The Yomiuri Shimbun/ANN | Monday, Jun 13, 2016 A Katori Kusei air purifier at Yodobashi Camera Co.’s Umeda Store in Osaka. OSAKA - An air purifier that filters out not only airborne pollutants, but also mosquitoes was released by Sharp Corp. and has been selling exceptionally well.Although the financially troubled company has refrained from running TV commercials for the product, its particular function of sucking in mosquitoes along with pollen and dust has interested many customers. Advance orders for the product were 10 times more than the firm usually receives and it trebled its production from the initial 3,000 units a month. The model was initially targeted at customers in Southeast Asia where there are many mosquitoes. In Japan, air purifiers sell less once the hay fever season of early spring is over. Sharp decided to reimport the product to prop up its domestic sales in summer.Called Katori Kusei, the air purifier was released in Japan on April 23 and retails for around ¥50,000 (S$640) plus tax.

The product is equipped with ultraviolet light that lures mosquitoes and an adhesive sheet to trap them.Katori Kusei was a hot topic online immediately after Sharp announced the product for Japan on March 17.The firm usually receives up to 200 advance orders for conventional air purifiers, but the number of orders for Katori Kusei had reached 2,300 units the day before its release.winix 9500 pet air cleaner with plasmawaveAccording to Yodobashi Camera Co.'s Umeda Store in Osaka, customers in their 50s and 60s show the most interest in the product.3q air purifier reviewsKatori Kusei's in-store sales display emphasizes the mosquito-catching function, and many customers stop and look out of curiosity.mikuni hs40 air cleanerIn response to the popularity, Sharp reinforced assembly lines in its factory in Thailand to boost production.

Another leading home appliance maker downplayed the product's popularity, saying, "It was simply because the release coincided with social anxiety over Zika fever."Sharp, however, hopes that Katori Kusei will help the firm restore its reputation of creating original products, bringing a resurgence to its bottom line. Air purifier that sucks up dust and mosquitoesIt seems I am always the first among my friends and family to be bitten at barbecues and other mosquito-prone occasions. My three-year-old daughter takes after me and gets her fair share of bites at home.So when Sharp launched a new air purifier with a built-in mosquito catcher recently, I jumped at the chance to try it. With a Hepa air filter that removes particulates as small as 2.5 microns, this air purifier sounds perfect for our haze and dengue problems. Sharp says the mosquito catcher was developed after a study with the Institute for Medical Research in Malaysia. In lab tests, the air purifier could cut Culex house mosquitoes by up to 91 per cent and the dengue-causing Aedes variant by up to 73 per cent.

To attract mosquitoes, the air purifier is finished in black. It emits ultraviolet light (UV) to lure mosquitoes into its air inlet before sucking them in and trapping them on a sticky glue sheet. Each sheet lasts about one month.The air purifier's fan is audible when set to maximum speed, but there is a quieter Sleep mode that also reduces the brightness of the catcher's UV lamp.My conclusion at the end of six days of testing: I am still a better mosquito magnet than the Sharp. In fact, the Sharp caught fewer than 10 mosquitoes. To be fair, I had killed more than that number in that period, which could have meant fewer mosquitoes for the catcher. The mosquitoes at my home are also probably the harder-to-catch Aedes variant as they usually strike in the evenings.TECH SPECSPrice: $459Coverage area: 30 sq mWeight: 5.8kgThis article was first published on October 21, 2015. Xiaomi is going places. The Chinese smartphone giant announced on Wednesday (July 27) the Mi Notebook Air, its first ever laptop, and one that looks like it belongs up there with the MacBook Airs of today.

Xiaomi has never been one to shy away from cramming high-end hardware into its latest devices, and the Mi Notebook Air is no different. It is actually available in two variants - a fairly powerful 13.3-inch (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) model, and a more power efficient 12.5-inch one. For starters, the 13.3-inch Mi Notebook Air features an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 256GB PCIe SSD. It measures just 14.8mm thick, which is actually thinner than the Dell XPS 13, already an exceedingly light and portable notebook in its own right. At 1.28kg, it's also in the ballpark of most of the other 13.3-inch ultrabooks in the market today.But the most intriguing thing is that Xiaomi has somehow managed to cram a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 940MX graphics card in there. This can't quite be considered high-end gaming-grade hardware, but the Mi Notebook Air is quite clearly more capable than its competitors equipped with the Intel HD Graphics 520 iGPU. At the very least, you'll be able to get high frame rates on Dota 2, according to Xiaomi.It utilizes a USB-C port for charging, while also including two Type-A USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI output.

What's more, Xiaomi says you can get up to a 50 per cent charge after just 30 minutes of charging, which should be great news for mobile road warriors. Then there's the 12.5-inch Mi Notebook Air, which is touting even more battery life - 11.5 hours as opposed to 9.5 hours - than its bigger brother. The smaller notebook is powered by an Intel Core m3 processor, and features just 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. It is also lighter and thinner at just 1.07kg and 12.9mm thick.Of course, this comes with certain tradeoffs - you won't get the discrete GPU and will have to make do with one USB 3.0 port instead of two.Like some other products in Xiaomi's eclectic portfolio (it makes things like rice cookers, drones, and air purifiers as well), the Mi Notebook Air is actually made by a partner called Tian Mi. Still, both notebooks will be sold under the Xiaomi brand, although press images show minimal branding with no logo visible on the lid.The 13.3-inch Mi Notebook Air is priced at 4,999 yuan (S$1,017), while the 12.5-inch version is cheaper at 3,499 yuan.