It doesn’t give me any pleasure whatsoever to admit I come from India, a country where an AQI of 150 is considered ‘a normal day’. People living in the capital city of Delhi are accustomed to AQI hitting highs of 400 on bad days, where a single breath of air is equivalent to smoking a cigarette. It’s a terrible condition to live through, and almost everyone owns an air purifier that gets strategically placed in either the bedroom or the living room, in the hopes that this one tiny device will be able to do something… just something to clean the air around it.
While that approach is commendable, the portable air purifier segment is still something to be explored. Imagine a tiny air purifier, small as a book, designed to be carried around from room to room with you, so that you’re always breathing clean(ish) air wherever you sit. This concept from Samsung takes on the literal shape of a hardcover book, and can be carried around with you from one room to another. The all-metal design feels premium to the touch, and opens up in ways that allow you to prop the purifier either vertically or horizontally for optimal airflow targeting.
Designer: intenxiv inc.
The book-shaped design gives the purifier a level of portability that your otherwise-clunky room air purifier just can’t attain. Place it on a tabletop, either horizontally or vertically, with the ability to angle it thanks to an adjustable kickstand. Air gets pulled from the top and pushed through the front, passing through a HEPA filter that traps a variety of particulate matter to give you dust-free air. This is the standard template of almost every purifier out there, but what Samsung’s concept does is make things hyper-portable.
The all-metal design feels premium, with the overall minimalist appearance bordering on something you’d see from Bang & Olufsen’s speakers. This one, however, bears Samsung’s name on the top, along with Mini Air (the product name) on the ‘spine’. Controls on the side let you increase or decrease the fan speed, while a USB-C port lets you charge the purifier.
A slot on the side lets you pop the HEPA filter out for replacement or cleaning. The details aren’t clear given that this is just a concept created by intenxiv inc. under some form of an internship or apprenticeship at Samsung Electronics in 2019. A ‘bookmark’ on the front lip acts as a notification light to let you know battery status, and whether the purifier’s switched on or not. One can only assume the fans are so quiet that you’d need such a light to let you know the purifier is running.
The purifier comes in two colorways. A lighter metallic variant and a slightly darker ‘space grey’ version. Both are identical in shape and size, barring the slight color change as well as the ‘bookmark’ on the side that’s either orange or teal, depending on the variant you pick.
The design is just a concept for now, but the template absolutely shouldn’t be. Portable air purifiers are a pretty unexplored category (at least by larger companies). Dyson did release a set of air purifying headphones ages ago, but the product never managed to hit mass appeal. A smaller air purifier like this one would fit well in most smaller apartments, whether they’re dorms/hostels, office cubicles, or tiny homes in the city.
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