No variable fan speed without eco mode?
So far it's great except for one MAJOR issue - the way eco mode works. I decided after several years with my old (different brand) air purifier, it was time for an upgrade. After shopping around I decided on this one (I went Into it already biased in favor of Shark / Ninja brand, as up until now I've loved every thing I've ever bought from the brand). Powered it up and thought everything was great, until I few hours later I began to pick up some cat litter box odors that I had never had before. My assumption was that the odor control feature of this purifier would absolutely ensure even better odor control than my old one, which had no such feature and cost half the price. Boy was I wrong. Since getting it several days ago, the only time it will come out of eco mode and turn on is if I'm cooking and some little something burns off when I turn the burner on. When that happens it comes on for a few minutes then right back to eco mode. The major malfunction comes into play due to the fact that there is no odor control of any kind when it's in eco mode - it's literally just turned off and sniffing the air for particles to see if it needs to turn back on. And cats going to the litter pan don't trigger it to turn on. So I thought that would be easy enough to solve - just turn off eco mode. Well, turns out that if you want the fan to auto-adjust at all you can't turn off eco mode - no way to set it to always run at minimal speed and ramp up when needed (like my prior unit could do). So my options now are to let a multi-hundred dollar device just sit powered off and doing nothing for me 23 hours out of the day, manually set it to always run at a low speed and have it do nothing to help the air quality when I'm cooking and it needs to turn up, manually set it to always run on high and deal with the noise and shortened 'neverchange' filter life - or return it and buy something else. As of writing this, I'm still undecided on which option I'll go for.
reply from SharkNinja Product Expert
Hi Darren,Thank you for sharing your experience. We want to clarify how the Air Purifier MAX operates. You can use Auto Mode without Eco Mode actively running. Auto Mode adjusts the fan speed automatically based on real‑time air quality readings. When air quality worsens, the fan increases, and when it improves, the fan slows down. Eco Mode is a separate feature that activates only after the unit maintains 100% clean air for 5 minutes in Auto Mode. At that point, the fan turns off to conserve energy and will restart once particles or odors are detected. Even in Eco Mode, the unit continues monitoring the air and is designed to detect both particles and odors, using its 3‑stage HEPA filtration system that captures 99.98% of particles as small as 0.1–0.2 microns, along with odors and VOCs. For further assistance or support with optimizing settings for your space, please contact our Shark customer support team at 1‑855‑427‑5127, available Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET.Kind Regards,Shark Home