Yeti’s Founders Are Now Backing This Surprising Brand

Windmill has already made waves once before with its viral window AC unit. The company’s newly launched product could be next.

Windmill air purifier in white with a bamboo wood colored exterior sitting on a wood floor in a corner next to a light birch-colored wall and a tan vase filled with tan colored plant steams

By Ben Bowers

Published October 12, 2024

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Updated October 16, 2024

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Windmill was already a new brand with a lot going for it. Back in 2022, the company’s sleek and smart window AC unit took off on TikTok. Based on the viral status, our team decided to review and confirm that it generally delivered on its promise of smart controls and features in a better-looking package.

Now the company has even more reasons for optimism. On October 8th, Windmill announced its entrance into a new, yet adjacent product category: air purifiers. It also shared it had raised $5 million in Series A financing “to further accelerate growth.”

The Founder’s of Yeti Like What They Saw

Three Windmill Air Purifiers sitting side-by-side at an angle One is white, one is natural bamboo colored and the other is navy. — The Windmill Air Purifier is apparently the first purifier to feature real bamboo panels that are sold in three different colors.

What caught our eye in particular, though, was where the money was coming from. Yeti Capital was the first investor mentioned in the press release.

In case the name didn’t give it away, it’s the investment company created by two people with plenty of first-hand experience transforming seemingly mundane and ultra-competitive product categories into prestige status symbols.

Roy and Ryan Seiders founded Yeti in 2006 and helped build it into the global outdoor lifestyle powerhouse brand it is today. Roy served as CEO of Yeti until 2015 and now sits as Chairman in addition to co-leading Yeti Capital.

The New Windmill Air Purifier Has Promising Features

A hand holding an iPhone showing the WIndmill Air Purifier companion app. The screen shot shown highlights how users can set the purifier lights to auto fade after 3 seconds.

The air purifier market is a competitive space. While most companies generally solved the engineering problem of how to clean the air in a room a long time ago, strategies for making the devices more aesthetically pleasing are constantly evolving.

Some air purifiers are designed to be small enough to hide behind furniture. These days, most try to avoid looking like a generic plastic box thanks to soft fabric covers, cylindrical shapes, and patterned facades. Some companies, including IKEA, even sell options incorporating appliances into nightstands and side tables.

It also claims to be the first air purifier to feature a real bamboo finish, introducing a more natural-looking option to a product category dominated by plastic.

Windmill’s approach to the problem isn’t exactly revolutionary. Though it’s mostly a 21.4 x 19.7 x 12 rectangle standing on its end, gently curved corners help soften the shape. It also claims to be the first air purifier to feature a real bamboo finish, introducing a more natural-looking option to a product category dominated by plastic. While the real bamboo color option emphasizes this vibe the most, the white and navy color options also look sleek and modern.

The Windmill Air Purifer in White sitting on a white countertop in a modern kitchen next to a stainless steel stove. The wall is covered in greyish white tiles. The lower cabinet is made of light wood. A set of stainless steel fridge doors can be see on the left of the photo.

Internally, like most purifiers, the Windmill packs in a pre-filter for capturing hair and dust, an activated carbon filter for odors and VOCs, and finally, a True HEPA filter to block 99.97% of airborne pollutants.

In addition to good looks and layers of filtration, the Windmill Air Purifier offers a bevy of running modes and smart features, similar to other more advanced machines on the market. Users can choose between three fan speeds, boost and eco modes. They can also use an app to see room air quality, check in on the filter’s lifespan, turn button beeps off or on, and even schedule certain modes to kick on or off, which seems particularly useful for sleeping.

There are two sleep modes on the machine. Whisper lowers noise output to just 16 dB, while white noise ramps things up to a random noise-drowning hum of 47 dBs, which is supposedly research-backed for better sleep. Unlike many other purifiers, which ask you to choose between keeping the device’s LED button lights lit, off, or covered, Windmill’s unit offers an auto fading mode that’ll turn lights off after 3 seconds. You can, of course, adjust the setting to keep them on or totally off.

But is it worth the price?

The Windmill Air Purifer in Navy shown sitting on a concrete floor — The Windmill Air Purifier is more expensive than other well-regarded air purifiers offering similar features and cleaning chops.

The Windmill Air Purifier looks like a well-rounded package with outstanding aesthetic details. But at $399 for the Bamboo version, it’s also very expensive for what it is.

For example, the Blueair Blue Pure 211i Max, which sites like The Wirecutter have named an upgrade pick, offers a similar amount of advanced connectivity as well as better cleaning chops for $100 less. It’s also rated for cleaning rooms up to 635 square feet in size in under 12.3 minutes, compared to the Windmill’s rating of 400 square feet.

That said, the white and navy versions of the Windmill cost less at $299. That’s still a premium, but it’s a bit easier to swallow for anyone really drawn to this machine’s more organic and stylish looks.

The first batch of machines will ship the week of October 28th.