on the 2.0 units, I can tell no audible difference in fan speed between sleep mode and speed 1. This is advertised as a 4-speed fan, but there are really only 3 speeds. -On the lowest speed, I can't hear the low drone of the fans from far away, but there is a higher pitch harmonic frequency that I can hear from quite far away even on Sleep. It isn't the sort of sound that makes me think the fan is malfunctioning, but combined with the fact that the Sleep speed is not any different than the first fan speed, this unit is noisier than I thought from reading the reviews and product description. I think they cheaped out on the fans rather than try to tune them to compensate for this resonance. The sleep mode on my smaller MA-14 works great. -There are two tacks I can see through the front grille. On one, I can see the head, and on the other I see the point. The one with the point is crooked, suggesting it was hammered in by hand or something. The end of the tack is very close to the top fan. It is not making contact, but it still seems like this couldn't have been on purpose. I've enclosed a picture of this. -Cosmetically, the unit looks fine from far away, but up close, the glossy black plastic has a number of swirls and micro scratches. I can also see something that looks like heat stress? It's hard to get a photo of, but it looks like the unit was stored or handled in an uncontrolled environment prior to being wrapped for shipping. It almost looked like I needed to peel a protective film off, but I tried to find an edge and didn't see one. Photo enclosed. Immediately after receiving the product, I contacted the seller and laid out these concerns in the same (probably annoying) detail I provided above. Here is the response I received: "Better news!! You have one of the brand-new Version 2.0 units. We removed the sensors as we have found after extensive research sensors don't do what they are intended to do. Instead, with every unit that has one, the air around the unit gets clean very fast and drops the motor speed to low. Then the air in your home does not get cleaned the way you want or need. I have run mine on speed 2 all day 24/7 for a year now, and I designed these. And when I leave the house, I turn on highest to turbo clean the air. This new machine has a 13% higher CADR and cleaning area than v1.0. The ionizer also works on speeds 2 and 3 only. We did that to keep low and sleep as quiet as possible. The unit is much better than before. We are the #1 selling unit on Amazon between $200 and $300. We listen to our customers and improve to satisfy your needs. God Bless you." As you can see, this doesn't really address any of the quality control issues I brought up. There is no apology for the confusion over the air quality sensor. Just hey, our product is super cool and we really like it. After receiving this non-response, I decided to return the unit. I was surprised to find out that to return it, I was required to ship it at my own expense. For me on the west coast, the shipping cost was ~$80 for UPS ground! In the end, I decided to just eat this mistake. I will put the unit in my garage or laundry room where it can do its thing without me having to listen to it all the time. I will likely look for a different brand to place in my living room. Hope this review helps someone.