The Awair 2 Brings Beautiful, Functional Indoor Air Quality Monitoring Into the Home

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Awair has been plugging away at the nuanced world of indoor air quality with its Awair Glow and its flagship Awair air quality monitor to bring affordable, action-oriented air quality monitoring into the home for years now. The Awair team is back with an updated version of its base station that brings together air quality monitoring, smartphone integration, an LED display all wrapped up in a beautiful design that makes it feel at home in just about any home.

What’s New?

We spoke with Awair’s vice president of brand and marketing, Nic Barnes, about the new edition to get the inside scoop about what’s new and exciting in the second edition of the Awair. Nic shared that customers shared that they liked, “being able to take control of your environment without having to go out and buy a ton of things.” The Awair packs in a number of helpful sensors, including the aforementioned PM2.5 sensor, an updated chemical sensor that detects volatile organics, CO2 sensor, humidity sensor, and a temperature sensor.

Each of the metrics it tracks was selected to address a specific concern. PM2.5 monitoring, for example, is which is one of the most impactful pollutants to humans, having been linked to heart failure, asthma, and allergies. PM2.5 is a serious concern for much of the world but the Awair team saw a huge demand for visibility of PM2.5 from its customers in Asia, where PM2.5 is a much higher profile pollutant and is having a much larger impact on the population.

Understanding the indoor humidity in a building is key in a healthy home, as too much humidity can lead to toxic black mold which is an all-too-common occurrence and causes a lengthy list of health issues. Temperature is a key contributor to personal comfort and our moods. The complex array of sensors in the Awair work together to give the home a score from zero to one hundred to show at a glance what the overall quality of the air is in the home.

A Call To Action

The Awair doesn’t just detect issues and let you know about them, it also proposes a handful of solutions via notifications from its smartphone app to help correct the issue. By themselves, the recommendations add value by suggesting easy actions that don’t require the moving of mountains to implement.

“A lot of our consumers are regular people who are not necessarily tech savvy,” Nic said. “The recommendations from Awair are perfect because they educate and give actions to solve the problem.”

These notifications can even be routed into the popular web-based productivity solution If This Then That (IFTTT). IFTTT takes notifications or other inputs and when it detects that they have happened, it can trigger another action to take place. The service can, for example, turn a fan on that’s plugged into the Awair Glow if it detects that the temperature is rising in the room. A number of these actions and virtual scripts have been created for the Awair already, with a nearly unlimited number of additional actions possible with a little bit of creativity.

These notifications have already proved their worth with a number of customers, including one customer who nearly lost his home but thanks to Awair, was able to avoid the situation. Nic shared that a customer left the stove on at home and while on the way to work, received a notification about chemicals and PM increasing in his home through an IFTTT alert, the customer realized what happened and rushed home to turn off the stove.

A Personal Motivation

Everyone has their own reason for paying attention to indoor air quality. For many, it was an article they read, a warning label on a product, a comment from a friend, or the noxious smell of the paint in the bedroom. “Air is invisible and you don’t think about it but once you start paying attention to how it affects you,” Nic said.

His story for why he cares about indoor air quality is very personal and it started with his newborn daughter. “When I painted the nursery for my daughter, I realized that the paints on the wall were emitting VOCs.” The Awair put a data point behind the emissions from the paint and made it easy to see if the levels were green, yellow, or red, and proposed some solutions.

“We added plants, changed the paint and took control of the situation,” Nic shared.

Looking To The Future

The team at Awair is seeing a lot of demand for enterprise products, where companies are always looking to ensure that they are providing a healthy, productive atmosphere for employees. Awair has the potential to give them the data they need to serve as the thermostat for all things indoor air quality. From there, they can fine tune the office environment to exactly the right conditions.

At $199, the Awair is not cheap, but in the emerging world of indoor air quality monitors, it provides a robust set of sensors and notifications that aren’t found in most IAQs. The ability to tap into the power of IFTTT takes the value proposition one step further, especially for those at risk of issues stemming from subpar air quality.

To learn more about the updated second generation Awair or its other products, head over to its website. The second generation of the Awair is available on the website today.


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Kyle Field

I'm a tech geek passionately in search of actionable ways to reduce the negative impact my life has on the planet, save money and reduce stress. Live intentionally, make conscious decisions, love more, act responsibly, play. The more you know, the less you need. As an activist investor, Kyle owns long term holdings in Tesla, Lightning eMotors, Arcimoto, and SolarEdge.

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