Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

SO! You want to know what’s in the air you’re breathing in your home? You brave soul. You brave, foolish soul, you. Like me, you can’t help yourself. You want to turn over that rock and see what’s there. You must pull at the thread, you can’t help yourself. Very well! And it may even be for the best. But, make no mistake, you’re embarking on a PROJECT. This will be a major endeavor. It will perplex you. You’re going to feel confounded, vexed, and at times a bit cynical and fatalistic. You’ll love the Uhoo out of the box. Then, you will grow to hate it. But, this is a relationship that is going to take effort on your part, and in the end it’s all going to come down to trust. My story is probably common. I’ve long suspected there may be issues with the air quality in my home. We have previously had issues with leaks, moisture, and mold, but beyond that I’ve always had it on my long-term agenda to seek to “optimize” our indoor air. This year, we finally got an air purifier in order to solve the problem of our air quality. Except... how did I know there was a “problem” to solve? Let alone, the nature of the problem(s), and the extent? How could I see the actual difference or lack thereof our $600 worth of air filtering gear was making? That’s where I came across handheld air quality monitors and the Uhoo. Compared to the competition, as of Feb 2021, the Uhoo is unique. You see, asking questions like “what going on with the air in my home” will reveal a series of increasingly open-ended and seemingly never-ending questions. There’s actually lots of various... stuff ... that could be in the air. And it’s not clear still to this user as to all the finer nuances of how to properly classify and differential all that ... stuff. There’s the solid matter floating in the air. Particular Matter, or PM, often broken down by diameter of the particles as PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 for particles smaller than 10, 2.5, and 1 microns respectively. That’s usually done by measuring the total mass of the PM for a given volume of air (eg micrograms per meter cubed). But you can also find sensors that actually COUNT the individual number of particles. I’m not clear on the virtues of methodology or units, nor am I clear on if PM measurements account for infinitely small particles (since they all represent particles SMALLER than a given size diameter, which implies all the way to zero). There’s also the Volitile Organic Compounds (VOCs). These are “vapors” and “fumes” coming from chemicals in your home. Cleaning products, personal care products, paint, even off-gassing from things like furniture and solid building materials. I’m still unclear of the finer points here, but from reading up it sounds like these are basically evaporates of chemicals that have a “high vapor pressure at room temperature”. I take that to mean that the evaporate below room temperature and thus and giving off what we call “fumes”. Buuut... are vapors and fumes the same thing? Is a VOC just one kind of vapor or fume, or does it account for all of them? Does it account for aerosolized chemicals, like say chlorine and chloramine during a hot shower with unfiltered city water or perhaps after spraying around some bug spray or other nasty product? Those mysteries so far have evaded my attempts to clarify them. But the Uhoo does have a TVOC (total VOC) sensor, which puts it in a small group of consumer products. It’s not clear to me what “total” in TVOC means... like is it really a univeral, all-inclusive measure, or is it just testing for several common ones and expressing them as a single value? Because if it’s the latter then one TVOC sensor might be able to detect more or less things than another. I’ve tested the Uhoo next to a Temtop TVOC sensor and the Uhoo appeared to be able to register and detect chemicals sprays in a room the Temtop did not. So, if it’s not universal, the Uhoo’s detection range of VOCs would seem to be pretty good, but this was a small set of random experiments and far from anything where I could say that for sure as there could be things the Uhoo wouldn’t detect that the Temtop would. Not to mention the question... are all VOCs of equal concern, or does it depend on the specific VOC in question? If you’re an air quality scientist who can explain any of this, please feel free to comment and set me straight!! So, particles and chemicals. OK. We good? Of course not. That’s basically just solids and liquids, my friend. But even the part of your air that truly is just “air”, is a mixture of many gasses—the breakdown of which of course has implications for health and wellbeing. Here’s where it gets even murkier for the person trying to understand the “quality” of their air. Luckily, the Uhoo has a broader range of detected gasses than any other device I’ve seen. It detects Carbon Dioxide (CO2, which we all breath out), Carbon Monoxide (CO, which is highly toxic), Ozone (O3, mostly a biproduct of electronics such as laser printers from what I understand), and Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2, which is a byproduct of combustion such as in smog or from cooking, smoking, etc). Carbon Monoxide is a common enough and well known enough concern that detectors are ubiquitous and you likely already have an analog one in your home. CO2 sensors are easy to find, but hard to find on devices that also measure VOC and PM... that’s a rare combo at this time. O3 and NO2 detectors seem to be exceedingly rare on the market, let alone included with all these other sensors in a single package. The Uhoo really has the best selection of combined sensors so far. That’s great, right? Yes! Comparatively. But... if you thought you were going to account for EVERYTHING, think again. There are lots of other gases and pollutants that the Uhoo will not detect. Or, at least, that I would imagine it would not detect. But then again, as I’ve already made clear... I have little confidence in my ability to determine that one way or another. Hydrogen Sulfide (HS) and Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), for example. I’m pretty sure those are gases, or at least not VOCs. Both are very toxic, neither is detected by the Uhoo (but neither are they detected by any competitor, for that matter). What if you or someone in your home accidentally (or ignorantly) mix bleach and vinegar? If you don’t know, this causes a reaction that releases chlorine gas (think: the trenches of the First World War...). Would the Uhoo detect THAT? It might detect the VOCs from the Bleach (and the vinegar? Does vinegar have VOCs? It stinks, so it’s releasing SOMETHING into the air... but something we generally believe to be much less concerning than bleach fumes)... but is the chlorine gas a VOC or a gas that would go undetected? I see Uhoo answers that claim an Uhoo could/would detect a natural gas leak, although I’m not sure of the specifics around just exactly what or how it would detect that (is natural gas a VOC vapor?). If all this doesn’t already leave your head spinning and make you feel bad for not at least taking chemistry in college (or make you even more glad you didn’t do so), it might just make you ponder more deeply about not just what your air purifier IS removing from the air, but what is ISN’T. For example, most air purifiers only remove PM, because they are air FILTERS. But, some do have additional media that “trap” or “filter” VOCs and gases (things like carbon filters) and some talk of “gas traps”. Some expensive, fancy purifiers tout fancy-founding technology that allege to “neutralize” gasses and VOCs... but there’s no such device that will “filter”, remove, trap, or “neutralize” CO2 as just one example. Would the right air purifier save or at least help you in a natural gas leak or that bleach/vinegar scenario? I don’t have the slightest clue, to be honest. All this said. If you’re going down this road and have enough discipline to not let it become a descent into madness, but also enough rigor to not just jump to unsound conclusions (like “the Uhoo says everything’s fine, so EVERYTHING must be fine!), the Uhoo is the best and maybe only choice. AirThings, IQAir, and others don’t come close to the number of metrics. That said, two things I feel like the Uhoo is missing that stand out: PM10/PM1 for particles, and Radon. It would be nice to have a broader range of PM readings to both expand what’s being measured and break it down into all 3 categories. Radon seems like an obvious addition here and, honestly, I’m surprised it’s not already included. Other than those points, if you’re looking for the widest number of things to track, Uhoo has got it at the moment. In addition to PM2.5, TVOC, CO2, CO, NO2, and O3, they also include humidity, temperature, and air pressure. You probably already have ways to track the first two (if not, thermometers with built-in hygrometers are cheap and easy to find), but air pressure is interesting to include. I’ve yet to see the value in it, but it’s nice to have I guess. As far as accuracy. Time to renew the descent into madness. See, you are powerless. Neither you, nor I, have any way to verify the accuracy of such a device. And I’ll tell you the ugly truth: the professional product review site you’re jumping to right now probably doesn’t either. Sure, you can buy other sensors and meters. But how do you verify THEIR accuracy. Sure they may come “calibrated” or “lab tested”, but ultimately it’s trust in the vendor, not actual proof. And some of these sensors are.... finicky. I should know. I purchased no less than 5 different air sensor devices of various makes and models along with an air purifier that had a built in set of sensors rivaling the Uhoo (Mila) all just in an effort to get SOME kind of idea which one might be telling the truth. Well... none of them really agreed. Even two different meters from the same company (Temtop, the brand Wire Cutter uses for their air purifier testing / reviews) that both had PM readings never agreed exactly. Sitting right next to each other they might be off by 10-20% or more at times for no apparent reason. The best I could hope for was to get reasonably (and more importantly RELATIVELY) consistent results. After using the Uhoo for over 6 weeks, I can tell you it is reasonably accurate as far as I can tell. It is also reasonably responsive. This may be even more important. Sensors can sometimes lag CONSIDERABLY behind in actually detecting and displaying changes. The Uhoo is pretty good there, but the app is sometimes quirky and you need to jump around for it to refresh the graphs and numbers. Here’s the key with accuracy.... Time. My Uhoo gave me ABSURD readings for the first couple of weeks. Just totally impossible numbers with little to no rhyme or reason to them. This is, in fact, what lead me to all those other purchases trying to get some kind of reliable baseline to compare against. Sadly, I contacted Uhoo support and was told “yup, that’s expected”. They say it takes at least a week or two for the sensors to “calibrate” and in some cases it could take upwards of a month for this process to complete. This was true in my case. After about 4-5 weeks, my Temtop and Uhoo were starting to show very close agreement on CO2 and other readings, enough to where I had a feeling of trust in the measurements. This was such a big change that I went from planning to return my Uhoo, to thinking I may want to get another one for our upstairs. One last thing in terms of detection that Uhoo has is their Virus Index feature. They aren’t super clear on exactly what the secret sauce is here, but it’s a proprietary formula that takes the sensor data and estimates just how good or bad your home environment is in terms of the transmissibility of airborne viruses (something which is very interesting in the COVID and even the post-COVID world). I can’t say if this is just marketing for putting some quantitative value to the fact that humidity plays a big role in viral spread through the air, but it does seem like it offers the tantalizing prospect of simple amedments we could make in our home and public spaces that could help reduce risks. One last thing the Uhoo doesn’t have is something pretty basic that doesn’t (as far as I know) require any additional hardware: Air Quality Index (AQI). As I understand it, this is just a numerical value that is a function of the level of PM and VOC in the air. Or some similar combination of metrics. This is something Mila air purifiers have, but over-rely on and falsely represent. It’d be nice if Uhoo included it. OK, so, beyond the sensors themselves and the information they provide and what they may or may not mean to you, how does the. Uhoo perform from a usability perspective? Well, it’s a smart, cloud-based IoT device. This means, you need to set up an account. It means you will need to agree to their terms of service., It means if they ever go out of business you may be left with a device that is no longer usable, due to the cloud service on the back end being discontinued. Not to mention if the app is discontinued. That all being said, the app is much better than the similarish experience provided by the recently-released Mila smart air purifier system. Graphs are easier to read and customize, and have more fine-grained data. You can answer questions like “hmmm the Ozone is high. Is it usually high or borderline high or something, what’s normal look like in my home?” The historical data is there, easy to browse, and has actual numbers. But. You can’t export it (to a CSV for example), and the interface is clunky. You can only go by full days or full hours, not scroll back and forth fluidly through a continuous timeline. Also, orientation is tricky. On the iPad Landscape mode is seemingly not a thing, but then I found out you can get it to do landscape if you go into the individual metrics, and then go back, But otherwise it always forces you into portrait mode. The app seems a tad buggy at times in more tiny ways than I could possibly enumerate, but at least all the base functionality is there for the most part. Now... one of the reasons you might want a SMART, cloud-enabled air quality device is to use it to do various other smart home... stuff. You know, Alexa routines, IFTTT, and so on. There is support for that. But the Alexa integration so far only allows for basic inquiries (“alexa, ask Uhoo for my CO2 level”). The IFTTT integration offers a lot more potential for things like having Alexa broadcast an alert if pollutant levels are high or even doing something like turning on a smart outlet with an air filter connected. But I have yet to play with this enough to know how robust the options available really are. So, is this a good device? If you have the patience, yes. Is this a worth while thing to do? To me it has been. If you believe ignorance is bliss, turn away! But, if you believe knowledge is power (every good Joe understands that knowing is half the battle) then this device or something like it can give you actionable information about your home that could have realworld appreciable effects on your health and happiness. Turns out, for me my apartment (which lacks a proper stove vent in my kitchen) becomes a veritable chemical warfare exercise when we do even light cooking. CO2 levels will shoot up to 1,500, or 2,000, on some occasions even 3,000 PPM, which is apparently pretty unhealthy. VOC and NO2 levels can also reach concerning levels. We had no idea. Even with two high end air purifiers running full bore for an hour or more does not fix the situation. The one thing that does? Opening the windows. Could I just open the windows and forego the obsessive compulsive behavior and expensive electronic gadget? Maybe. But I’d never know if I opened them wide enough for long enough. Even with weeks of getting used to the cause and effects, I still have to check the numbers in order to keep those levels within healthy parameters. And if you live somewhere that gets cold in the winter months, trust me there is value in being able to know exactly when it is safe to close the windows after dinner is done.