Temtop Air Quality Monitor Professional PM2.5 PM10 Particle Counter, Formaldehyde, Temperature, Humidity, AQI Tester for Indoor/Outdoor Air Pollution Detection w/Data Export

The AQI meter seems pretty accurate in measuring air pollution. I put it outside when I want to measure the air pollution and in a couple of minutes I get a good measurement. It's pretty close to what I get from my local airnow readings. The airnow readings are much more precise and accurate because they use a very expensive machine but the airnow readings are an average of the last hour or so and my meter measures the moment I am looking at it. Plus the airnow machine is 6 miles away and may not be accurate to my local area as it is in the area it is measuring. It is supposed to be 91 percent accurate as opposed to the purpleair meter which is a little higher in accuaracy. All the purpleair readings I see on their website comes up much higher than airnow and my meter because there are two settings on the purple air and the default setting is much higher. As a result, it is hard to compare the TemTop meter with the purpleair meter. Overall, I like the TemTop meter as it measures air quality well.

The media could not be loaded. Professional quality. This is super easy to use and useful for making sure you are breathing healthy air. Comes ready to go and with a usb charging cable. When it's charged you just press and hold the center button until the startup screen appears. Place the device on a stable surface or hold steady. Select AQI (air quality index) to see the standard AQI that is used in weather reports and smog alerts. Press PM 2.5 to see 2.5 and 10 micron particles per cubic meter and total particles per liter. Press HCHO to see formaldehyde (chemical from particle wood, glues, etc). I used this in my bedroom to make sure my air purifier was adequate and to minimize air leaks from outside. In my photos you can see the outside air was bad due to neighbor with wood stove. After getting a better air purifier and sealing air leaks I was able have super clean air that improves my sleep! NOTE: Follow the instructions so you get accurate readings. Don't blow into the vents and don't measure with air blowing into the unit. Make measurements in calm air with the device steady in your hand or on a clean surface. The air quality measurement stabilizes pretty quick, but for most accurate reading you should wait 2-3 minutes. Temperature and humidity are slower (the sensors are in the case) but will likely be accurate and stable in 5 minutes. Don't swing the device around or let air blow hard into it, otherwise you might get inaccurate results. It has a tiny internal mechanism that draws air into the particle counter module at the proper rate. The device will run approximately 8 hours on a charge. It does not store data, but some other models by this company do. The display is bright, clear, and easy to read. I am very pleased with the quality and functionality of this device! Don't waste money on the cheap ones. This is professional grade. NOTE: This is a sensitive device for measuring particles that are too small to see. If you use it in dusty or misty (paint, hair spray, fog, etc) environments you could foul the internal laser device that counts microscopic particles. For example if you used this in a cloud of talcum powder you could foul the laser optics. Some fluctuation of readings is normal due to particles shed by you, your hair, clothing, dust on surfaces, many sources. These particles can waft into this device with the slightest air movement, including just walking by this device. This affect is more pronounced in clean air because a wave of particles from clothing or other sources will be more obvious.NOTE: If you use this to measure visible particles, such as pollen, you can damage the sensor and will get inaccurate readings. Smoke may be ok for a short period of time (a few minutes) but this is best used in areas where visible particles are not present. Intended for 10 micrometers or smaller particles.

Update in Sept. 2022. This meter continued to work fine, but I bought a more elaborate meter and gave this one to my brother.Longer explanation: with Covid, I decided to track CO2 levels in restaurants etc. First I got an el-cheapo CO2 device for $60, which I promptly left in a hotel. 😢 Then I got the Temtop 2000C, for about $150, which measures CO2 PM2.5 and PM10, VOC, and NOX. I give a brief review for that meter.So I continue to recommend Temtop meters. They are intended for people who are not intimidated by small fonts and slightly complex menus/buttons. Make sure you decide which pollutants you want to measure and get the appropriate model. I wish they had WiFi or Bluetooth, but that would raise the price.Update in September 2020.This device has held up well and I am using it to track air quality during the ongoing California fires. Its outdoor readings match official numbers pretty well, and I now think it is Reasonably accurate. When I move it from indoors to outdoors, or into a room where I have an air filter running, its readings are about what they should be.As I surmised in the original review, the graphing mode is not very useful. Spikes get averaged out over time. The main way I use it is to bring it into a room, or outdoors, turn it on, and wait about one minute for readings to settle down.What it shows is valuable. For example my air filter reduced the p.m. 2.5 in a 15 X 15 foot room from about 90 to below 20 in half an hour.After a few hours, it was below 10. Similarly, when I open windows, I can track how the indoor air quality worsens rapidly.I’m going to try it in my car to see effects of AC.I also have a “Flow” Meter with a much more sophisticated design, but I find that this is actually more useful for several reasons.PS I’m near San Diego, otherwise the AQI would be much worse.======= ORIGINAL REVIEW ====It's very hard to find good information on the many IAQ (indoor air quality) devices, so I will write a prelim review after 24 hours of use. This device, P600, is less than $100, and it ONLY does PM2.5. (It claims to do PM10, but I have not tried it and I suspect that it just uses a formula to extrapolate.)o It is quite mobile. About the size of a 2000 cell phone. The battery lasts several hours, at least, and it's easy to recharge. It was easy to carry, around although if you put it inside a briefcase the readings will naturally be inaccurate. I carried it in my hand while walking.o It has 2 modes: current level, and a continuous graph. When you start the graph, it shows readings every few seconds at first. After a few minutes, it changes scales to give less frequent readings. If you keep leaving it on, it seems to give one bar on the graph every half hour (?)o ACCURACY: this is the key question. I purchased a second meter (Awair) just so I can run them side by side, but I have not run it yet. For now, I can only report that its readings are "plausible." In a clean and almost empty restaurant I got a 7 (I believe this is in micrograms/cubic meter). Walking home late at night it was around 16. Leaving it on at home overnight it gave somewhat lower numbers. But there is no way to tell if these numbers are correct, and I have not yet moved it to areas where I expect high readings.o Don't like: there seems to be no way to go back through its memory. I am going to have to photograph the screen once a day to get a 24 hour graph! (This is a tradeoff for the low price, and I knew about it ahead of time.)o Similarly, there is no clock. The only way to tell WHEN a bar on the graph was taken is to count backwards from the current time.o If I leave it on for many hours, the graph will "average out" any spikes. The only way to detect short spikes is to keep it in continuous mode. Perhaps I will set up my phone to take a picture every minute. (I once read that scientists used to use 16mm cameras to photograph their instruments, in order to get continuous data! This would have been before microprocessors were invented.)o There appears to be a way to adjust the readings, but I have no clue what it is for or how to use it. It starts at a setting of 1.00; if I change this to 2.00, all the readings seem to double.o Overall, it appears that this is a minimalist design which puts all its money into giving accurate PM2.5 readings moment by moment, and a minimalist recording.o I'm giving it 4 stars for now, but that is just a place-holder.o I will try to report back in a month or two.

We bought this to test our house when my wife was having problems. It read very low for volatile organic compounds (safe region) but my wife was still ill. Now having had mass spectroscopy done 4 times on the air, with VCOs originally 14X the upper limit of "safe" (and still well above safe after >1. year of treatment) we realize this meter not only wasted our money but delayed correcting the problem. It was way too late to return it by the time we realized how bad it was.