#home appliances

At noon on 12 October NEA's 24-hour PSI read 146 in the central region and 147 in the west, a day after peaking at 152, the worst reading of this haze season. We re-checked all eight brands on their own Singapore stores the same day, and stock is now the story, not price. Every Sharp air purifier shows out of stock, novita has sold out of the A5i, A11i and A18i, and EuropAce's $139 and $199 HEPA-14 models have become pre-orders with earliest delivery on 11 November. What you can still get delivered: Tefal's Pure Air Mini at $99.90 (back in stock), Mistral's MBFAP250 tower at $159 and MBFAP460 at $289, Sterra's new Halo at $249 and its three-Moon bundle at $458, Dyson's TP10 at $599 or $549 with code PEAK50, and Coway's serviced Noble AP from $1,588.

Singapore tap water is already safe to drink straight from the tap. PUB says so, and that is the honest starting point for this list. What you are actually buying with a water purifier is instant near-boiling water without a kettle, cold water without a fridge bottle, and better-tasting water without hauling cartons home. Prices as they stand on each brand's own Singapore store today: Toyomi's 3.5L filtered InstantBoil dispenser at $128 (U.P. $148), EuropAce's StronPure hot-and-cold tank at $499 with six filters thrown in (U.P. $899), Coway's Mate at $588 (U.P. $738), or $529.20 with any trade-in, Sterra's Y Tank tabletop from $599 with free delivery and installation, Hydroflux's LITE+ Compact at $749.92 with a year of filters (U.P. $1,839.92), novita's W1i InstantPerfect at $1,798 (U.P. $2,098), and Cuckoo's Prince Top at $2,599 outright, with up to $999 off and two free years of servicing if you trade in any old purifier (its $1,965 National Day price ended on 31 August). Every price below came from the brand's own site, not a marketplace listing, and the running cost that actually matters is filters, not water.