Awair says that indoor air can be five times more polluted due to everyday factors such as paint, furniture, carpet, air fresheners and toys. It also highlights the fact that air quality affects allergies, asthma, concentration, sleep health and overall health. So it’s well worth knowing how ‘clean’ the air is in your home, office or wherever you spend your time indoors.
Awair 2: Price & availability
The Foobot is a bit more expensive at £199.
Awair 2: Features & design
On first inspection, we were impressed with the build quality of the Awair 2nd Edition. The outer shell is crafted in walnut and perfectly frames the LED display. The box measures five key air quality factors
temperaturehumidityCO2chemicalsfine dust (PM2.5)
It presents results in graph form and as an overall score out of 100 on its LED display. The Awair app (available for iOS and Android) also colour codes the overall score, allowing you to assess the quality of air in your home or workplace at a glance on your phone wherever you are. Green means good, amber is fair and red – well, you know the rest. You can also see specific readings for each measurement on the app, such as temperature in Celcius or Fahrenheit, humidity percentage and the CO2 ppm score. The app also presents information for each factor using trend graphs that may be able to help you isolate why and when a reading changed.
The Awair is preset to measure general air quality but can be customised using the app to set a preference such as productivity, allergy, sleep or baby, each of which enable the Awair to focus on specific readings that influence them and give you the info you actually care about. The app also has a Tips section that provides advice on how to improve the quality of the air it has been measuring such as fitting vents or using kitchen and bathroom extractors to reduce humidity.
In our tests, conducted over a good six weeks, the Awair told us that the air quality was 95 out of 100 with all measurements receiving a good score, other than humidity which was amber (at 51% humidity). The app gives you daily notifications (which you can disable) that update you on any changes such as CO2 or humidity levels rising or falling.
Carbon Monoxide
One obvious thing the Awair does not monitor is CO. It’s a shame about this, given the price, as it means it won’t double as an alarm if there’s ever a build up of this odourless, but deadly gas: you’ll still need to buy a separate CO detector for around £20.
