Amazon's Smart Air Quality Monitor ($69, Amazon) tells you about your indoor air quality with a simple score on a 100-point scale. This compact white cube sucks in air to break down humidity, harmful particles and the temperature of your environment in a visual report. It also notifies you about air quality changes and can talk to your existing Alexa smart home devices.
That means you can use it to trigger smart home routines. For example, it can automatically turn on your air purifier when the air quality score falls below 80% or dehumidifier when your room is a bit too damp. As someone who has considered a smart air quality monitor for quite some time, I put this gadget through its paces over the past week. Read on to see if Amazon's Smart Air Quality Monitor is accurate enough for its $70 price tag.
Air quality impacts your health
I’ve been through a number of rentals that have lacked HVAC systems that can tell you about your air. It wasn’t until I moved into my first studio apartment that I realized how much your air quality makes a difference in all aspects of your life. With everything from sleep to work, it's hard to focus when you’re room smells like the chicken cutlets you just fried or paint from a remodel.
Amazon’s air quality monitoring system is an affordable and easy way to enhance your home. It can tell you when your air is bad to take steps like opening a window (or closing it if you live in a city). I've been staying in an older apartment that stored heavy-duty sanding machines and wood stains. Although I've cleaned it many times, I use this gadget to monitor the air quality at a glance. My place typically scores in the low 80s. This gadget automatically kicks on my air purifier when the air quality dips too low.
Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor setup
Amazon's Smart Air Quality Monitor arrives in a compact rectangular box comparable to the size of a smart plug. Inside you’ll find the all-white white air monitor, a wall plug and a Micro-USB power cable.
I simply asked my Echo Show 15 'Alexa, how's my Indoor air quality?' and was shown levels for temperature, humidity, particulate matter (PM), Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and Carbon monoxide
The device enters pairing mode once you plug it into the wall. Setup is quick and painless—all I had to do to get started was open the Alexa app, hit the add device button and scan a QR code on the included manual. This immediately connected the air quality monitor to my saved Wi-Fi network and assigned it to my Living Room group of smart home devices.
The monitor takes 7 minutes to calibrate to the room you place it in and takes readings through its silver mesh air intake vent located on the front. Once the monitor is ready you can quickly assess air quality with a glanceable LED light at the top of the monitor that’s either green (good), yellow (moderate), or red (poor). Alexa packs the more detailed stats into visual report complete with graphs.
This can be accessed from the Alexa app on your phone or pulled up on your Echo smart displays or Fire TV. I simply asked my Echo Show 15 "Alexa, how's my Indoor air quality?" and was shown levels for temperature, humidity, particulate matter (PM), Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and Carbon monoxide, which you can see in the picture above.
Amazon Alexa smart home integrations
In addition to real-time data, Amazon's Smart Air Quality Monitor lets you see air quality trends over time. Insights are shown by an hourly, daily and weekly basis. Throughout my testing, the monitor snappily sent notifications to my phone when my room's air quality dropped. These instantly told me if a guest was vaping or when my dog used her wee wee pad. It took just two seconds from spraying a cologne bottle towards the monitor to receive a popup on my phone and Echo devices.
Beyond having all of this information handy, the monitor uses it to improve your smart home's air quality in real time. When the humidity climbs too high my smart home turns on my dehumidifier's smart plug to make the room more comfortable. If the temperature in a specific room is too cold I can tell my smart thermostat to kick up my baseboard heating. And when hazardous particles or dust appear my fans and air purifiers kick on automatically. This is a seamless way to optimize your air and keep everyone in your home feeling healthy.
The wide range of readings this monitor looks for are especially helpful to have when you’re cooking or spring cleaning with your Echo. The only thing that could make this air quality monitor better would be if it were wireless. I doubt a battery-powered version would be possible with how frequently it checks the air. As it stands it's still easy enough to move between rooms. You just have to wait for the 7-minute calibration process. Overall, this is a versatile device to keep in your main living spaces like a living room, bedroom or basement.
