5 Best Air Quality Monitors to Keep an Eye on Harmful Pollutants

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Although we spend about 90% of our time inside, indoor air quality might not be something you've given much thought about until recently. If the global pandemic and widespread smoke from devastating wildfires have you concerned about the air quality of your indoor environment, you should consider investing in an air quality monitor.

An air quality monitor tracks the ventilation quality in a room and gives you measurements of what pollutants are in the air, including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, fine particles, and more.

The Best Air Quality Monitors

One of the biggest advantages that air quality monitors offer is their ability to measure CO2. According to Richard Corsi, an indoor air quality expert at Portland State University, CO2 measurements — which can be calculated with most air quality monitors — can give an indication of how much air you are breathing that comes out of other people's respiratory systems.

Why Air Quality Matters

Indoor air quality is a crucial factor that affects people's health and well-being. According to The New York Times, buildings in the U.S. have become better sealed in the last 50 years, which helps with heating and cooling, but consequently makes it easier for built-up gases and chemicals to get trapped inside. Poor indoor air quality and weak ventilation have been shown to dull cognitive abilities and even cause chest pains, headaches, and irritation to the eyes, nose, and throat.

What You Can Do About It

If you receive a low air quality rating from an air quality monitor, the first step to improving indoor air quality is increasing the ventilation of your indoor space with fresh air let in from the outdoors or by running an air purifier. According to the EPA, increasing ventilation helps remove or dilute indoor airborne pollutants and can help protect you against COVID-19.

Another tip for maintaining good air quality is to keep your house clean to reduce the accumulation of dust, mold, and pet dander lurking in your home. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America says that dust mites and pet dander thrive in furniture, carpets, and your bedding — so, besides vacuuming, you should be washing your sheets once a week, too!

Most home heating and cooling systems don't bring fresh air into your home. So, the EPA recommends that you open windows and doors to increase ventilation to help remove or dilute indoor airborne pollutants and reduce the level of contaminants.

What to Consider

When shopping for an air quality monitor, you'll want to consider exactly what it measures. Here's a quick breakdown of what the best air quality monitors can measure and indicate.

• Carbon Dioxide: Increased rates of CO2 indoors can potentially lead to loss of concentration, headaches, and a general sense of sluggishness. It's also a good indicator of how much air you're breathing in that has been exhaled by other people.

• Temperature and Humidity: It's good to know when an indoor space is too humid, as it can be a breeding ground for mold. High-temperature levels indoors can also increase the concentration of some pollutants.

• Air Pressure: Changes in barometric pressure can cause head, neck, and joint pain. It has also been shown to cause changes in your blood pressure and blood sugar.

• Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOCs): Because there are so many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air produced by everything from cleaning products to your stovetop cooking, there's no way to continuously monitor all of them separately. A TVOC measurement is a figure that represents the total combination of VOCs in the air.

• PM2.5: The term fine particles, or particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), refers to tiny particles or droplets in the air that are 2.5 microns or less in width. According to the New York Department of Health, exposure to fine particles can cause short-term health effects such as eye, nose, throat, and lung irritation and coughing, sneezing, runny nose, and shortness of breath.

• Carbon Monoxide: Breathing air with a high concentration of CO reduces the amount of oxygen that can be transported in the bloodstream to your heart and brain. At dangerously high levels, carbon monoxide can cause dizziness, confusion, unconsciousness, and even death.

When determining the best air quality monitors, we gave bonus points to models that can measure nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone (O3), formaldehyde (HCHO), and radon. Check out our favorite air quality monitors below, so you can keep your air quality at home as clean as possible.

Indoor Air Quality Sensor

The uHoo air quality monitor is a powerful but easy-to-use device that keeps track of nine different parameters. It analyzes temperature, humidity, air pressure, carbon dioxide, TVBOC (total volatile organic compounds), PM2.5, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone.

Alec Wagner, a contributor at TechHive, said the uHoo Smart Air Monitor was one of the best air quality sensors they tested. “The Uhoo does a good job of sending actionable notifications about improving your air quality,” they wrote. “It boasts accurate and sensitive pollutant detection but is saddled with a lofty price tag.”

The device, which is about the size of a coffee thermos, connects to your Wi-Fi network so you can keep tabs on your home’s air quality. With help from a convenient app, the monitor can alert you when readings go outside of the thresholds that you’ve set, and it’ll even give you tips on how to improve your air quality.

It also offers users a virus index feature that uses air quality data to provide you with actionable insight into a virus's likeliness of survival in your environment.

Related: The Best Air Purifier to Keep VOCs Levels From Skyrocketing

Wave Plus (2930) Air Quality Monitor

The Airthings Wave Plus looks like a smoke detector, and it can also be mounted on your wall or ceilings. Unlike our best overall pick, this one is powered by AA batteries, so it doesn’t need to be plugged into an outlet.

What sets the Wave Plus air quality monitor apart from the competition is its ability to sense radon. In case you’re unfamiliar, radon is a radioactive gas that is one of the leading causes of lung cancer.

In addition to radon detection, the device measures temperature, humidity, VOCs, air pressure, and carbon dioxide. The device syncs with your smartphone or tablet so you can keep tabs on readings, learn what each measurement means, and discover steps for improving levels. It has a glowing ring on its face that changes from green to yellow and then red if the quality of your air goes down.

Aranet4 HOME Wireless Indoor Air Quality Monitor

The SAF Aranet4 is a wireless, completely battery-powered indoor air quality monitor that monitors temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, and carbon dioxide levels in real time. The latter can be incredibly useful intel for minimizing your risk of exposure to COVID-19.

The World Health Organization recommends indoor CO2 concentration levels to be between 500 and 700 ppm but never to exceed 1,000 ppm. With this monitor in tow, it will buzz and warn you when CO2 levels are too high.

The monitor is powered by AA batteries that last several years on a single charge. Not only that, it pairs to your smartphone for viewing and analyzing up to two weeks of the recorded data.

M10 Air Quality Monitor

The Temtop M10 is a no-frills air quality monitor that’s easy to use, set up, and won’t take up much space. The device uses a combination of lasers and algorithms to scan the air for VOCs, fine particles, and formaldehyde. We appreciate that it is powered by a rechargeable battery. That way, you won’t have to swap out AAs or keep it near an outlet.

In case the device detects a surplus of harsh chemicals, an alarm will sound so you know to open your windows or turn up the intensity of your air purifier to increase air circulation. Given its single button, the device is easy to operate — and since it’s battery-powered, you can take it on the go, too!

Room Air Quality Monitor

The Eve Room is one of the few Apple HomeKit-enabled air quality monitors out now. Similar to Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant, HomeKit is Apple’s system for managing your smart home gear, but what separates it from the other two is you can control all of your smart home gear from a single app rather than using multiple apps for each smart home gadget.

Not only that, Apple has more stringent security and privacy standards that manufacturers must follow — so it’s more secure and much simpler to use and set up.

The device is capable of monitoring temperature, humidity, and TVOCs. The data it collects can be arranged and broken down by hours, days, weeks, months, and years on your Apple smartphone or tablet.

Additionally, the accessory rates your air on a 5-star scale. By toggling an arrow on its display, you can decide what measurements you want to keep easily visible. The Eve Room is rechargeable and has a battery that lasts around 6 weeks on a single charge.

Element Indoor Air Quality Monitor

The cleverly named Awair gives you a real-time snapshot of the air quality in your home, and it'll help you track data over time with its convenient and free app. We’re big fans of its modern-looking design that’ll almost certainly blend into any room of your home.

Besides looking great, the gadget works hard to track temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, VOCs, and particulate matter in your space. Numerical levels for each of these categories can be displayed on its front LED screen, as well as a score (on a scale of 100) that takes each of those levels into account.

Through a free smartphone app, the Awair can also alert you when your air quality is irregular.

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