Our Favorite 8 Home Health Monitors We Tried (2025)

Until I wrote it about my quest for fresh air in my house in brooklyn, i didn’t know air conditioners existed. Now I couldn’t live without them. Knowing your indoor air index is getting into the realm of the invisible.

We humans evolved due to changes in temperature, rain, and wind. Bad air is quiet and usually odorless, but long-term exposure to certain vapors, particulates, and high concentrations of CO.₂ it can affect cognition and increase the risk of certain cancers, as well as heart and respiratory disease. Reading the daily temperature and weather forecast prepares us for what’s to come, but checking your air quality can be the biggest thing you can do to improve your health.

These air conditioners were tested in two locations: a 130-year-old Brooklyn home with a gas stove under construction, and a cabin in the woods in Maine that uses an electric stove. There were two cats, a dog, and two people throughout the experiment. I had different air cleaners running all the time. Neither facility had central air or HVAC with MERV filters, nor did they have over-the-counter stove exhaust fans that could exhaust the smoke outside. In both places, it was cooking on the stovetop that produced the most pollutants. These monitors were used both on days with very good outside air and on days when the air temperature was in the low, above 50 US Air Quality Index.

For more information keep your breath wellcheck out our tips at Best Air Purifiers and The Best Robot Vacuums.

Updated January 2025: Added PurpleAir’s Zen Air, Govee’s Smart Air Quality Monitor, and Ikea Vindstyrka; additional tables; and modified links and prices.

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