2nd Edition Air Quality Monitor

This is one of the best tech devices I’ve ever owned. It’s reminiscent of Apple, being an intersection of both form and function executed with great attention to detail on both sides. No sacrifices, because useful needn’t be ugly, and good looks aren’t useless. It not only blends in with my decor, but has lived up to its mission in making me aware of my air.Before getting Awair, did I know that the humidity in my space was fluctuating both high and low? Sometimes I knew I was uncomfortable when it was muggy, but could never measure it and never did anything about it. Now, I have a dehumidifier to resolve this discomfort, and Awair alerts me to the levels before I may even notice the discomfort to come. It allows me to gauge where the outdoor whether is, and how much my indoor efforts are helping.Before Awair, did I know that CO2 levels sometimes rest in the midrange of being too high in my space? Nope! And that’s just crazy. Me, sitting at my desk, breathing in a deficient amount of oxygen. I’m still working to resolve this one by getting some big plants.Before Awair, did I have a true appreciation of how badly candle smoke and sage burning is affecting my air? Not at all. Blowing out a candle spikes the PM2.5 levels, and don’t even get me started on sage, which I started using after getting the Awair and have developed a bad cough from. Imagine if I had just listened to those red PM2.5 levels after one burning and not let it affect my throat this badly from multiple burnings… Being able to read PM2.5 is very helpful, and sometime a little unsettling. Same with the chemicals, which fortunately rarely rise in my space. My essential oil diffuser raised them, but I use a brand I trust (Eden Garden) and although it’s true they are chemicals, they probably aren’t bad to be breathing. The compounds in essential oils are what we’re looking for, and it’s good that Awair is detecting them.Before Awair, did I know that my space was consistently way too hot? Yes. =) My room is an attic. However, my smart AC often gives me a temp reading several degrees cooler than Awair, which is centrally located and reading the true “feels like” temp of the space. I never trust my AC’s temp and always defer to Awair.That’s my experience of having Awair after just a few weeks. I’ve made consistent improvements in my air quality in ways I’d never considered before, all because this device has truly made it easy to be aware of my air. You could buy some fancy PM2.5 reader and place a thermometer somewhere and check the humidity on the weather, but having all of those things separate doesn’t compare. Awair is your one-stop shop for seeing the invisible that you breathe everyday AND which allows you to do something about it through convenient data.Once they add HomeKit support, which they said on Twitter is coming, Awair will be — by my personal high standards — a perfect form+function accessory to my room and my life. You can bet I’ll have it triggering my AC automatically so that my space always feels perfect. Awair is helping me achieve that.

I have a unique situation to test this out having a Molekule air filter, a particle sensor and a nearby open window. Setup was very easy and connected to my Nest thermostat. The display options vary (e.g., time) but the preferred (in my opinion) is the vertical bars and the air quality value. In the uploaded photo my air quality is 80 (barely giving me the green dot in the upper right corner). The problem is that my room is too cold (far left bar) and far too humid (second to far left). The other bars (left to right) are CO2, chemical and particulates. These all react predictably. If I vacuum and create dust in the air it will read higher particulates. If I keep the windows and door closed during bedtime, the CO2 will rise and we exhale that without any fresh air coming in. The brilliance of the unit is if my CO2 goes high, it will run the AC fan only through the Nest thermostat to circulate air from the rest of the house.CO2 levels make a BIG DEAL in the quality of sleep. Sometimes I will need to open the window to bring down CO2 levels and it always seems to make a big difference.The mobile app (at least on Android) is really well-done with charting over time and notifications when issues arise AND when they are resolved. I've got a $200 hand-held sensor that measures VOC, humidity, temperature and particulates. It aligns very good with this unit.I would not hesitate to recommend this unit for anyone, not just those with respiratory issues. It will help guide you on how to optimize your air quality and home and it is a bit fun to get your air quality into the 90+ values.

Easy stuff first. Setup is simple with the iPhone app. Design looks great. I like that the device automatically adjusts brightness based on ambient light.Sensors. I am making a leap of faith that the readings are accurate or at the very least consistent. I picked this device because its one of the few consumer sensors that both measures the actual co2 and not the calculated co2. After running for a couple weeks it appears that the readings are consistent which matters more to me than the calibration of the sensors but the actual readings appear to be with a range of acceptable accuracy but I have no way to test this myself.App. The iPhone app is ok. Its not great but it gets the job done. My main complaint is the graphed reading views do not auto refresh so I have to go back to another view in the app, then back to the graph for it to refresh.

I bought this mostly because I was concerned about CO2 levels in my home office. I already had a Netatmo unit that was reporting very high CO2 levels and I wanted a second opinion and online reviews of the Awair looked promising. I had a little bit of a problem with getting it setup where it got stuck updating the firmware, and then a few days later it seemed to not be able to connect to wifi. Since then I've had no issues and I find it pleasant to look at, the display is useful and the app is pretty good also. I did do some testing with the Awair API, which is currently in beta. I had to apply to get into the beta and a day or two later I was approved. The API is pretty easy to use and I've had no issues with it.One big difference between the Netatmo unit and the Awair is that the Awair seems to be more accurate and more responsive. When the humidifier turns on in my office, the graph for the Awair picks it up quickly, whereas the Netatmo unit barely budges at all. However, one thing the Awair made me realize is that the Netatmo is actually really bad at measuring CO2 levels because the accuracy of the CO sensor in that unit is effected by changes in the ambient temperature. The Awair CO2 levels seem to track properly despite swings in the temperature and it reports changes much faster also.