Sprimo takes a personal approach to purifying your air

We’ve written about a number of air purifiers before, but Sprimo is taking a different approach — instead of trying to clean all the air in the room, it creates a personalized stream of clean air for individual users.

Now, a phrase like “personalized stream of clean air” might sound a little silly, but CEO Ray Combs and CTO Harold Han (who has a Ph.D. in chemistry from New York University) convinced me that if you’re going to buy an air purifier, Sprimo could be an efficient and affordable alternative.

After all, they said that only 1 percent of the air from “whole room” purifiers actually reaches you, making the personalized approach 10 times more efficient. Plus, it allows for things like temperature to be tailored to your preferences.

“Have you ever gotten in someone’s car and adjusting the air vents is the first thing you do?” Combs said. “We all have a perception of what we want our air to feel like.”

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So Sprimo is designed to be set up on your desk, say at your office. Then once you turn it on, it filters out toxins and allergens, with a fan blowing in your face (in a subtle, not annoying, way) to create what Combs called “a bubble of fresh air.” Of course, you’re not completely isolated from the air around you, but Combs said the Sprimo’s “influence” extends two meters out from the fan and takes effect in about 30 seconds.

The filters are customizable based on your needs, say if you have a particular problem with pollen or live in a city where there’s a high concentration of a certain chemical. Combs said Sprimo can get smarter about this over time, because it will analyze the used filters that customers send in through the filter exchange program.

Sprimo is currently crowdfunding on Crowd Supply, with a pre-order price of $319.