Airthings View Pollution - PM2.5 Air Quality Monitor, PM2.5 Sensor, Humidity & Temp - Smart Indoor Air Pollution Detector for City Pollution & Wildfire Smoke Monitoring - App, Battery Powered & WiFi

The information provided by this monitor has been very useful during this worrisome time in Los Angeles.

It works well for its purpose but I just want to share my experience setting up the device once I got it. I currently live in Guam and they shipped the item to me with no problem. It actually came in earlier than expected. I am pretty tech savvy when it comes to gadgets but I got pretty frustrated setting up the device with the airthings app. Let me explain, I was setting up the app and I chose Guam as my country since I live in Guam. But then it won't let me finish the setup since my region is not supported. I checked on the website and it was stated on there that they only ship to regions that are supported by the product. They shipped it to me so I thought our region is good to go. It won't let you change your region once you started the setup process. I had to delete my account and create a new one. On my second try I went ahead and use United States as my region and it worked. It let me through all the way to connecting to my wifi but when I got to the part where I need to pair the device it won't connect to bluetooth. I did some troubleshooting and went into my bluetooth settings and forget device and setup bluetooth again and that worked. i was able to pair the device then entered the device ID and was able to set it up. When came to set it up as a hub it had a hard time connecting to my wifi network after a few tries and some more troubleshooting it finally connected to my wifi. It took a lot of trouble shooting on my part. So if you're new to this smart home tech stuff you might get frustrated like me. I just want to share this experience and hopefully it will be helpful to someone who will buy this item in the future.

The AirThings 2980 is a great air pollution and indoor air quality detector. If you are looking for something "that just works" and has "remote monitoring" capabilities - this is the product for you. As a nice bonus, it will display the indoor temperature, humidity, and optionally outdoor weather/temperature (with a caveat here - the outdoor information simply does not refresh timely to be reliable - see bellow for information on this.) The primary detection for the 2980 is CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) and VOC (volatile organic compounds) with PM 2.5 (Particulate Matter) -- the 2.5 referring to the microns of tiny droplets, which are about 30 times smaller than human hair. In layman terms, it is air pollution from things like cars/exhausts/flames+fires and other toxins (ie: frying pans emitting gasses, chemicals from paints, seals, etc) that cause health problems with long term exposure. This includes everything from The product works by detecting PM at 2.5 microns, and displaying the value on the screen, along with optionally displaying the indoor temperature, indoor humidity, and outdoor weather+temperature. The device also has a "near field" motion sensor, which triggers as you wave in front of it in order to display a an easy to understand visual "red", "yellow" or "green" color, so that you can easily tell the quality of the air (see screenshot for chart). This summarizes as anything less than 10 uq/m3 (microns) is "green", and between 10-25 is "yellow", and above 25 is "red". In terms of the Hardware itself - it is nearly perfect. It detects and updates the pollution very accurately and in semi-real time. The main point here is that you don't care about any specific "point in time", but in the overall longer term exposure. The e-ink display is very well executed, and is both battery efficient and bright/clear to read. The device also supports both battery operation (on six AAs) or via USB-C -- which also turns it into a "hub" for other Airthings devices. Where the device could use some more work is on the software. There are two aspects to this: The first is the "firmware" essentially. Specifically, the device connects to your wifi to both upload the data to the app and to pull the weather/outdoor temperature. The limitation here is that it is trying to conserve power and thus the outdoor temperature and weather is wildly delayed and thus inaccurate. To the point that after 3 days I decided to turn off the display all together. The second is the "phone app" software. While the reviews do not reflect this, the app (iOS at least) is actually good. While not perfect, and it does lack a few small things, it is far better than most IOT/OT type devices (doors, windows, sensors, etc). The app gives you at a glance your devices, and when you select it, you are given a quick view of PM, indoor humidity, and indoor temperature. The app allows you to customize the "firmware" portion of how things are displayed, but showing 2 values at any given time (ex: PM and Indoor temperature; or PM and Indoor Humidity; or Indoor Temperature and Indoor Humidity). When you "swipe" in the air in front of the device to trigger the proximity sensor, it will always show you the PM value and the red/yellow/green color. The App also provides historical data in charts. From what I saw, the company does seem to offer an API and they do have an official GitHub API integration repository, with examples in Node and Python. Overall, I am very happy with the devices, and I would very much recommend this as a solution for anyone looking to get both accurate readings and a way to get this information "remotely".

I own several air filters that I have placed in various parts of my home, but I don't run them all the time because I'm trying the make the replaceable filters last longer, and I also want to focus on cleaning the rooms where my family spends most of their time or the rooms that have the poorest air quality. Unfortunately this is not easy since only one of my air filters has a digital readout that gives me a good idea of the air quality in that room. The other units I have give me little useful information other than when the filter needs to be changed. So I ordered this air pollution monitor from Airthings to allow me to take accurate measurements in each room of my house, so that I can determine where I need to focus my attention. So far it seems to be quite accurate, and it has really helped me decide where and when I should be using the air filters I have. You can customize the display to tell you which 2 out of 4 possible values you want to monitor. I have mine set to show me the PM 2.5 value and the humidity. If you look in the app you can see all values including the temperature and how the values have changed over time. The monitor can be powered either by 6 AA batteries (included) or with a USB-C cable (also included in the box). Since I move mine around from room to room often, I keep it on battery power. So far I am very happy with this monitor and would recommend it to anyone who cares about breathing cleaner air. It does exactly what I need and is making a difference in my family's overall health.

It's a good product, but the device came fully loaded with batteries and a message to replace them. It's one thing to not include batteries, but basically saying "here, you throw this out" is insulting.

We live in an area where we get smoke from forest fires at certain times of the year. We have good air filtering units, but we’ve never been able to measure the air quality (PM2.5) indoors to see how well the filters are doing or if we need more capacity. With this unit from Airthings, we can do exactly that. I appreciate the ability to see graphing of the measurements over time as well. I haven’t yet tried integration with Alexa, but I understand it’s possible, so that’s pretty cool to. I will say that while the temperature seems to accurately track with the HVAC thermostat that’s mounted adjacent to it, the humidity measurement is often at a 5-10% variance. Without additional means of testing though, I have no way to tell if one or the other is out of whack or if they both just have a slight margin of error around an average point. On days we have the windows open, the PM2.5 tracks the community measured outdoor PM2.5 so I have a good degree of confidence in that sensor (which is good because that’s the reason we got the unit in the first place). The price seems maybe a little on the high side compared to some other options out there, however the benefits to be had from adopting other tech within the Airthings brand ecosystem seem as if they’d make the price make sense for a lot of users in terms of total value. It’s clear the Airthings folks put a lot of thought and good design work into their products and the iOS app has been flawless so far (a pretty big deal these days). I’m pleased with the peace of mind this air monitoring appliance delivers.

I have both this monitor and the slightly higher end - and more expensive - Airthings 2960 View Plus, which has a radon monitor on top of the standard features bundled with the 2980. To be honest I can't say I love either, but of the two this model is the more attractive. The problem with the 2960 View Plus is that it retails at $300, which is simply too much for an air pollution monitor. The reason for the high price is the radon monitor, which would cost in the region or $100 were you to buy one as a standalone, so the more reasonable $199 for the 2980 accurately reflects the difference. It also brings the cost in line with what I'd expect to pay for something like this. This monitor is reliable. I've tested it against my other Airthings monitor and my Huma i-Smart, and either they're all accurate or they're all wrong as they consistently give me identical readings. The 2980 is an attractive monitor, the kind of thing that could sit on a table and pass for an ornament, at least in comparison to most air pollution monitors. I can't say I love the e-ink screen, though. It can be difficult to read at a distance. I'm giving this monitor a solid 4 stars, though, because not only do I think it's reasonably priced but I also think the app is truly excellent. It's well designed, easy to read and updates regularly, and because of this I'd be happy to recommend this device.

I use air purifiers throughout the house, but these purifiers aren’t anything fancy and don’t come with particulate matter detection, instead they operate based on set time and intensity. I decided to get Airthings 2980 so I could truly know how good my indoor air quality is without being forced to rely on guess work. Before getting this air polution monitor, I would begin to feel paranoid about my air quality once I’ve been using an air purifier filter for longer than a month. I got Airthings 2980 so I could stop finding myself in a catch twenty-two scenario where running the air purifiers all the time wore the filter out too fast, and not running it enough meant the air could have particulate matter in it! Airthings 2980 works great. The ePaper display is low power, meaning battery life hasn’t been an issue thus far. I use rechargeable AA batteries. And while not having a built-in battery feels old school nowadays, I prefer it because batteries are the most likely point of failure for an electronic device. The Wi-Fi functionality lets me keep track of my air quality when I’m away, so if I left the air purifiers off and things are in the red, I’ll get a notification and know to use my inhaler ahead of time. Now that I know my actual air quality, the guess work is gone, and I don’t feel the need to run my air purifiers constantly.