Product review: HOPE C+ UV Light Sanitizer Bag - Failed the Banana Test

Hope C Satinizer is a nicely built sanitizer box. It looks great; the specs say the rights things, but does it work? Hospitals that use UVC sanitizer have very expensive, powerful machines.  How to tell if the UVC light in this box sanitizer is actually producing the light in the UVC spectrum and that it is strong enough to disinfect my handful of N95 masks purchased ten years ago?  

Before  I purchased this sanitizer bag, I did a bit of research. I found an article in Discover Magazine, By Jeanne Erdmann, published on August 3, 2020, "UV Light Wands Are Supposed to Kill Viruses. But Do They Really Work?". You can find this article online to read the details yourself (access to the article is free).  This article describes the "banana" test and provides references to YouTube videos that demonstrate how to do this test. The tests show that UVC light changes the color of the banana skin to brown color.  To make the color change more apparent, a portion of the banana is covered by tape, so when you peel the tape off, you can clearly see the difference for the products producing enough UVC light to disinfect. If the banana color is unchanged, the product does not generate enough UVC light to disinfect.

I performed the banana test on the HOPE C Satinizer box, which you can see in the attached video. I performed two tests; the first test is a three-minute test because the auto-shut happens at 3 minutes.  And then, I ran the box nine more times, giving the banana a total of 27 minutes of light exposure. In both tests, the banana color, unfortunately, remained unchanged.

Note 1: I wanted to run it 10 times rather than 9 times, but the box began blinking red; it ran out of battery even though it was plugged in during the test.  I left it plugged in overnight, but it did not recharge enough to start working again; it continued to blink red.

Note 2: The human eye cannot see UVC lights. The LED light you see in the HOPE C Satinizer box's small window is a white LED light going through a purple plastic; it is not ultraviolet light.

I have a hand full of N95 masks I bought ten years ago, and I wanted to be able to sanitize and re-use them during the COVID-19 pandemic.  HOPE C Satinizer box is the right size for the job, and I liked that it operates closed so I would not be exposing my eyes to UV light. If I did not do the banana test, I would have thought it could disinfect my masks. Sadly, since this box cannot change banana skin color, it cannot disinfect my N95 masks.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★☆☆☆☆