SwitchBot Air Purifier Table Review

Introduction

Nobody really wants an air purifier that looks like an air purifier – that’s where the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table comes in.

The Purifier Table joins the growing ranks of devices that work as regular bits of furniture all while cleaning the air.

This one stands out by integrating a table and a wireless charger into the top, alongside a simple app with Matter support, decent performance and generally good looks.

Design and Features

• Fiddly to install, but it looks great
• Works with the SwitchBot app
• Matter compatible

The SwitchBot Air Purifier Table joins the ranks of air purifiers that are also side tables, alongside the Blueair DustMagnet 5440i, and the Ikea Starkvind. It’s quite a good idea, as most of us don’t have lots of space to take up with ever more appliances, and side tables are always useful.

If you really don’t want this, there’s a standard version without the wood-effect table top, although it still has a flat top and looks a bit table-like.

With the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table, you get quite a large tabletop (42 x 29cm), and the entire unit is 50cm high. This tabletop must be plugged into the main unit’s power cable, twisted, and locked into place.

There are then two of the tiniest screws known to man to secure the table in place, which sounds great in theory, but trying to get them in place using the provided screwdriver is a mission in patience and skill.

It’s very easy to drop the screws through the plastic grilles and then have to turn the purifier upside down to shake them loose. Still, once the tabletop is screwed in place, you won’t have to do this again.

The table provides a surface to put things on and has a built-in wireless charger, which is handy. Just drop a compatible phone on it, and it’ll start charging. It’s a neat and convenient touch.

There are three filtration layers: a pre-filtration layer for pet fur, which you can wipe down, then the main filter, which has a HEPA filter and a carbon filter for pet odours. These should last for six to 12 months, depending on usage and air quality, and the app will say when it’s time to replace it.

Replacements cost £70 for a pack of two, which isn’t bad value considering how long they’ll last.

The air purifier can be used via the controls on the front. There’s a button to turn it on and off, one to select the fan speed, and one to select the mode: Auto, Pet, or Sleep. Auto uses the PM2.5 sensor to adjust the fan speed based on the level of dust in the room.

This air purifier won’t react to other pollutants, such as VO2 levels; you need a purifier with more sensors, such as the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde.

In Pet mode, the fan runs faster, and the idea is that the purifier sucks up pet hair and takes it out of the air.

Sleep mode gently purifies while you’re asleep and is so quiet that I couldn’t hear it over ambient noise.

There’s also a timer, with an option to two, four or six hours. Finally, an indicator shows when it’s time to change the filter.

If you’d like the fan to release a scent, there’s a pod that pulls out the back, and you can add essential oil to it. As SwitchBot warns, though, doing so can affect your air quality.

Connect the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table to the SwitchBot app via Wi-Fi and you get full remote control over it. Here, you get all of the same options as on the front, plus a timer where you can set the time in hours and minutes. Oddly, this feature is called Delay.

A schedule is useful, so that you can have the purifier run when you want, for example running at full speed in the hour before you normally go to bed, so that you can sleep in a clean room.

The app also gives you more information about air quality, showing the current PM2.5 level on the home page, as well as stating if air quality is good, bad or moderate. A full history shows how air quality changes through the day, too.

If you want control over the lighting, you also need the app. There are two options for this. First, you can set the ambient lighting of a colour of your choice, with the option to turn the light off when it’s too bright. Secondly, you can choose to use the lights to show the air quality, with red for bad.

Turned on, the light looks nice, but it does tend to get a bit distracting. I opted to turn the lights off and have the table blend into the background.

There’s also Matter support, and I hooked the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table up to Apple Home. Not that it was particularly worth it: I could turn the purifier on and off, and select a fan speed, but not the various modes. Still, Matter might be useful if you want to run the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table in an automation, say, turning it off when you go out.

Performance

• Cleans the air fast
• Not too loud

With only a PM2.5 sensor, the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table isn’t that responsive to environmental factors. Sat in the same room as a Purifier Hot+Cool Formaldehyde, I found that the Dyson often ramps up and down during the day, as its sensors pick up various issues; the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table largely remains quiet and only goes when there’s quite a bit of dust around.

Still, the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table is more designed for dealing with pet hair, and running it at higher speeds manually or via schedule does help it collect pet hair, as I can attest with a long-haired cat.

To test how quickly it can clear a room, I lit a smoke pellet in my office and started a timer. Within a minute, as the Nest Protect sounded, the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table powered up to maximum and started to suck the particulate matter out of the air.

I found that the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table temporarily dropped its fan speed down while it was cleaning, before the Nest said the air was safe; however, the air purifier kicked up to full speed again within 20 seconds, cleaning the room.

Overall, the purifier had the Nest Protect say that the threat was over in 7m 15s, and its sensors went back to normal after 11m 15s. That’s very fast and shows that the combination of fan and filters is effective.

Noise was good, ranging between the inaudible at lower speeds and increasing to 61.1dB on full speed.

Should you buy it?