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Things are changing in the air quality world, and I mean that in the most literal way possible.

When I first started paying attention to this stuff (back in 2019!) monitoring your air meant spending a good chunk of money on devices that most people had never heard of, made by companies most people had never heard of. While this still remains largely true for the ‘enthusiast’ end of the market, things have shifted over the past year or two, and today I want to discuss the factors pushing this change.

Sensors are getting smaller. Not incrementally smaller, but surprisingly tiny. We’re now at sizes that really open up entirely new categories of devices (more on this soon!). At the same time, the hardware you can buy off the shelf has gotten cheaper, and the brands selling it are no longer niche. IKEA has an air quality monitor now, and Amazon has also had one for a while. Whatever you think of these companies and the devices themselves, air quality monitors are becoming devices you no longer need to hunt for.

The third change is subtler but just as interesting. The people working on how we communicate air quality data are getting more creative. Raw numbers and AQI scores are useful if you already know what to do with them, but new tools are emerging that translate pollution data into something anyone can look at and immediately understand.

Let’s first take a look at the monitors that are bringing air quality monitoring into the mainstream.

Amazon's entry into air quality monitoring isn't something I'd point most people towards first. The app is limited, data export doesn't exist, and the CO sensor it includes in place of a CO2 sensor is of questionable usefulness. At $70 full price (and occasionally around $50 on sale), there are more capable monitors at the same price point. You can read my full review here if you want the details.

What I will say, however, is that Amazon selling an air quality monitor at all matters. Most people aren't going to stumble across an AirGradient or an Aranet by browsing their local ecommerce sites. They might, though, add an Amazon monitor to their cart if it pops up as a recommended product when they’re making another purchase. For anyone already deep in the Alexa ecosystem, this monitor does slot in quite well, and if it prompts someone to start paying attention to what's in their air for the first time, that's a net positive regardless of whether it's the monitor I'd personally choose.

If you were around for Issue 01, you'll know I'd been trying to get hold of an IKEA Alpstuga for a while. Stock availability made that harder than it should've been, but I've now managed to get three units in hand and testing is underway. A full review will follow, and I'll be sure to send out an email once it’s ready. At this point, I would guess the review will go live sometime in early June.

The Alpstuga is IKEA's second generation of air quality monitor, which tells us something in itself. The first generation (the Vindstyrka. Not the Vindriktning which was pretty bad) was a reasonable effort for the price, and this one raises the bar by adding CO2 and Matter support alongside PM2.5, temperature, and humidity. At an even lower price point of $30, or your local equivalent, it's genuinely hard to argue with the price. IKEA isn't a brand that makes air quality monitoring its focus, but that's the point. When a company this large puts a $30 CO2 and PM2.5 monitor on its shelves next to the lamps and bookshelves, it lands in front of people who weren't looking for it. Hopefully some of those people come away with newfound curiosity about air quality.

Early impressions on the PM side are positive, though I've noticed some CO2 variability across the three units that I want to look into properly before drawing any conclusions. More on all of that in the full review - coming soon!

One of the major forces behind air quality monitoring becoming more accessible is miniaturisation. As sensors shrink, manufacturers can design devices that are unobtrusive, which, in my experience, matters much more than it might sound. A monitor you're willing to carry every day is infinitely more useful than one that stays on your desk because it's too bulky to bother with.

The natural endpoint of this trend, at least in theory, is air quality sensors built into smartphones. However, I'm sceptical that ever will ever happen, honestly. Smartphone manufacturers have shown little appetite for it, and there are too many other constraints to be considered. But none of that diminishes what miniaturisation is already doing for the portable monitor space, where the gap between "something you'd actually carry" and "something accurate enough to trust" is very rapidly closing. Just look at devices like the Atmotube Pro and Airspot CO2 monitor!

This one is a few months old now, but I've had a handful of questions about the ultra-small Bosch BMV080 lately so I wanted to revisit the article. If you don’t already know, Bosch released one of the more interesting PM sensors to come along in a while. It's tiny (roughly the size of a fingernail) and works in a fundamentally different way from the Plantower and Sensirion sensors you'd find in most consumer monitors. Instead of measuring particles inside an enclosed chamber, it fires a laser outward and measures what's reflected back from the air up to 35cm in front of it. Using AirGradient’s reference monitor, I was able to test the sensor in a range of scenarios.

The accuracy results were very good for a sensor at this price point, and the size opens up some exciting possibilities for compact devices that traditional sensors simply couldn't fit into. I do want to temper expectations a little on the portable side, though. The 45 to 60 second warm-up spike is a big limitation for anything that cycles on and off, and it showed some sensitivity to hard vibrations in testing, which isn't ideal if it's bouncing around in a bag all day. On the accuracy front, it tracked the Palas Fidas closely at lower concentrations with an R² above 0.97, though it underreported consistently and struggled more noticeably above around 120 µg/m³. The full write-up has all the details.

If you've ever tried explaining decades of air pollution data to someone who doesn't follow this stuff, you'll know how quickly eyes glaze over. Air Quality Stripes, a project from three universities and the UK Met Office, takes a different approach, using the same visual language as the famous climate warming stripes to map how PM2.5 concentrations have changed in cities around the world. Every national capital has its own stripe image, with light blue indicating air that meets WHO guidelines and darker shades showing progressively worse pollution. It's an easy way to see at a glance whether your city's air has improved or worsened over the decades, and the contrasts between regions are striking. You can find your city on the website.

That's a Wrap for Issue 02

Air quality monitoring is quietly becoming something more people can access, whether that's through a $30 IKEA device, a sensor small enough to fit inside almost anything, or a visualisation tool that makes 170 years of pollution data readable in seconds. It's a good direction, and I'm glad to be covering it as it happens.

Before I go, I have one more thing to share. I'm giving away an Aranet4 Home, which is one of the best CO2 monitors you can buy and one I use as a baseline device in my own testing. If you'd like to enter, you can do so here.

Thank you for reading this far. For a one-person publication, your attention means more than I can overstate. If you found this issue useful, forwarding it to someone who'd appreciate it is the best thing you can do. I truly appreciate it.

See you in a couple of weeks.

Ethan