Hands-on with Xiaomi’s smart air purifier

Back in December, Xiaomi added an air purifier to its growing catalog of smart gadgets. It’s controlled by Xiaomi’s Smart Home app, which is available for Android and iOS (so it isn’t tied just to Xiaomi’s phones).

I recently bought one Mi Air Purifier to see how it performs. I’m not going to do a full review, which would require a scientific test alongside some other air purifier models, but here’s a quick hands-on.

Firstly, why even buy one? In a word: China. While my lake-filled city, Suzhou, is usually pleasant – certainly nothing like Beijing and many heavy industry-based cities where a blue sky is more of a rarity than a norm – there are still enough off days to cause concern. Those are the days on which you imagine all those tiny PM2.5 toxins entering your lungs like those cartoonishly evil, spiky tar molecules in an anti-smoking PSA.

A breath of fresher air

This is the top of the device.

The plastic feels solid. It looks like metal from a distance.

The Mi Air Purifier only has one button, so it calls out to be controlled by the app. That app shows the PM2.5 pollution levels for your area (which I presume comes from an online database, which pinpoints your location) along with your indoor PM2.5 levels, which is calculated by the air purifier itself.

Here’s the app in action today, 30 minutes apart:

Cheaper oxygen