At a glance, Muji's latest product looks like some tech gadget: the minimalist, porcelain-white analog to Apple's Mac Pro or the Amazon Echo, perhaps. It's actually a beautiful air purifier that pulls in dirty air from 360 degrees.
The Muji Air Purifier is made up a three-layer, activated charcoal filter that is rated to weed out pollen, mites, and dander from the air. It does most of its heavy lifting while in auto mode, using a multitude of sensors to detect dust and odors in the air, and spinning up the engines to deal with them. Air is drawn from all around the cylinder, purified, then pushed out from the turbine at the top.
There's another mode, though, that will be of particular use to allergy sufferers. It's called jet-cleaning mode, and it's designed to be used as a vacuum. The idea here is that as your vacuum tosses dust and other allergens up into the air, the air purifier will increase its fan speed for up to 30 minutes, maximizing the air flow and filtration until you finish vacuuming.
The Muji Air Purifier was designed for the company by Kazushige Miyake, which also designed Muji's portable hair dryer using a similar dual-fan system to the one being used in the Air Purifier. Sadly, though, Muji's Air Purifier does not yet seem to have crept into the company's United States stores. In Japan, though, it costs around $310.