Since travel umbrellas are so often lost – left next to your seat on the bus, sitting under your table at a cafe – you usually don’t want to spend an exorbitant amount of money on one. The Rainbow RainMate air purifier was invented as part of a patent developed by Rainbow (Rexair inc) in 1988. That patent expired in 2006, so the market is now full of these “water air purifiers” that filter air through water to remove pollutants. All of the umbrellas I reviewed are good quality, portable, and affordable and each have their own special features and designs that make them unique. It’s a super simple unit to use, you just switch it on when it’s full of water, and it will start pulling air from outside into the main tank and start bubbling. The LEDs are optional and have their own switch. The 2021 edition has a reinforced rib canopy that makes it super sturdy. This compact travel umbrella is lightweight and the one I tried out had a cheerful blue sky pattern printed on the inside, so it felt like I was in a little rain-free world of my own.

As this air purifier uses water to filter the air, there are no extra filter costs to consider as you just change the water every few weeks.

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Even with all these bells and whistles, though, I had some major problems with this umbrella’s size. Collapsed completely, the umbrella was several inches taller than all of the rest I tried out, making it less portable than the others. While the primary market for this invention was a new type of vacuum cleaner, Rainbow realized that you could also use this technology on a smaller scale as an “air purifier.” So even with all of the cool features and the high quality of the entire product, this umbrella falls short when it comes to its main purpose: rain protection.

You can hold pretty much anything above your head to protect you from the rain, but an investment in a quality umbrella can make your time abroad a lot more hassle-free. The collapse button works the same as the rest, but again, it is a bit hard to open and close all the way. What set this travel umbrella apart from the others I reviewed was the extremely comfortable handle. It was lightweight and easy to hold, but it had a grip-able material that keeps it in your grasp if a gust of wind comes up under it. So while you don’t want to splurge too much on an umbrella that you run a high chance of losing or barely using, you still want your umbrella to get the job done. The best feature of this umbrella was the double canopy, meaning the top part of the umbrella was detached and overlapping from the bottom, so the wind theoretically would go through it rather than up under it and you would keep hold of your umbrella while still staying dry.

Fragrance infused Air

Please note the following postcodes are classed as Non-Mainland UK or Remote / Rural delivery: AB, IV, KW, PA, PH, HS, KA, ZE, PO30-PO41, IM, JE, GY, BT, TR21-TR25. Once the umbrella has closed though, you have to manually push the collapsed canopy down to the handle before you can push the button to open it again, and that takes a little bit of muscle – not a deal-breaker by any means, just something to keep in mind when you take our top travel umbrella out in the rain for the first time. That being said, the Eezy umbrella was the compact travel umbrella that came in the most colors (the one I tried out was a gorgeous sunshiny yellow) and also featured a dual open/collapse button. Again, though, it was pretty tough to push down to collapse all the way. A sturdy skeleton stitched firmly in place that won’t bust open with heavy winds and risk poking you or someone near you in the eyeball.

It also claims to be “windproof,” but doesn’t have a vented double canopy like the Eezy and Lifetek, so I can’t say for sure how good the wind resistance is – it’s also the exact same inside construction as the Rain Mate, which makes no claims to being windproof. The construction of the Repel Windproof Travel Umbrella is very similar to the Rain Mate compact travel umbrella; the only differences between the two compact travel umbrellas is that the Repel is made with a heavier, less comfortable handle and it has Telfon coating. I have read a ton of academic studies around the performance of HEPA and activated charcoal at removing pollutants and gasses from the air. Still, I have not seen any studies about the power of water to remove these types of pollutants.I was wary of this air purifier when I read about how it’s sold directly in the home and that they had no published CADR scores. You often hear the phrase — “it sounds too good to be true,” and for the Rainbow RainMate, this is the case. Anyway, the rainy season is upon us again and it's always a challenge to stay stylish at the same time as getting drookit. Despite its vintage pedigree, we would have to draw the line at describing the rain-mate as stylish. While we would love to have an air purifier that costs very little to run and needs no replacement filters, the fact that it’s useless at the one job of removing pollutants is why I wouldn’t recommend this air purifier to anyone. Unfortunately, We Cannot Guarantee Next Working Day - you will be notified if we can't fulfill this. When opened completely, the actual canopy of the umbrella was fairly small, and the T-shaped ends gave the umbrella a scalloped shape, making it easier for rain to come in.