We’ve been on a bit of an air-quality kick lately — watching the CO₂ climb in a closed room with the Aranet4 monitor, and testing a portable HEPA purifier from AirFanta. So when we came across the OmniMask — a respirator with a clear face you can actually see through — we bought a couple and tried them on.
Most masks share the same trade-off: the better they filter, the more they hide your face and muffle your voice. The OmniMask takes a swing at that, and the first thing you notice is obvious — you can see the whole face.
What it actually is
It’s a reusable elastomeric respirator — think of it as a see-through, refillable alternative to a disposable N95:
- A clear polycarbonate lens over the whole face, anti-fog coated — so expressions and lip movement stay visible.
- A medical-grade, platinum-cured silicone body (latex-free, MRI-safe, no metal parts).
- Three swappable filters — two inhale on the cheeks, one exhale at the chin. It takes OmniMask’s own E100 filters (they claim 99.5% filtration at 0.1-micron particles) or, via adapters, standard 3M, Honeywell, Moldex and MSA filters.
- A dual-airflow valve system meant to draw cooler air across your cheeks and keep the lens clear.
- One universal size on long, stretchy silicone straps.
The pitch is comfort and visibility without giving up filtration — and, importantly for us, it’s reusable for years rather than binned after a single use.
Our first impressions
After wearing it on and off for a few days, here’s the honest read:
- The clear face is the real deal. You can see the whole face — nose, mouth, expression — which genuinely changes how it feels to wear, and to talk to someone wearing one.
- No fogging. The anti-fog coating held up and the lens stayed clear.
- It muffles your voice. This is the one clear downside so far — sound is noticeably dampened, so you find yourself projecting more to be heard.
- It feels heavier than a disposable. Not uncomfortable, but you’re aware it’s there. The real test is a long, multi-hour session — we’ll report back on that.
Why it caught our eye
Two reasons, really. First, the sustainability maths: a disposable mask is a few minutes of use and then landfill, while a reusable respirator you clean and re-filter is a very different footprint — the kind of buy-it-once swap we like to poke at here. And second, the clean-air curiosity: after watching a CO₂ meter and a purifier at work, thinking about what we actually breathe — and what we can filter out — felt like the natural next rabbit hole.
But does it actually filter? — what we’re doing next
Here’s the part we’re most excited about: we’re not going to just take the 99.5% claim on faith. We want to measure it ourselves. And there are really two separate things to test:
- The seal. A brilliant filter is useless if air sneaks around the edges of the mask. We’ll run the simple pressure check (cover the filters, inhale, and the mask should pull in against your face and hold), and possibly a proper qualitative fit-test kit — a bitter or sweet aerosol where, if you can taste it, you’ve found a leak.
- The filtration. We’ll get a particle counter and use a cheap, abundant particle source (incense or a candle throws off huge amounts of fine PM2.5). Measure the particle count in the room, then the count of air pulled through the filter — the drop tells us the real-world filtration, seal and all.
We’re deciding between two ways to do it, and we’ll take you along either way:
- Build a kit. The fun, fuel-your-curiosity route — a low-cost air-quality sensor (a Sensirion or Plantower particle sensor) wired to a small microcontroller, logging particle counts before and after the filter. Cheap, hackable, and satisfying.
- Buy a counter. An off-the-shelf consumer particle counter is the faster path — and the same device will let us finally put a real number on the AirFanta purifier and our room air, too.
One honest limit up front: OmniMask’s claim is 99.5% at 0.1 micron, and affordable counters typically only read down to around 0.3 micron — so we won’t be able to verify that exact lab figure at home. What we can show is whether it removes the large majority of fine particles, and whether it truly seals to a real face. That’s the part that actually matters day to day.
First verdict
The clear face is a genuine upgrade, the anti-fog works, and the reusable-not-disposable angle sits right with us. The voice-muffling is the trade-off, and the weight is a “we’ll see” pending a proper long session. Whether it earns a permanent spot comes down to the numbers — which is exactly what we’re going to measure next. Stay tuned.
Curious about the air around you? See also our Aranet4 CO₂ test and the AirFanta portable purifier. We bought the OmniMask ourselves — this is our own honest take, not a sponsored post.