Awair: Know What's in the Air You Breathe - Air Quality Monitor

Brief background: I am a physician living in a very polluted city, study the effects of industrial and traffic related air pollution since 1995, test different air purifiers, filters and air quality monitors, have PURCHASED most of my equipment from Amazon and publish some webpages about air pollution. I am very sensitive to air pollution and usually detect spikes several minutes before good sensors detect them. Updated on 2016/07/03. I rated it as an Air Quality Monitor, not as an Environment Monitor, but it could work for both. I have two Awairs and will be updating this review because I think they are updating the software. This is an excellent device with excellent customers support, reflects quality but has a very important flaw with the humidity sensor and a shortcome with VOCs measurement. It does not work as an Environment Monitor yet (it should) because the humidity data is not consistent with AQI and another humidity sensor, taking into account that AQI is outdoors and Awair is indoors . But it is an excellent air quality monitor with two limitations. Let's see why: Humidity: it was +17% below actual humidity. Now it is +/- 11% below actual. I compare it with another humidity sensor and with my local AQI reports several times a day. Temperature: It had problems during the first week but it seems ok now. I verify it every day with two digital thermometers and an analogic one used to develop slides film and it seems awair is almost accurate but it does not show decimals. CO2 measurement with a real sensor for CO2. Very useful. It tells you when to open doors and windows to let fresh air in. It works great. VOCs metering: It does not use units but a VOCs index. I have two excellent VOCs sensors to compare with: My nose and symptoms, and the one that comes with my Winix 9500. Whenever my nose tells me there is important VOCs pollution, my Winix 9500 shows it with yellow and red bars. Definitely, awair is very sensitive. Just consider index 2 as polluted. Keep in mind that index 2 when dealing with benzene, formaldehide, etc., is harmful, but when dealing with your girlfriend's perfum is safe ... supposedly ;) PM2.5/PM10. It shows them as micrograms per cubic meter but does not differentiate PM2.5 from PM10 so, it really measures PM10 which means particles equal or smaller than PM10. I compare it with my Dylos Pro EMI and think Awair is reliable enough to get an idea of PM pollution. Score: unreliable yet. It takes into account humidity that comes with up to 17.3% error, CO2 that works well, VOCs with no units and PM that works well but you cannot compute a VOCs relative index with quantity values. Besides, temperature and humidity have nothing to do directly with air quality and both are relative: 65% humidity might be too dry for someone living in the jungle and 60 Fahrenheit might be too hot for someone living in Yellowknife, Alaska. Hopefully they can fix that all with software updates. Wifi: No problem at all but I use good routers. It just allows 2.4 GHz band but that is ok. The devices disconnect from the server, as far as I have seen because of the server - maybe updates, maintenance, etc. and they start working again with no problems, unless you try to fix it :) Anyway that is normal and they are live more time than AQI. If you change your wifi network, you must reset awair twice and must use bluetooth to find your awair again. It uses an app for tablets and cellphones, so you can monitor any site as long as you have wifi connection. That is very useful. OS: IOS and Android. I use both with no problems but prefer IOS. Bluetooth: No problems. For those of you how find trouble pairing it with bluetooth remember: the hole is on the left. 69 and 96 are not the same when talking about math ;) As AQI reports do not include VOCs, awair will help you TONS because they can represent important risks for your health and contrary to PM, they are very difficult to control; closing windows is not enough and most air purifiers are almost useless for VOCs. That you'll learn with awair. The articles and tips you get from your subscription to awair are very interesting. Unfortunately the tips might not always be accurate because the score might not be accurate enough all the time. Anyway, if you take that into account, you can use them for your needs As a whole, the awair is the best home air quality monitor, much more useful than air purifiers sensors, even more sensitive than the Winix 9500's VOCs sensor. But the Winix display is like a red light. You will not miss a warning. In time, updates will be included as part of the initial review Update: 2016/07/03 The more I use it, the more I like it. It is like a new car: understeers or oversteers, too much gas, etc. OK, let's see: General reaction: there is a lag, sometimes 1 or 2 minutes sensors: Dust (PM10) overreacts compared with my Dylos Pro VOCs: excellent sensitivity CO2: excellent sensitivity Humidity: displays wrong values half of the time Temperature: not very accurate. Just enough to get by Score: It works but takes into account temperature and humidity and it is not very accurate Red/green dot on the right. Yellow dot desirable! Please! Software: I insist it should have a function to remove humidity and temperature for the score calculations Great statistics, graphs, reports. I have used them to detect industrial pollution, post them to twitter and got newspapers interest. You can directly share your statistics by email, tweeter, facebook, etc. UPDATE: 2016-08-25 customers support: I had a problem with a sensor and Kevin sent me a new awair overseas and a form to return the defective one. They are always willing to help. The knocking function for the clock is very functional if you have your awair close to you. The clock is accurate. The display with LEDs is simple, easy to read, learn and understand and very useful because you immediately "get to know your air". No need to use the App unless you want numbers, statistics, tips, change settings, etc. You can simultaneously use the app to check one or more Awairs even from different devices. You can connect as many devices as you want in any place, room, city, country, continent, as long as you have WiFi. This is a great advantage to keep an eye on air quality for your kids' rooms, shops, theaters, etc., You can also create a small air quality network for your home, business, city, country, etc Awair is not a scientific instrument, but certainly is very useful, reliable and easy to use. Statistics: Very useful and they are improving the software with nice and useful functions. Awair Card: Their tips to improve air quality are superb. They are scientific, interesting and well supported. Battery usage: relatively low: 2% - 6% at the most CO2, VOCs and PM sensors are relatively very accurate. CO2 is consistent with environment. So are VOCs and PM. I wanted numbers for VOCs but they are no really needed because VOCs toxicity depends mostly of the VOCs: low concentrations can be harmful. PM: I compare it with my Dylos Pro EMI and can tell awair is reliable. The humidity sensors definitely are not reliable enough. Temperature is not very accurate either but it is enough to get by. AQI considers humidity and temperature but they are unnecessary for air quality. It does not really matter if you want to monitor air quality and for this purpose Awair is excellent. AQI does not include VOCs. Awair does, which is a lot better. The red/green LED is functional but I still miss a yellow intermediate LED I am also using another very interesting and portable device that you might consider, too: Air Mentor that looks beautiful, girls love it but it is completely different from awair's. You cannot just go for one or the other, because you might get disappointed. It would be like comparing a Ford SUV with a Mini. Both are cool, but do not have the same functionalities. I am very, very happy with my 2 awairs and hopefully can have more units later. Awair slogan “Get to know your air”is completely valid. It works! Update: 2016/10/02 Awair now displays ppb for VOCs which is very useful to verify your air purifiers for VOCs. Bad news for air purifiers manufacturers because contrary to PM cleaning, they do not really help much with VOCs. (I have not been able to test Aerocide yet, so I cannot tell if it does do the work). Awair is not a portable device but it is relatively easy to locate it over the air purifiers clean air outlets and check results. As you might have read, I am also using Air Mentor that is portable, am comparing both and prefer Awair. With Awair you can easily get an idea of what is wrong with your air. With Air Mentor you always must use the app because the colors just tell something is wrong but do not provide any idea of what is wrong. If you need a portable monitor go for Air Mentor. If you need functionality, go for awair. I recommend you have both, several awairs if you can afford them and one Air Mentor for portability. If you cannot afford both, go for Awair; otherwise you might end up blaming Air Mentor that is also a good device. The other not-professional air monitors that I have seen are not any competence.

I gave this another try, and I'm pleased to say the changes they have made, have made this a viable product now. In 2 weeks or so, I've only lost connection to WIFI once. And while that is once too many, I'm sure they'll continue to make changes to improve the quality of this unit. The app has also been changed to address concerns of tracking info for more than a day. That helps alot. Everything I was concerned about before, has been addressed. The unit has been active with the environment, and not waiting to report the changes in the conditions. And it seems to be in rhythm with other units. I'll give it 5 stars if the WIFI doesn't drop out at all, and if they figure out how to work in notifications when there is a problem, vs. having to go and look through the history. But I will say, the improvements made have been good and things are looking up for them. I realized they only recently launched, so they needed time to get things worked out. In the next couple of months, I'll provide another update, and let you know. But for now, it is worth a look. My concerns were implemented, and I think these are the things that others have mentioned as well. Monitoring the air around you should be a concern for all of us, I know at work they found one of the black molds and unfortunately the landlord is slow to want to clean up the problem. At least now, I know what I was having problems with, is really true and not just my imagination. When I felt like I was having problems with breathing, like I was missing oxygen, it turns out the CO2 levels are higher than they should be. And when I've started sneezing, I can see the particulate count is up. ***************************************************************************************************************************************************** I bought this to monitor the air quality at my office. The idea behind this is that I'd leave it on and running, and connected to WIFI. First night, after I left, I was unable to monitor it because it disconnected from WIFI. So, I was out for 3 days and when I returned, I had to connect manually to the unit after I unplugged it and plugged it back in, at which time it reconnected to WIFI. While it was "offline" from the network, it does not buffer the info, so the past 24 hours of data was gone. And as other reviewers have said, the app only gives you 24 hours of data then a new day erases the previous day....it is 2016, and apps can store countless months of data without even asking....why would you release a unit that monitors the air quality, with only 24 hours worth of logging? I know, because it won't stay connected to WIFI for more than 8 hours (at the most). Other things I noticed is that the readings were mostly flat, other than carbon dioxide, which actually seemed to be higher than the other units I've tested. I've noticed also that temp and humidity were not close to multiple other units that are similar in their readings. So, do I trust the 4 other units that are giving similar readings, or this one, that is way off on humidity and temp? What else is wrong? The look is cool and the hand crafted wood is a really nice touch; this reminds me of a vintage radio or speaker. Very cool. But the love affair stops there, nothing else is worthy of spending money on this. May not be what you want to hear, but I'm being honest. The app needs serious work, and features, and the unit needs some real work to (1) stay connected to the network it is attached to and (2) to provide readings consistent with other devices (all diff. manuf.) that are telling me the same thing, while this is telling me something else. You can decide if the masses are correct, or this is correct.

Update 5/24/18- device now goes offline daily rather than every few days. Since it’s gotten warmer out now and we usually open the windows during the day, It’s really only needed for night time air so now I just make it a habit to unplug it and plug it back in before bed and hope that it stays up and running all night. I’ve attached screenshots of what a normal days readings look like, the blank spots or when the device looses connection. —- We live in an older house fairly close to a highway, so I was looking forward to learning more about the air quality issues inside the house and using this information to address it with the whole house filter through IFTTT. There are a few significant issues: 1st - As others state, it won't stay connected to your wifi. I used to work in IT and set up wifi systems professionally. My system is pretty high-end and I have no issues with other devices. The Awair is about 30 feet from the closest wifi access point with no barriers. It still drops connection every day or two. This would be more of an annoyance than an issue, except the device does not store any data whiledisconnected, and it doesn’t reconnnect itself. You lose connection, you lose your data. It stays offline till you notice it, unplug it and plug it back in again. I've spoken with support on this and they said that the device cannot connect to 5GHz, and it is not capable of differentiating between 2.4 and 5GHz, so it keeps trying to connect to the 5GHz even though it can't use it. So to resolve this issue they gave me 2 options: turn off my 5GHz, or rename it to something different than the 2.4. This is absolutely not the correct way to set up wifi and can cause issues with other devices. Why would I impair my whole network just to keep their substandard design online? 2nd - I question the accuracy of the readings. -The dust reading is pegged at max constantly, even when I shut the thing in the closet with a HEPA filter running. I borrowed a commercial level particulate detector from a friend and measured at different times during a few days and they did not correlate. -The Chemicals one seems questionable as well though I don't have means to validate that one. -The temperature was pretty accurate, though I don't believe it should impact the AWAIR score at all, or only unless it's far out of comfort range, and even then it should be lightly weighted compared to the other air quality ratings. - The humidity seems accurate - The CO2 I can only tell by the fact that it does seem to respond to adding fresh air to the house but can't speak for accuracy otherwise. The other aspects of the device are good. Nice design that fits in well with various decor (I have the wood one, and it looks like a quality piece, not cheap). Easy to read, intuitive, and clean interface on the app and the device itself. The tap to show time is nice, as is the auto-dim for night use. I can't compare it to the other options on the market, however until they resolve the wifi connectivity issue that many are having I would not recommend this one.

Had this item for a little over a month now. It performs what it's supposed to do well enough that I didn't return it, but also has enough flaws that I won't suggest it to others. Pros: - Responds to changes in CO2, VOC and dusts well. - Clean design that fits in well with various rooms. Cons: - Temperature and moisture measurement are way off. I've never seen the temperature on mine leave the 62 to 68 degrees range regardless of what the actual temperature is. Moisture I have no good comparison with, but it had been displaying a 3 dot measurement on days when I woke up with a dry mouth. - Only records data for a day. Not even 24 hours--the previous data gets wiped on 12am without a way to export it. Why is the company so against implementing a history or export feature despite it being requested since essentially day 1? I may start doing it manually to find some clues. - Loose power cable connection. Way to easy to knock it out of power. If you are not paranoid about your indoor air quality as I was back then I ordered this, it's probably best to wait for something more reliable. Edit 11/21/16: Received a follow-up from Bitfinder. I was mistaken on the moisture display--the dots could mean either too dry or too moist. Not a design choice I agree with, but it's actually working. Also promised an app update soon, looking forward to that. Edit 12/06/16: App updated to show 7 days of data, much better. They also sent an replacement power cord which seems to be doing well. I may update again in the future if I get my hands on another temperature measuring device for a verdict on my last pain point. *Edit 06/26/16: The dust sensor no longer shows anything below a 78 anymore regardless of the environment. I guess dust got trapped inside near the sensors? Not sure how I'm supposed to trust the other readings either now. It's only been 9 months... I'll have to drop my rating.

UPDATED: It was found that my issue with dust was the water I was using for my cool mist humidifier was what was causing the dust. Once I started using RO water in my humidifiers, the dust levels settled. I worked with their customer support on this issue and they have been absolutely fantastic! I love my three units and look at them all the time. They have an easy to read display, you can get an idea of your air quality with just a glance. I also have BlueAir aware units that run my air filters and their numbers are comparable. The Awair units are much more user friendly and look great. My only wish is that the user could customize the optimum temperature and humidity levels. It's not efficient (or comfortable) to have my heat at 72 degrees up here in the mountains. So my overall score is always low as I keep my heat at 67 degrees during the day and 65 at night. This is a really great tool, but has a major flaw. I bought three units, one for each level of my house. Overall they all reported good, with the exception of my humidity is low. No problem, I turn on my humidifiers. Unfortunately, the units report humidity as dust. So as my humidity achieved a good level on the Awair, it also now shows my dust level at the highest bad level. So, now that my house good humidity, I have no accurate reading of dust. If they can fix this with a software update, I will gladly raise this to a 5 star rating.

UPDATED REVIEW: 1 Year Later (01/15/18) Having lived with Awair for over a year now, I am docking an additional star for the same original gripe about the vague response to certain notifications. We originally bought Awair to (hyper) manage our daughter's nursery (first-time parents--we're suckers for IOT and smart home tech). While the data provided, day-after-day, is interesting and has led us to a few fine tuning tweaks to help our daughter sleep through the night (namely maintaining a particular temperature and humidity level); on the whole we've learned to ignore the notifications about minor CO2 or dust spikes, as they 100% of the time resolve themselves within a few minutes without taking ANY action at all (for example: during a morning diaper change, the Awair almost always alerts to a spike in VOC's due to us using a hand sanitizer nearby....within a few minutes the reading comes back normal and the notification says, good job its back to normal). Outside of this long term gripe, there are also 2 usability issues that drive me absolutely nuts: 1) The "Knocking" function has FOREVER been in "beta" mode, and probably for good reason because it works about 12% of the time. You're supposed to be able to lightly "knock" on the top of the Awair and it will toggle from Clock to your score...but it rarely ever works when I try it. In fact, usually the knocking just fakes my dogs out into thinking someone is at the front door, and they go running and barking...annoying. 2) The auto LED brightness setting is a total hit and miss. In a pitch black room, without any ambient lighting or reflections to influence it, sometimes the Awair will randomly go FULL brightness, and the annoyingly bright LED's light up the whole room (usually when I am trying rock our daughter to sleep at night). The only other option available for the display is "Sleep" which effectively turns the display off. And the only way to get it to come back? See point 1 above...the Knocking function, LOL. All in all, the Awair, by design aesthetic, is still a very sleek looking device packed with some trivial monitoring functionality, but if I could go back in time, I would've likely opted out of buying it. ---------------- Original Review -------------------------- Initial Review (4/5): Excellent product design and very easy setup. This is a very clean design and functions exactly as it says...what I am shorting it a star rating for is the lack of actionable "next steps" for what your air results are. We bought this primarily to monitor the air quality of our baby's nursery. Upon building some new furniture in the room, we experienced a spike in the VOC levels that have been maintaining. The suggestion tabs that come up in the Awair app are vague and/or worthless for how to combat this. Would be great to have both in-app companion product suggestions that will work with Awair (such as an air purifier suggestion and showing HOW it works with Awair) or other DIY suggestions that are actual DIY process write-ups.

As a check on something you can't see or monitor without investing thousands of dollars in industrial-grade monitoring, this unit is perfect. Setup to WiFi was easy, no software problems yet. Outdoor air VOCs are usually 175 ppb but indoor air is a problem, going over 600 ppb unless we open the windows. It's really sensitive to isopropanol, acetone and I think ethylene gas from fruit. If the seal to your attached garage is not perfect, gas and paint and other hydrocarbon fumes can be sucked into the home's envelope through the door seal raising the reading. It's really helping us narrow down the VOC source, just haven't quite found all of the sources. May have to live with some of it because "organic" cleaning products I've found really don't work, some even smell hideous themselves. The CO2 sensor is accurate and the graphing feature demonstrates how higher occupancy and/or overnight levels rise until you open up in the morning. Most of all the Particulate Matter or Dust sensor is very sensitive allowing us to see what cleaning and a/c filtration schedules are the most productive. Upstairs runs 0.3 micrograms/cubic meter, downstairs 0.6 on average. Walk across the carpet and watch it spike as dust is released into the air. It works. Temperature and especially humidity tracking are important in dust mite and mold control as lower humidity (below 50%) inhibits mites and mold growth. Units like this should be incorporated into HVAC systems, it really is essential data.

I am now on my second one of these. When they work they are great but have a life expectancy of about two months ( from my experience). That averages to about $100 per month. Needless to say I will not be buying a third one. Update2/17/17: On the date I wrote this review I was contacted by Awair customer service. We have been going back and forth on how to fix the issue. Finally they said they would send me a new one...still waiting for that. One point of interest, until recently Awair would not display data if there was no internet connection or the connection to the server was lost. Awair last week sent out an update that allows the Awair to work without an Internet connection. I now have a display on my Awair but no data uploaded and the app will not connect to the Awair. I will update again when I get the new Awair to see if that fixes the problem. Update: 2/19/17 finally received the " new" Awair. Initially I had exactly the same problem, however after three times of failing the setup. I turned off the firewall and all security and then the Awair was able to finish the setup. It should be noted that browsers and all internet functions worked properly when the firewall was up and security turned on. Why the Awair would require me to drop all security and expose it directly to the internet to setup is unusual and needs to be addressed by Awair. For reference I am using a new CenturyLink Technicolor C2100T. Thanks to Awair for sending me another unit and working with me on this issue. I would give it a higher rating but ultimately it was my trial and error method that solved the problem not Awair Customer Service. Update: 2/21/17 After receiving the new one, which still did not work. I completely dropped my firewall and the Awair started to work properly. I turned on the firewall and started closing ports until it stopped working...definitely a port issue. I had asked about ports before but customer service said if I had internet then it should work. Well, no so much. Turns out ports 8883 and 443 need to be opened. I upper the rating from two stars to five stars, 1) because they are a startup and will have some initial problems 2) it is a very cool product when working! Update 6-20-17 Once again Awair is offlline. The only way to get numerical readings if the device is connected to the main server which is seldom at best. The Amazon Echo can interface and give verbal readings but again requires connection to their server. Without the connection all you have are 5 bars of 5 leds to give a very course indication of measurements. I have given up making this thing work. I am a retired IT professional and if I can't get it to connect well I hope you have better luck. Update: 11/11/17. Well it has been about a year now and I still can not maintain a connection to the Awair server. I have had numerous service calls and no one can give me settings that can maintain a connection to the Awair Server. One technician was honest enough to tell me there was a known issue with some newer routers. Without a connection to the Awair Server all you get are five bar graphs consisting of 5 or 6 LEDs and an Awair Score. With a connection to the server you get a chart that shows trends over time for each measurement and you can get a instant value through the Amazon Echo , Amazon dot and the Amazon Show. I can use none of these devices without a connection to the server, so I have none of these features even thought I own 9 of the Amazon devices. I gave one star for customer service only...the device is a zero. Update 1/8/18: A few days ago I received an e-mail from the head of Customer Service that apologized for my experience with version one of the Awair. He then asked if I would be willing to try their Glow product. A couple of days later I received the Glow. Setup was amazingly easy and it worked out of the box. I set it up exactly as I did with verison one of the Awair, that I fought to make work. While I still can not recommend the Original Awair, the Glow works great and customer service is great

The package arrived quickly. Awair is a beautifully made product. It took me very little time to set it up and started using it. I check the app often for interesting data recorded by Awair. I originally bought it to track CO2 mainly, but now I realized that chemical in my air is the bigger problem. The readings are quite accurate and sensitive. I have not yet figured out the cause of some random spikes in CO2 or chemical concentrations.

Pros. - Principalmente la información que puede obtener es bastante útil y si me ha ayudado a buscar mejoras en el aire dentro de mi casa e incluso en obtener correlaciones en momentos del día en que algunos índice aumentan o disminuyen. Voy en camino a comprar algunas plantas para mejorar la humedad que es el punto que me indica mejorar. - Set-up sencillo, no tuve ningún problema en hacerlo y toma muy pocos minutos. - Diseño estético que combina muy bien con cualquier decoración de hogar. Incluso puede ser hasta parte decorativa del entorno. - Los materiales son buenos. Cons: - No he experimentado alguna desventaja hasta el momento.

Looks great, so can have it in the living room clearly displayed without upsetting the decor. Seems to work very well; is incredibly responsive to changes in the air quality and has made me more aware of things I do (like cooking) to seriously impact the quality of the air I breathe. The app is great, so long as you disable notifications. Occasionally it has brief errant readings, but I suspect this would be a problem for most sensors

寝室の環境管理目的で購入しました。約2万円と高額ですが、これ一台で温度・湿度・二酸化炭素・化学物質・ホコリが分かる優れもので、デザインも類似製品と比べ、格段にスタイリッシュです。 睡眠の質には温度・二酸化炭素が影響するそうで、この２つを1台で測れるものは、コレしか無かったです。 性能は特に問題なく、人が居ると二酸化炭素濃度は上がりますし、料理の匂いが広がってくると化学物質の濃度が上がったりします。きちんと反応していると思います。 本体表示は4パターン有ります。①表示なし、②時刻、③各レベル＋空気質スコア、④温度と湿度の切り替わり。LEDが明るくクッキリ光り、インテリアとしてもアリです。 購入後に「お〜」と思った良い点が2つありまして、①部屋が暗い時は自動で非表示になる設定が出来ること（寝る時に邪魔にならないよう、素晴らしい配慮）、②iPhoneならリアルタイムの状態をウィジェットに表示出来ることです（知りたい時にすぐ分かります）。 細かいところも、しっかり考えられてます。 Awairを買うことで、本当に加湿器や空気清浄機が必要なのか等、判断する目安にもなりました。これは買って良かった！ 各部屋に置きたくなりますね〜

Do not spend money on Awair products. Solely for their convenience, they sunset products early and stop supporting them, no longer updating firmware and removing them from their Awair App, rendering them less than useful.