22 facts in comparison
Dreo Air Purifier 539 vs Dreo Air Purifier 338S
This pair sets up an unusually clean choice, because the two purifiers disagree on exactly one thing that matters and one thing that does not. The 539 moves more air. The 338S is the one you can talk to. Nothing else in the table separates them in a way a buyer would feel across a room.
Start with the room itself. Both coverage figures here are calculated the way the industry body defines a purifier's rated space - close to five air changes an hour - and not the way a box does, which is usually one or two changes and a number several times larger. Read our figure as the room each unit can genuinely keep clean rather than merely stir. On that basis the 539 suits a decent living room and the 338S a bedroom or a home office, and neither is a whole-floor machine.
The second difference is filter chemistry. Dreo bonds carbon into the combined filter on the 539 and uses loose pellets on the 338S. Pellets carry more carbon by volume and are the better answer to cooking smells and smoke; a thin carbon layer laminated onto the HEPA sheet is there for freshness rather than for odour removal at scale.
Then comes the split that decides most purchases. The 338S has app control and answers to voice assistants. The 539 has neither and is a dial-and-button appliance. If a purifier lives in a bedroom and needs scheduling, quietening at night, or checking from another room, that gap is the whole argument. If it lives in a living room and gets switched on when the air feels stale, the gap is nothing at all.
So this is not better against worse. It is a bigger plain machine against a smaller clever one.
Editor’s note
The honest read on this pair is that Dreo has segmented them by feature rather than by quality, and the 539 is the one that suffers for it. Purifiers are simple machines whose usefulness is mostly fan and filter, and a model that gets the fan right but ships with no scheduling at all feels dated the moment it goes in a bedroom. That is not a defect, but it does mean the 539's advantage only pays off in rooms where you would have run it manually anyway.
The 338S has the opposite problem. Its smart features are the reason to buy it and also the reason people expect more of it than it can deliver. An app cannot compensate for less air moved, and running a small purifier flat out to cover a room it was never rated for is loud, hard on filters, and still not enough.
What neither model advertises is running cost. Both use combined filters that have to be replaced whole, so the cheaper unit today is not automatically the cheaper unit over three years. Check the filter price for the specific model before deciding: with these two, that arithmetic decides it more often than the specification table does.
Where the Dreo Air Purifier 539 beats the Dreo Air Purifier 338S
- A higher CADR (smoke) ?158 CFM vs 115 CFM
- A higher coverage area ?245 sq ft vs 178 sq ft
Where the Dreo Air Purifier 338S beats the Dreo Air Purifier 539
- Has app control ?
- Has voice assistant ?
Key real-world differences
The spec sheet pulls in both directions. These are the gaps big enough to shape the decision — with the actual figures, and what each one means in real-world use.
- Coverage areaPerformance245 sq ft vs 178 sq ft — 27% more for the Dreo Air Purifier 539
The room size the purifier is rated to clean effectively.
- CADR (smoke)Performance158 CFM vs 115 CFM — 27% more for the Dreo Air Purifier 539
Clean Air Delivery Rate — how quickly smoke particles are scrubbed from the air.
- App controlSmart featuresNo vs Yes — only the Dreo Air Purifier 338S has it
Control and monitor it from a phone app.
- Voice assistantSmart featuresNo vs Yes — only the Dreo Air Purifier 338S has it
Works with Alexa and Google Assistant.
Which one should you buy?
There is no single answer — it depends on what you will actually use it for. Match your priority to the pick below.
- Best for performance Dreo Air Purifier 539 takes the category 100 to 11 — driven by coverage area (245 sq ft vs 178 sq ft).
- Best for smart features Dreo Air Purifier 338S takes the category 100 to 72 — driven by app control (No vs Yes).
- Best for design Dreo Air Purifier 539 takes the category 100 to 0.
- The safe all-rounder Dreo Air Purifier 539 wins more of the categories that carry real weight, topping the overall VS Score at 95.
Where each one falls short
Dreo Air Purifier 539
- App control: No vs Yes
- Voice assistant: No vs Yes
- 3 specs are unreported (shown as Unknown) and excluded from its scores.
Dreo Air Purifier 338S
- Coverage area: 245 sq ft vs 178 sq ft
- CADR (smoke): 158 CFM vs 115 CFM
- 8 specs are unreported (shown as Unknown) and excluded from its scores.
What matters to you?
Drag the sliders to weight each category and re-rank the products to suit your priorities.
Score breakdown
Performance
Filtration
Noise & power
Design
Smart features
Specs last verified August 23, 2026Dreo Air Purifier 539: 19 of 22 specs verified (86%)Dreo Air Purifier 338S: 14 of 22 specs verified (64%)Unverified specs show as Unknown — never estimated, never scored
Where to buy
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What reviewers say
The bottom line
Buy the 539 if the room is a living room, an open-plan kitchen, or anywhere that cooking and open doors keep dirtying the air. It moves substantially more of that air, and no amount of scheduling makes a smaller machine bigger. Buy the 338S if the room is a bedroom, a nursery or an office where the purifier should run to a schedule, drop to quiet overnight and be checked without getting up, and where its pellet carbon will do more against odours than its smaller fan gives away. The trap is buying the clever one for a large room and then leaving it on high all evening. Size the machine to the room first and let the app break the tie.
