Equate Earloop Face Mask

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the place we are testing every single mask in the world. That's right. Today, we are looking at the Equate brand masks that you can get for $5.68 on Walmart. That's right. Walmart's brand of masks. Think that's Walmart's brand, anyways. Correct me in the comments if I am incorrect on that. Excited to look into this. Made in the USA. Walmart contract manufactured this. I think I met the company. That's doing it. I'm not a hundred percent sure though. With U.S. and imported materials. That probably means they're importing the fabric for the mask. But great that this is made in the United States. That's awesome. Great packaging. 25 masks selling it for five bucks. Probably the company is making it, probably cost about two bucks to make.

Wait, the (beep) second. Are you kidding me? Made in the USA, Chinese product certificate. Are you kidding me? Really? That's illegal. Okay. Let me see. Name of product, disposable. Wait, I think this has got put in here accidentally. This is weird. Name of product, disposable nitrile gloves. Okay. That's weird. I'm going to give Walmart a mulligan on that one and pretend that this is not made in China, even though there was... So weird. All right. Let's kind of quit yapping and put it in the clamper, huh? I got the old clamp machine back out. Very excited. I think you are, too. Because this one, I can get my fingers clamped in if I do it wrong. And that's exciting, you know? We all love carnage. This is a PFE machine, particular filtration efficiency machine. We are doing the ASTM test here, which is the American Surgical Mask Test. And that's the test that they are claiming to be a part of.

So let's look at the box. They're saying, I hate this, a lot of these people say 98% bacterial filtration efficiency. Why do I hate that? Because bacteria doesn't matter. Bacteria is huge compared to COVID. If you're buying this mask because of COVID 19, bacteria is not a good measure. However, particulate filtration efficiency, look at that, .1 micron, that's what we're doing. That's the test we're doing here. It's the whole point of this $250,000 lab, is to do this test at 98%. And they are claiming to be a level two mask. We shall see. Let's try out the ear loops. I don't like this. This mask is very sloppily put together, I'll be honest.

So, I mean, just coming from a mask manufacturer, they're doing it backwards. They're putting the ear loops on the back, supposed to put it on the front because it helps hold things forward. And then look at this, look at that fold. I remember when we were making our masks at first, we did that all the time. This is very, very sloppy. And then the other thing that's sloppy is look at, the welds are at different angles. And yeah, look at that. Thing just falls apart. That's horrible construction. Oh my gosh. And the winner for the worst put together mask goes to Equate. I didn't even touch it. I breathed, and I was like, and it like... Wow, that's really bad. That is really bad.

I mean, it is very affordable, but at the same time. I mean, this is the thing that's like, when you're putting on this mask, it's going to fall off. Could just, when I'm putting it on. Now that one actually is pretty strong. Okay. Let's do the smell test. Oh, this smells like the laundry room at a Comfort Inn and Suites. This smells like, yeah. It's like clean, but also why does the mask smell that way? Hmm? Does any of that matter? Doesn't protect you> remember they're claiming ASTM 2, that's 98% or better on this machine.

Ah, shocker. Shocker. So what'd I say, if the other things aren't lining up, if they're not paying attention to the little things in this mask, the quality issues here, why would they care about the quality issues of the actual fabric? One follows the other. There's also a lot of other tests that you have to do that like this blood splatter machine does and the breathability, there's a lot of tests that you have to do for a surgical mask. I'm just doing one here, because it's super fast except for all my yapping and granted they're almost making it right. So ah, big deal. 96.694. 96.694 air flow. Really breathable 68 pascals, super breathable mask. But you know, they were claiming 98% and they didn't make that. All right.

Shocker that I would not recommend the Equate Walmart brand mask. But I will say I'm glad that it exists because Walmart is probably one of the biggest actual shop in person stores that exists. And I'm just glad to have masks out there because at the beginning of the pandemic, you couldn't get any masks. So to have some, I'm actually happy about and glad that Walmart's prioritizing making that on U.S. soil. So what happened during the pandemic will never happen again. Thank you guys so much watching, really appreciate it. And I will catch you on the next test.