!["Clean Air Should Not Be a Luxury" According to Makers of the World's Most Cost-Effective Air Purifier](https://www.thebeijinger.com/sites/default/files/styles/blog_list_image/public/thebeijinger/blog-images/379541/the_sqair_smart_air_purifier_cost_effective_beijing_china_kickstarter.jpg ""Clean Air Should Not Be a Luxury" According to Makers of the World's Most Cost-Effective Air Purifier")
Too low ... not too long!
Laser Egg Comes to the Rescue with Eggxact AQI and Pollution Readings
I’ve been living in Beijing now since 2008. I remember when those who wore facemasks were the strange-looking passersby. I remember when everyone I knew was starting to get air filters and I hummed and hawed about their necessity. Now, I barely know a family without them.
Last week’s record-breaking air followed by this week’s red alert has me, once again, asking myself what I’m doing here. Why have I spent so much money outfitting my home to be leak-proof, buying air filters, replacing cartridges, and now obsessing over my Laser Egg, my newest and most prized possession? Why am I so interested in these technologies: monitoring, analyzing, assessing my home’s safety levels rather than just moving my kids back to my clean-air country?
It’s complicated. Here in China, we have our lives established. The adults in this family are employed and my daughter is enrolled at school. We have childcare in place for our son. Our home has a lease and, and, and …
But when the red alert was announced on Monday evening, I thought: none of those things are binding. Will this really get any better? Is the impact on my kids’ lungs the cost of my optimism?
RELATED: 10 Ways to Make Your Home More Pollution Proof
If nothing else, I feel relieved that I have successfully gotten one large room in my home under 10 for PM2.5. This is thanks to an excellent air filter, sealed windows and the confirmation of my Laser Egg, an excellent tool that helps me stay on top of the air quality in my house whether I am home or not.
Now I have other windows to seal and new cartridges to buy for my less impressive air filters that are chugging away in the other rooms, which I can only get to 59 and 35 respectively. The pricey quest for perfect air in Beijing continues.
Anyway, here we are so we’d better do what we can – for the sake of those little lungs we need to protect – perhaps while simultaneously (and sadly) planning our inevitable exits.
This article originally appeared on our sister site beijingkids.
Photos: Origins
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My friend told me about his Laser egg and I was keen to buy one. However, he thought he paid around 300 for it. I scanned the wechat code on their website and saw the price was 500rmb. Actually, I sent them a message and, as 'admin' states, they essentially said the price was too long and they needed to generate more money from this project to help them develop more products. The product hasn't changed with the price though. They also confirmed the price is'499' and not '500'. That was really important.
I would have happily paid the 379RMB price (if that's what it was recently) but I don't think it's as worth it for 500RMB. I can buy the new Xiaomi air purifier for not much more than that so if it's a choice between knowing how bad my air is or actually doing something about it, the choice seems obvious.
I also went to buy this just as the pollution was around 600 last week ... so it seemed pretty suspect that (as far as I knew) they'd just raised the price to 500rmb at that time.
Raising the price was a bad PR move, scheduled or unscheduled. Anyone paying attention to bad air patterns in Beijing knows that this time of year is often the worst for air quality.
Whether it was their intention or not, the vast majority of people I talked to did not look at this positively.
The explanation was a little ham-fisted as well: in essence it was: We need more of your money to come up with better products.
I am totally receptive of this idea because I am an air quality nerd.
The opinions of the unwashed masses, unfortunately, cannot be controlled so easily.
I also find the Laser Egg super useful and reassuring at home. It's allowed me to realize I have trouble spots near my front door, and I'm focusing on sealing that up better. And I don't think the price, new or old, is unreasonable at all for a consumer product. And they say on their site that their pricing decision was made long before December 1. It's just poor coincidental timing, not greed. If it really was greed, they'd be charging a lot more than they are.
