One of the greatest upgrades I made to my home was the addition of an air purifier. There it sits in my living room, pumping away to cleanse my indoor air of wildfire smoke (thanks, Canada), cigarette smoke (thanks, arrested development neighbors who smoke like preteens in the stairwell), and outdoor pollution (thanks, America).
Everything about it is great, except that it sits near my one and only closet, and occasionally I try to put stuff on it, just for a second, which just happens to be long enough to send it crashing to the floor because my air purifier is not, in fact, a table.
But here’s one that is. Blueair, an air purifier company with which I’m well acquainted, having tested air purifiers professionally for the past five years, just released the Blue Signature, an air purifier designed as a tabletop.
a sudden, limited-time deal
Who knows what’s going on with Blueair’s decision to unveil its new air purifier on June 17 and then for Amazon to knock $60 off the price by next week. That’s weird behavior for any new product, air purifier or not, but I’m almost afraid to ask too many questions, lest the deal disappear into the ether like a cloud of wildfire smoke passing through an air purifier.
The deal only applies to the gray version. For some odd reason, black is exclusive to the Blueair website, on which the deal doesn’t appear. So you’ll have to make some hard decorating decisions.
There’s no mention that the air purifier within the Blue Signature is HEPA, which does indeed suck. But it still filters out 99.97% of airborne pollutants, such as dust, pollen, smoke, and pet dander, along with some measure of effectiveness on certain bacteria, viruses, mold, and pollen.
Legs don’t come with the $390 Blue Signature, which is a drag. That’s a lot of money to pay when you’re left on the hook to purchase your own legs separately. But grudgingly, I have to admit it’s better than making them standard if it means raising the price.
Many people won’t bother with legs, using the Blue Signature instead as a standard air purifier tucked in the corner of the room, anyway. You can’t buy them just yet, as they’re marked “out of stock” right now, but the legs cost $80.
I think the legs are actual wood. Every mention of them on Blueair’s product page says something like “wood finish” or “leg base in wood,” which to me sounds like a cop-out that they look like wood but aren’t wood, kind of how Butterfingers say they’re covered in a “chocolatey” coating as a way to get around the fact that it isn’t technically chocolate.
Except in the case of the Blueair Blue Signature’s legs, there’s one press release that explicitly mentions “wooden table legs,” so unless that one unnamed writer was unintentionally clumsy with their choice of words, that’d seem to suggest the legs are legitimately wood. There’s also a metal base ring, purely aesthetic, for $100 that’s seemingly waiting to come into stock.
It’s not the first air purifier that also happens to be a table. IKEA has a pretty spiffy-looking end table air purifier, even if IKEA lacks the sort of pedigree in the air purifier space that a company like Blueair possesses.
That’s why I’m more excited about the Blue Signature. It’s an air purifier first and foremost, and an end table second, which is how it should be when you’re entrusting it with something as important as the air you breathe. Now if only those damn legs would hurry up and come into stock.
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