I bought IQAir AirVisual Pro (indoor), because California’s AQMD[0] tested it as fairly accurate (and, let’s be honest, because I have been relying on their app).
It cost more than $400, and it lasted less than half a year.
The unit is made of flimsy off-white plastic, has an insanely bright blue-white display that cannot be dimmed enough (not fit for the bedroom, at all), slow menu with useless options, and (in 2024!) that weird micro USB connector. That connector is what broke after four months.
Despite having dozens of evaluations, they do not seem to have tested AirGradient or Airthings or their respective sensors. I wonder if they take requests?
The reason we did not do the AQ-Spec yet is that we are still doing a lot of research into fine tuning the accuracy of the monitor. For this we run a co-location project with more than 25 sites around the world. Here we compare the AirGradient to reference grade instruments to see exactly how they perform and which algorithms can tune them better. You can read more about this on our research page [1].
> It cost more than $400, and it lasted less than half a year.
I have four of IQAir's indoor ones and one of their outdoor ones. I got the first one probably 8 or 9 years ago but the others maybe 3 or 4 years ago. The original one was made before iqair bought airvisual. They all are working fine currently.
Also, for the indoor ones, you can set DND mode (I forget the exact name they use) and it'll turn off the display during the night. Does have one downside I'll cover in a sec though.
That said, until this year I always just used their website to view the data or the app. It worked.. ok. But their graphs were tiny and not very easy to use. So this year I started digging in deeper and set tried to connect things to grafana. The indoor units have a samba share where you can pull down data, but the issue is they only update that data every 5-15 minutes (15 when its in DND mode).
The outdoor unit does NOT have a samba share. You need to use their API for that. Now this is where I'm really unhappy and eventually looking at AirGradient or some other option. In order to get api access to my data on the outdoor unit I either need to pay (a lot, I forget how much) for api access, or I can get free api access if I allow iqair to sell my data to everyone else.
.. not interested in that
So I'm currently only getting data from my indoor units and only getting every ~5-15 min data points.. but they are working. I did invest a lot in these devices so not ready to upgrade to anything different just yet, but every time I see one of these air quality topics pop up here on HN it really makes me want to change.
I am sure the sensor is fine and the weird USB port can be fixed (though it looked like they do not make it easy to disassemble the body). However, the device is just so janky and unpleasant to use I am not sure I want to go through the trouble. I started looking at Airthings, though I was recommended AirGradient as well.
> until this year I always just used their website to view the data or the app
Never used their app to check my own unit. My apartment is small. I am here in this room, the device is right here in this room, would I want to go fetch my phone to know the readings?
> Also, for the indoor ones, you can set DND mode (I forget the exact name they use) and it'll turn off the display during the night
Of course, but it means it should be within reach to turn on and it will blast blue light in my face should I want to check it at night. An e-ink screen would work best, considering low refresh rate is not an issue in this scenario.
> Of course, but it means it should be within reach to turn on and it will blast blue light in my face should I want to check it at night. An e-ink screen would work best, considering low refresh rate is not an issue in this scenario.
You can set a schedule. Mine automatically go into DND mode a little before bedtime and turn off after the sun is up.
Would you have a clock that requires being turned off at night, because it has an unbearably bright screen?
I personally don’t want to fumble through DnD mode whenever I thought to take a glance at carbon dioxide or PM2.5 while it’s dark outside.
There is only one thing I need from it, and that is to show air quality measurements in a non-painful way. Sadly, AirVisual Pro does not do that well for me.
It cost more than $400, and it lasted less than half a year.
The unit is made of flimsy off-white plastic, has an insanely bright blue-white display that cannot be dimmed enough (not fit for the bedroom, at all), slow menu with useless options, and (in 2024!) that weird micro USB connector. That connector is what broke after four months.
Turns out, precision is not everything.
[0] Apparently, California government has a lab that tests various consumer air quality monitors and publishes results (http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/criteria-pollutants).
Despite having dozens of evaluations, they do not seem to have tested AirGradient or Airthings or their respective sensors. I wonder if they take requests?