These Smart Interior Air Quality Monitors Can Help You Sleep Better & Cure Your Allergies

Arriving at home should be a relaxing experience, but if you're finding yourself coughing more indoors than outdoors, there might be something wrong with your indoor air quality. You might just think you're sick at first, but if you notice the moment you step outside you instantly feel better, there's something wrong in the house. You have smoke detectors and maybe even a carbon monoxide detector, but they aren't going off.

That's because these old-fashioned detectors can only detect when your life is in immediate danger—not when there have been chemicals slowly seeping into the air. Fortunately, it's 2018 and technology has advanced to a point where we can monitor a lot more than smoke and carbon monoxide. The following smart interior air quality monitors will alert you to potential threats to your health before it becomes serious.

How can an air purifier help me sleep better and cure my allergies?

Before we get into which of these is best for you, we should probably go over why they can actually help you. Studies have shown that the air quality inside our homes can be up to 8 times worse than it is outdoors, which is saying a lot. When you clean your house or make different kinds of DIY projects, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) can be introduced into your air. Even some furniture can release VOCs into the air. If you don't have your windows open nearly all the time (who does), these chemicals get locked in our homes and attach to the carbon dioxide that we breathe out, trapping more CO2 into the air, since now it can't be absorbed by plants you might have.

With all of these VOCs in the air, you can't breathe properly. You might find yourself coughing like you have a cold, or your allergies not getting any better despite being away from pollen. You can't smell, see, or detect these chemicals though. A smart air quality monitor, however, can. They can connect to your smartphone and give you constant updates, alters, and suggestions on how to improve your air quality. Once you've improved your air, you'll sleep a lot better and find indoors to be an actual escape from the evil that is pollen.

The Nest Protect is like the smoke detector you already have, but clearly from the 21st century. Whether you are home or away, the Nest Protect will alert you of smoke and carbon monoxide, and will even tell you where it is. Smoke in the kids' room? Too much carbon monoxide in the kitchen? Nest will let you know.

It also doesn't have those annoying chirps or beeps; it speaks to you in a calm but clear voice if you are home, and just a notification on your phone if you aren't. If it's out of battery, it won't wake you up at 2 am to let you know either. It performs a test of its batteries when you turn the lights off and will let you know that everything is okay with a pleasing green light. This is one of those smart interior air quality monitors that lasts a whole ten years too, so you don't have to worry about replacing it anytime soon. Just make sure you get the right one for you; if you're replacing battery smoke detectors, get the battery style, but if your smoke detector is wired, you'll need the wired style.

The Eve sensor is just so elegant. You'll barely even notice it's there, and if you do, it's very pretty to look at. It's not just a pretty face though. Eve analyzes those VOCs we talked about earlier and sends information right to your smartphone. In the app, you can see graphs that show your air quality data by day, week, month, or even year. That means through tracking how your quality has been improving, you can actually see results from using Eve.

Probably the best part is that Eve and Siri are best friends; yup, they can work together! You can ask Siri for the temperature and humidity and she will draw that information from Eve, so you can get all your information without even having to open the app. It's completely HomeKit enabled too, so if you're already starting to learn how to make your home a smart home, Eve is an excellent addition.

Awair is one of the most advanced smart interior air quality monitors you can get, and in my opinion, it's well worth the price. The system automatically tracks five different air quality factors: chemicals, humidity, CO2, temperature, and dust. Then, it gives you a number from 0–100 on the quality of your air, 100 obviously being perfect, along with a color. You literally don't even have to open your phone to check your air quality. If your quality is in the red or yellow zones, you can find personalized recommendations in the app on how to improve it.

For example, if your chemical (VOCs) reading is too high, it may suggest wiping down your furniture with a wet rag. If your humidity is too high, it will warn you that it can affect senstive skin. You really don't have to do any research on your own here; Awair figures everything out for you. Not only that, but Awair pairs with Alexa and Nest (mentioned above), making this one of those smart home gadgets you'll actually use and love. Plus it's made out of all natural materials like Walnut timber.

Netatmo has brought us not one, but two air quality monitors in one package. The smaller one goes outside to measure outdoor air and things like rain and temperature, while the larger one stays inside and can check the quality of the air you breathe while indoors. The indoor one can measure indoor pollution, and can alert you when it's time to air out your home. It'll coordinate with the outdoor one to know if it's nice out too! Even better, Netatmo's weather stations are Alexa compatible; so you can simply ask her what the temperature outside is.

It interacts with more than Alexa too. If you've got other devices in your smart home, you can just tell it to"switch off the automatic watering system if it rains." You don't even have to remember! Sleek, stylish, and smart, this is a great two-pack deal.

Have you been measuring radon in your home? Probably not, and you seriously should be. Radon poisoning is the number one cause of lung cancer among non-smokers, and kills more people than house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning combined per year. Radon can fluctuate per day and per floor of a building, so the only way to know if you're safe is to get a radon monitor.

Why get a plain one though when you get get a smart one? Wave is one of the only smart interior air quality monitors that also measures radon. It still keeps track of other air quality features like humidity and temperature, but you get the added bonus of tracking radon. Simply wave at it and Wave will show a green, yellow, or red light to tell you about your radon levels. If it's red, you're in danger! Radon is colorless and odorless, so there's no way to tell if you have high levels without a reader. It also had regular updates, so your product won't be out of date anytime soon. This smart device will seriously improve your home.

Want an air quality tracker that can go with you everywhere? Flow is the best choice in that department. Maybe you ride your bike to work. Flow tracks the air quality from your house, on the bike ride, and in your office, just by having it on you. It measures real-time concentrations of NO2, VOCs, PM2.5, and PM10. That's nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and two different types of particle pollution, if you didn't know. That's everything you need to understand your exposure and build healthy routines.

Not only can you learn if your home and office are of good air quality, you can check your commute too! Maybe you've been taking literally the most polluted route and need to change it up, or your office needs to learn how to open a window. Either way, Flow lets you keep track of your health so you know if you need to improve the air quality around you.

Some of these smart interior air quality monitors can take a while time to set up. Not so with Foobot's air quality monitor. It takes literally minutes; you just plug it in, sync it to your smartphone, and you're ready. It has really pretty LED lights to show you the air quality and comes in some more original and pleasing colors than the typical greens and reds we see with others.

It comes with an e-book to give you tips and tricks on how to improve your air quality, as well as insight into what might be causing your personal issues. If you are having trouble sleeping at night, it may be caused by high PM levels. If you're feeling particularly sneezy, it could be caused by dust mites. Foobot will let you know what's happening and how you can fix it.

Not only does this one monitor the air quality, this little guy can actually help to purify the air. Wynd's air purifier has a medical-grade filter in it to help rid the air of things like pollen, pet dander, and bacteria. Its monitor is detachable, so you can measure the air quality no matter where you go. Maybe you think your office is full of dust—bring the monitor in on the strap of your bag, then when you get home, check the app to see the results.

If it's just as dusty as you expected, bring the whole purifier with you! It weighs less than a pound so you can bring it easily with you wherever you go and make sure the air around you is clean and safe for you to breathe. It was the #1 most funded air purifier on Kickstarter for a reason!

Air purifiers are nice, but a lot of the time they just suck the pollutants in and stick them on a filter, so still have them hanging around, just in a filter. What if they were literally destroyed? Molekule does that. It eliminates viruses, mold, allergens, and airborne chemicals, so you definitely won't have any dust allergy trouble with this in your home. It actually breaks down these molecules into harmless ones. Talk about science in action!

People even said they stopped taking some of their allergy medication after putting the Molekule air purifier in their home. That alone makes this one of the best smart interior air monitors that money can buy. It's super quiet, sleek, and energy efficient, great for large rooms.