HealthMate Junior

You can't really compare the two. The Austin HealthMate Plus Jr. CADR isn't published, but it's believed to be about 120 CFM, lower than the Levoit 300. But it has at least 6.5 lbs of Activated Carbon, Potassium Iodide Impregnated Carbon and Zeolite. It's much more than a particle filter, it's "designed for the chemically sensitive (MCS), removing the toughest contaminants and broadest spectrum of VOCs" and is "also recommended for allergy and asthma sufferers sensitive to VOCs, or for those in high smoke, particle or gas contamination areas." As with any unit with sorbent media, you want to run it on low to maximize "dwell" time, so the CADR will be a tiny fraction of 120 CFM. The odor reduction is a function of the meaningful amounts of carbon. With the Levoit, even if you upgrade to the Levoit Core 300-P 4-Stage Smoke Remover Replacement Filters, you get a trivial amount of carbon in a mesh. The reduction in allergy symptoms would suggest that you are more allergic do things that are captured by the "Activated Carbon, Potassium Iodide Impregnated Carbon and Zeolite" rather than by the particulate/HEPA filter(s).

I love my Austin air. I have a Jr with HEPA and it’s so quiet.

tough, for odor you want strong carbon but given cats would be a particulate issue, you want strong hepa. super quiet and powerful enough to notice any improvement at under $600 may be challenging, especially with a fan that'll just add to it. I'd avoid Dyson. If you want to stick with Canadian-made, I'd consider the Airpura R414 or Airpura V414, both strong quiet models. We don't have cats but we have a homestead with many quail and chickens and live in a 150 yr old house. We have an Airpura V414 in our bedroom and throughout the years have had bats in our attic, flooding, etc, and Airpura keeps the smell and particulates to a minimum. If expanding beyond Canadian made, I'd consider Austin Healthmate JR. We have that in our nursery room, very quiet. I'd say quieter than Airpura. Austin also gives 5 yr warranty at least when we bought the unit maybe 10 yrs ago. So durable, I have 2 friends that have units from....1997!! Hopefully ours lasts that long. Best of luck mate!

If you are looking to filter primarily VOCs I would look into the AustinAir Healthmate line. They come with 15 lbs of activated carbon filters. Most regular air purifiers don’t have that much carbon in them that you will have to replace the whole filter much more quickly to work against VOCs.

Austinair healthmate is good.

We have an Austin Air Systems Healthmate that runs 24/7/365, and has done since 1998. No lie. We only switch it off to change the filter (every five years or so). 

Best of the best would be really any product from the company Austin Air Passable would be like a winix 5510-5520 The most important thing here is that it has a decent amount of carbon in it, carbon being the only thing that actually removes the odor. Austin has the most carbon, winix doesn’t have a ton but it’s passable and a lot more than most of the ones you can get at Walmart. Either way though your roomie like smoking next to the air purifier every time specifically is something I’d recommend, pot smell has a habit of spreading out pretty quickly and then it becomes a question of how quickly can your purifier get the entire apartment.