Awair has now launched a new smart home device called Awair Element, delivering more core functionality to the budget-friendly air quality monitoring market.
This time around, Awair’s latest solution integrates more completely with a smart home environment. Not only is the device compatible with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. It also integrates fully with Ecobee and Sensi Smart Thermostats to respond when air quality readings show too much pollution. In effect, Awair Element can automatically trigger a home’s HVAC system to clear pollutants out, creating a healthier living environment.
Awair hasn’t provided information regarding just how large of a space a single Awair Element will serve. But the solution is intended to be inexpensive enough to buy several, placing them throughout a home. Under those circumstances, each device individually Awair Element serves up real-time air quality data. That’s delivered alongside personalized recommendations and tips to improve air quality.
The company’s device accomplishes that via an associated app that also offers environmental change tracking data over time.
What exactly is Awair Element monitoring to gauge air quality?
The Awair Element is a smart home table-top style device that measures air quality from five different factors. Those are factors that generally impact not just comfort but also health and productivity, according to Awair. Of course, the company builds those on a fairly reasonable foundation of temperature and humidity monitoring.
For temperature, Awair points out that the factor can influence how well a person performs tasks, the quality of their sleep, and even how well their immune system works. Humidity ties hand-in-hand with that but at the wrong levels can also aggravate existing conditions such as asthma and eczema — conditions which often appear in conjunction with one another.
It moves beyond that to the next logical step, housing sensors to track carbon dioxide. The air-borne contaminant has been linked to headaches, fatigue, concentration issues, and decision-making impairment. That typically happens indoors where ventilation is lacking, Awair notes, allowing it to rise to unhealthy levels.
Along that same line, the Awair Element can track Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Those are toxic chemicals that commonly arise from environmental conditions. Common items such as widely-used building materials, furniture, and cleaning products can act as a source of those contaminants. They’re also an underlying cause for short and long-term health problems related to the respiratory system and skin health.
Finally, the Awair Element tracks microscopic particular matter. That’s specifically PM2.5, microscopic particles down to 2.5 micrometers. For reference, that’s about three-percent the diameter of a human hair and includes materials that stem from cooking, wildfire smoke, traffic, and more.
Pricing and availability
Now, Awair is billing Element as a robust monitoring solution that helps users get a better understanding of environmental pollution and air quality variations throughout their home. So it not only works to offer actionable information but as a way to adjust on a room-by-room basis for users who install more than one unit. Awair intends it to do that at a more affordable cost.
The device costs $50 less than the previous iteration of Awairs technology and just over the cost of its smaller, less capable Awair Glow C smart plug. It comes in a gray-on-white coloration and ships at an MSRP of just $149, direct from Awair’s official site. The company says Awair Element is available from today in both the US and Canada.
