Airthings View Plus Air Quality Monitor
Buy this if radon is a real concern where you live, or you are moving into a home and want to know before you commit. For that job it has almost no rival at this level. If you do not care about radon, a cheaper multi-sensor monitor covers the rest of what it does for a lot less. Two honest catches. The price is high for something that only measures and never cleans the air. And the headline sensor, radon, needs two to three weeks of data before the number is trustworthy, so patience is part of the purchase. Taken for what it is, a careful long-term watch on your indoor air, it is excellent.
Our editorial rating, not aggregated user reviews
If you want to know what is actually in your air, this is the monitor to beat, and the reason is radon. Very few consumer devices measure it, and radon is the one indoor pollutant with a serious long-term health case behind it. On top of that it reads CO2, PM2.5, VOCs, humidity, temperature and air pressure, and shows the ones you pick on a clear e-ink display you can read across a room. The app is genuinely good, with history and sensible alerts. Two things keep it from a higher score. It costs roughly double a typical multi-sensor monitor that skips radon. And radon itself takes weeks of readings to mean anything, so this is a slow-burn instrument, not a quick check.
Pros
- Measures radon, which almost no other consumer monitor does, and radon is the indoor pollutant with the strongest health case
- Covers the rest of the essentials too: CO2, PM2.5, VOCs, humidity, temperature and air pressure
- The e-ink display shows the readings you choose and stays legible across a room, with a colour cue for good or bad
- Long battery life, quoted at up to two years on six AA cells, so it is not another thing to keep charging
- The app is one of the better ones, with clear history, trends and alerts you can actually tune
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, with Alexa, Google and IFTTT if you want to act on the readings
Cons
- Expensive for a monitor, roughly double a good multi-sensor unit that leaves radon out
- It only monitors. It tells you the air is bad but does nothing to fix it, so budget for a purifier separately
- Radon needs two to three weeks of readings before the figure means anything, so it is no help for a quick decision
- The e-ink screen refreshes on movement nearby, so it is a glance tool, not a live-updating dashboard
- You need the app and an account to get the most out of it, with limited use from the display alone
- Runs on six AA batteries or a USB-C tether, and battery life drops if you poll radon and sync more often
Specifications
- Measures
- Radon, CO2, PM2.5, VOCs, humidity, temperature, air pressure
- Display
- 2.9-inch e-ink showing four chosen values, with a motion-activated colour indicator (green, amber, red)
- Connectivity
- 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy, using Airthings' own link to the app and hub
- Power
- Six AA batteries, quoted up to two years, or a USB-C cable for continuous power
- App
- Real-time alerts, long-term history and trends, plus Alexa, Google Assistant and IFTTT
- Radon
- Reported in pCi/L or Bq/m³ depending on region; the reading settles over weeks, not hours
- Alerts
- Custom thresholds for radon, CO2, PM2.5, VOCs, temperature and humidity, pushed to your phone
- Mounting
- Wall bracket included, or stand it on a shelf