Wired sold-out to Condé Nast long ago. They're the tired ones.
This sounds like something Louis Rossmann should cover as a counter-example of mfgrs trying to do the right thing but fickle, corporate reviewers behaving in a petty, unfair manner.
To anyone else reading, I would recommend, AirGradiant is the only real contender that checks all the boxes for an air monitor. Love the way they spun this narrative.
I checked out the Wired article. Not recommended seems to mostly be about the fact that it's a tiny display, which some people (like the reporter) will have trouble to read. That the screen degraded didn't help of course. The reporter doesn't want to use a web dashboard to check out the readings on his indoor air monitor. I think that's a fair comment, maybe just a bit harsh to put it in the not recommended bucket. I understand that this can affect sales quite a bit for a small supplier like AirGradient.
Not exactly on topic, but does anyone else feel that the bolded key phrases actually makes it harder to read? I find my eyes jumping between them without absorbing the rest of the text.
I own several AirGradient monitors and have used other brands in the past. As far as I am concerned AirGradient is clearly superior, not only for ease of use, repairability and their open source approach, but also because of their tremendous enthusiasm for getting accurate data and being totally transparent about the strengths and weaknesses of the technology.
I wouldn’t worry too much tbh if I was Airgradient. I don’t think anyone trusts Wired for serious tech reviews and the target audience would veer towards plug and play crowd anyway.
My airgradient monitor has been online for years and sending data to Prometheus reliably. I’ve been able to plot the air quality across a few climate events and the introduction of a Samsung air filter in my bedroom. It’s a good little product.
I have one of these AirGradient indoor units. I also have a dedicated RadonEye Bluetooth device and Airthings wave Pro.
The oled display is nice, but I rarely care in realtime what the exact metrics are. I have that stored as time series stats sso I can see trends over time. Exactly like I do for metrics of production systems in SRE life.
The unit also has a series of LEDs across the top and I can read the actual status from 20’ away (which is as far as I can get without going out a window or around a corner).
One green led? Good.
Two green leds? Meh.
Three LEDs? They’re red now and that’s not great
Single red led in the top left in addition to any on the right? Spectrum is having yet another outage (no internet)
No LEDs? Not powered on
Reviewer was overly severe and did his readers a disservice.
It’s better imho than my Airthings wave pro, and it lets me get awesome, actionable time series data. It’s sensitive enough to show air quality taking a dive overnight with two people and multiple pets breathing in the same room (one green during the day, three or four red at night), and also to show that adding a half dozen spider plants keeps co2 well in check (consistent one green led).
And I can read the air quality from across the room without getting out of bed.
Rotten luck but at the same time reviewers review the device in front of them. They can’t really throw that experience out on the basis of some assumption that it’s not representative
There seems to be a trend of companies attacking reviewers and claiming their feelings got hurt when they dislike the review, Nothing CEO is reacting to reviews on youtube, Rabbit R1, the Humane AI pin, Fisker cars, and not AirGradient i guess.
I don't think any of this review is unfair. Shipping a broken product and then covering the fix with your warranty is better than shipping a broken product and telling the consumer to get bent, but worse than shipping a working product. A product that advertises fewer features and delivers them is better than a product that advertises more features and doesn't deliver them. Even in the case of the CO2 sensor, it may be your opinion that a CO2 sensor is critical and can't be done without, but the review is for the feature set at the price point. A device that does fewer things can be a better device depending on price point and, again, reliability.
If, however, I concede the author's idea that reviews must have objective criteria, methodology and standards in order to be taken seriously then I'd like to propose the first objective criterion: broken out-of-the-box === not recommended.
edit: evidently the device failed after a few months. This doesn't change my final opinion, which is in total agreement with the review, but it deserves to be mentioned because I was incorrect in my facts. For my fellow JS devs, I'm standing by broken out-of-the-box === not recommended, and adding broken within a few months of installing == not recommended.
Shipping them a product with a broken display implies shoddy manufacturing and crap quality control. Any other customer could end up buying this substandard product too, and being disappointed by the lack of workmanship.
Why not take responsibility for that instead of complaining about an honest review?
My immediate reaction when landing on one of these "top 10 X products" are that the list is sorted according to the size of the kickback the author gets when users click on affiliate links. For the most part I don't believe there is no such thing as a legitimate product review on the internet any more.
There is a vanishingly small collection of youtubers that I might still trust when it comes to product reviews, and that list is shrinking.
The product with fewer features being recommended makes sense if they do those things well. The customer buying it is aware of the limitation, whereas the customer buying your unit getting a broken display is a disappointment. Maybe it was an unfair review, but this comparison is lame.
Open source performs better, but is less convenient/accessible than a polished consumer product with inferior technical chops?
Even ignoring the broken display, which I think is a red herring here (it would be relevant if this unit had a pattern of quality issues or failures indicating systematic production issues), I think that's the story here.
I appreciate the response from airgradient, assuming it's all true.
I would much rather prefer AirGradient over IQAir AirVision Pro, despite WIRED’s recent evaluation favouring the latter. Source: I “own” (see below) an IQAir AirVision Pro, which I bought directly from IQAir’s website, and I have seen an AirGradient unit in someone else’s home.
One reason is, in fact, the screen. AirVision Pro’s display is bright, but it is bright all of the time; it cannot be made dim enough to make it suitable for use in the bedroom, for example: the blueish white LCD is basically a small light fixture. Furthermore, the contents of the screen are well-readable only at a narrow angle (think when you look straight at it; putting it on top of a tall fridge or down on your windowsill makes it illegible). I would much rather prefer an e-ink display.
Second, on their website IQAir states that their air monitors are made in Europe[0]. This is a false claim. In fact, AirVision Pro is made in PRC, as it declared on the box. I would not be against a good product made in PRC, and AirVision Pro is in fact known for good cheracteristics regarding accuracy, but it seems like a dark pattern at best, and they clearly want to mislead customers.
Third, the enclosure featured a charging USB port (which is an obsolete micro USB variety incredibly hard to find cables for) that was very finicky and gave up the ghost 3 months in. The device just wouldn’t charge its battery or see any power at all thereafter, so it basically became a brick of cheap plastic for all intents and purposes. I can’t be bothered to disassemble the enclosure and try to repair it since I can’t stand the bright screen anyway and I already got the hang of air quality patterns where I live.
It did the job, sure, but if AirGradient’s PM2.5 and carbon dioxide detectors do nearly as good of a job[1] it makes it a much more compelling option for me.
Unfortunately, as of the time I last checked, AirGradient shipped to a small set of countries which did not include my area; by comparison, IQAir has a much wider coverage.
[0] You can still see the proud large “Swiss made” in the relevant section of their website (https://www.iqair.com/products/air-quality-monitors). Furthermore, if you Google the question, the LLM-generated answer suggests that
> The IQAir AirVisual Pro air quality monitor is Swiss-designed and manufactured. While IQAir is headquartered in Switzerland, their manufacturing facilities for air purifiers, including the AirVisual Pro, are located in both Switzerland and Southern Germany
I have one and I generally agree that the screen sucks, it could really use an upgrade.
Also it’s a pain in the a to zero out the co2 sensor the first time.
I would probably not recommend it to someone who does not like to dabble a lot with the tech. It’s not really a it just works and it’s easy for everyone product.
21 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 43.2 ms ] threadI spend quite a long time writing this post and it actually helped me to see the bigger picture. How much can we actually trust tech reviews?
I am already getting very interesting results from the survey I posted and already planning to write a follow up post.
This sounds like something Louis Rossmann should cover as a counter-example of mfgrs trying to do the right thing but fickle, corporate reviewers behaving in a petty, unfair manner.
It's linked in the article but here it is. https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-indoor-air-quality-monito...
My airgradient monitor has been online for years and sending data to Prometheus reliably. I’ve been able to plot the air quality across a few climate events and the introduction of a Samsung air filter in my bedroom. It’s a good little product.
The oled display is nice, but I rarely care in realtime what the exact metrics are. I have that stored as time series stats sso I can see trends over time. Exactly like I do for metrics of production systems in SRE life.
The unit also has a series of LEDs across the top and I can read the actual status from 20’ away (which is as far as I can get without going out a window or around a corner).
One green led? Good. Two green leds? Meh. Three LEDs? They’re red now and that’s not great
Single red led in the top left in addition to any on the right? Spectrum is having yet another outage (no internet)
No LEDs? Not powered on
Reviewer was overly severe and did his readers a disservice.
It’s better imho than my Airthings wave pro, and it lets me get awesome, actionable time series data. It’s sensitive enough to show air quality taking a dive overnight with two people and multiple pets breathing in the same room (one green during the day, three or four red at night), and also to show that adding a half dozen spider plants keeps co2 well in check (consistent one green led).
And I can read the air quality from across the room without getting out of bed.
A more professional response would just stick to the facts rather than trash the reviewer and pontificate on what is wrong with journalism today.
Is there a "meta review" site like metacritic, but for products?
If, however, I concede the author's idea that reviews must have objective criteria, methodology and standards in order to be taken seriously then I'd like to propose the first objective criterion: broken out-of-the-box === not recommended.
edit: evidently the device failed after a few months. This doesn't change my final opinion, which is in total agreement with the review, but it deserves to be mentioned because I was incorrect in my facts. For my fellow JS devs, I'm standing by broken out-of-the-box === not recommended, and adding broken within a few months of installing == not recommended.
Why not take responsibility for that instead of complaining about an honest review?
Given the AirGradient is $100 cheaper than the winning product, I think the review might have been a little harsh.
There is a vanishingly small collection of youtubers that I might still trust when it comes to product reviews, and that list is shrinking.
Even ignoring the broken display, which I think is a red herring here (it would be relevant if this unit had a pattern of quality issues or failures indicating systematic production issues), I think that's the story here.
I appreciate the response from airgradient, assuming it's all true.
One reason is, in fact, the screen. AirVision Pro’s display is bright, but it is bright all of the time; it cannot be made dim enough to make it suitable for use in the bedroom, for example: the blueish white LCD is basically a small light fixture. Furthermore, the contents of the screen are well-readable only at a narrow angle (think when you look straight at it; putting it on top of a tall fridge or down on your windowsill makes it illegible). I would much rather prefer an e-ink display.
Second, on their website IQAir states that their air monitors are made in Europe[0]. This is a false claim. In fact, AirVision Pro is made in PRC, as it declared on the box. I would not be against a good product made in PRC, and AirVision Pro is in fact known for good cheracteristics regarding accuracy, but it seems like a dark pattern at best, and they clearly want to mislead customers.
Third, the enclosure featured a charging USB port (which is an obsolete micro USB variety incredibly hard to find cables for) that was very finicky and gave up the ghost 3 months in. The device just wouldn’t charge its battery or see any power at all thereafter, so it basically became a brick of cheap plastic for all intents and purposes. I can’t be bothered to disassemble the enclosure and try to repair it since I can’t stand the bright screen anyway and I already got the hang of air quality patterns where I live.
It did the job, sure, but if AirGradient’s PM2.5 and carbon dioxide detectors do nearly as good of a job[1] it makes it a much more compelling option for me.
Unfortunately, as of the time I last checked, AirGradient shipped to a small set of countries which did not include my area; by comparison, IQAir has a much wider coverage.
[0] You can still see the proud large “Swiss made” in the relevant section of their website (https://www.iqair.com/products/air-quality-monitors). Furthermore, if you Google the question, the LLM-generated answer suggests that
> The IQAir AirVisual Pro air quality monitor is Swiss-designed and manufactured. While IQAir is headquartered in Switzerland, their manufacturing facilities for air purifiers, including the AirVisual Pro, are located in both Switzerland and Southern Germany
which is not true.
[1] Perhaps someone can comment on that; I don’t see SenseAir sensors listed on https://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/summary-table.
Also it’s a pain in the a to zero out the co2 sensor the first time.
I would probably not recommend it to someone who does not like to dabble a lot with the tech. It’s not really a it just works and it’s easy for everyone product.