This indoor air quality monitor costs as little as $10 / 40 PLN (Amazon, AliExpress). I compared it against a professional meter that cost 100 times more. Would I recommend it? – NOPE. Is it completely useless? Well, not entirely, but overall, it’s a waste of raw materials. I’d recommend something better (recommendations at the end):
The cheapest air quality monitor that measures temperature, humidity, and—most importantly—CO2 (carbon dioxide). And how’s the measurement quality?
Temperature – pretty decent. Whole degrees only (e.g., 21°C instead of 21.4), but good enough for home use.
Humidity – not ideal, but good enough for home use
CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentration – absolute garbage…
Low-level CO2 measurements are actually passable; it even displays correct values in fresh ambient air. But the moment you hit medium or high CO2 levels, the readings from this thing become completely unacceptable. For example, while the professional sensor shows around 825 ppm, this cheap monitor screams 2000–4000+ ppm! So, this gadget is realistically only useful for detecting two states: pristine fresh air (reading below 600 ppm) or no fresh air with moderate/high CO2—expressed as thousands of ppm.
The meter is very sensitive and reacts lightning-fast to CO2 concentration, but the readings are completely divorced from reality.
Aside from measurement accuracy:
- battery life is pretty solid (around 8 hours).
- acceptable display quality and legibility
- zero extra features like graphs, Wi-Fi, etc. – it only has a switch between °F/°C and calibration (which doesn’t help)
2 air quality monitors I actually recommend:
- The absolute best indoor air quality monitor: IQAir AirVisual
Cheap and pretty decent for home use: Dienmern DM125:
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