Having An air quality monitor for your home is more important than you may think. As climate change speeds up and wildfires increasingly engulf large swaths of land, leaving behind smoke that makes air potentially hazardous to breathe, it’s more important than ever to ensure you’re breathing clean air. An at-home air quality monitor is a simple way to ensure that, whether it be car exhaust, wildfire smoke, pollutants from seasonal changes, or simply fumes from your gas stove, the air around you is safe to breathe.
These air quality monitors test the air quality both indoors and outdoors, and on top of measuring PM2.5 (particulate matter) in the air and AQI (air quality index), they can also give insights into the air you’re breathing, including measuring temperature, humidity, CO2, VOCs, and more.
Our top pick, IQAir’s Air Visual Pro ($330), measures for several factors and has an easy-to-read display, while our more basic budget pick, Temptop S1 PM2.5 Air Quality Monitor & Indoor Thermometer ($28), has been solid throughout prolonged testing.
For more ways to keep your air quality in check for a healthier environment, take a look at our guides to the Best Outdoor Air Quality Monitors, Best Air Purifiers, and Best Multiuse Air Purifiers. Plus, check out how we test them and how to pick the right air purifier for your home.
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Best Indoor Air Quality Monitor
The AirVisual air quality monitor has an easy-read 5-inch LCD display screen and a graphic of a boy’s face along with the AQI color scale that lets me know my indoor air quality from across the room. As the air quality gets poorer, the little boy will stop smiling with a green background and become solemn with a yellow background; finally, if the air is truly dangerous, he’ll put on a gas mask and the color turns dark purple. I like that I don’t have to log on to the internet or open an app to know if I have clean air. Plus, the AirVisual has the added feature of giving both indoor and outdoor air quality data. This saves me the extra step of checking the outdoor air quality on my phone. And it cycles through various displays—it has the time, then it will show both indoor and outdoor readings, along with congratulating me for achieving excellent indoor air quality or it will recommend that I open a window. The AirVisual air quality monitor measures PM2.5 and CO2 and displays the temperature and humidity. It has an easy-to-read dashboard on the app and keeps data for a year, but its biggest strength is its display, especially when I burn a pizza and the boy gets sad and dons a gas mask. —Lisa Wood Shapiro
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