Return of the Haze

The several news articles reporting of the worsening smog in Beijing this year had a side-effect; they reminded those of us in Singapore of the dreaded haze from last year, and that it was only going to be a matter of time when the effects of slashing and burning tactics employed by Indonesian farmers coupled with weather phenomena would once again reach Singapore. So, when local news reported last week that the haze was not only going to return soon, it looks to be even worse than last year’s, it was largely received by persons here with a mix of mostly disappointment and resignation as opposed to shock, going with social media at least.

We went without air purifiers last year, and instead relocating most of what we did at home to the master bedroom at our old home. This year with Peter at home, we’re even less inclined to risk living with the bad air. So, we started scouting around for air purifiers over the last week. Our requirements were quite specific again; we’d likely be relocating most of what we do at home to the master bedroom at our new Minton home, so the air purifier unit would need to easily work with a room of that size. We wanted also a unit that was True Hepa certified, and also with filter parts easily available for end-user purchase.

The Honeywell purifiers were the most consistently highly-rated units on online chatter and are priced attractively in the US but apparently heavily marked up by the local distributors. We thought of picking them up through Amazon but didn’t want to have to deal with having to use stepped-down transformers. Of the bunch of alternatives, the Sharp and Philips purifiers seem to be quite popular, but we eventually settled on a Novita NAP 611-i. The Novita purifiers seem to be relatively well-received on online forums and popular purchases too. We eyed the the NAP 611-i which ticked all the boxes. The unit was a $599, but we got it at $500 at Goh Ah Bee, a home appliance store located at Kovan and quite near The Minton. The unit came with a extra complimentary filter set – nice – which immediately extends the longevity of the unit, assuming if everyone else works to expectation in the years to come.

The unit seemed to work just fine, though we’ll have to wait till the haze actually returns in a couple of weeks to see how it’ll operate under stress. More to report when that time comes!