It's not unlikely. A while ago I had to deal with a laser printer that automatically reported the end of the drum's life after 15000 pages or so, even if there were no signs of stripes on the printed pages. The solution was to stick a 220 ohm resistor on the electric contacts between the drum and the rest of the printer. The printer would sense the resistor (which is present on genuine new drums too) as a signal to reset the page counter. Once the resistor gives a puff of smoke it can be removed, and the old drum can be used until its true end of life.

What does it take to burn a resistor? It sounds terrible to me. Guess it was hot all the time?

Depends on the wattage/power rating of the resistor

It was a through-hole 1/4W resistor. It burnt in about 5 seconds as far as I remember.

And it is for the consumer to decide which path to take. Not the product itself.

Until the consumer complains that the air purifier isn't doing its job and thrashes the company online, and changes for a model from a competitors.

Most consumers aren't really capable of this type of nuance.

This sounds like a completely made up problem, I don’t think this ever happens.

A clogged filter is obviously full of dust and grime, anyone who can use a vacuum cleaner can understand that

> A clogged filter can stress the fan motor which can A) increase power consumption and B)reduce overall product life.

you got it completely backwards, unless you have a very fancy and expensive ECM motor.

Increasing resistance decreases power draw, as the fan needs to do less work. You can test this by hooking up a vaccum cleaner to a killawatt and blocking the intake.

There may be concerns about cooling the motor, but it really doesn't take that much air movement to dissipate heat.