I’m always on the lookout for more air quality monitors to try, and recently the Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor crossed my feed. Well, actually, I was Googling ‘best air quality monitors’ (totally not trying to see where my website ranks) and came across a WIRED article listing the Govee as the ‘Best Budget Air Quality Monitor for PM2.5’. Although the article itself wasn’t very good - there was almost no actual discussion around the accuracy, performance, or sensors themselves - I was curious to try the so-called ‘Best Budget Air Quality Monitor for PM2.5’ and decided to go ahead and purchase one.
I’ve recently noticed quite a trend of IoT companies jumping into air quality monitoring, and I guess it’s the next sensor that makes sense as air quality is gaining a lot of attention at the moment. I’ve already tried the Apollo AIR-1, Qingping has been in the industry for a while, and I’m currently also testing the Ruuvi AQ Monitor. Needless to say, a lot of IoT companies are jumping into the space. I’m curious to see where Govee fits in.
While it’s too early for me to fully share my thoughts with the device, I do have some initial impressions that I want to share. I will continue to keep this article updated as I discover more things, and I will eventually also share my full review here. Anyway, let’s get started!
Price: at $35-$45 (depending on where you purchase it), it’s true that this is a very low cost PM2.5 monitor. I will be opening up the monitor at a later stage (and comparing it to other devices), but I would be very curious to see what kind of sensor they can fit in at this price especially considering that they can’t be selling it in incredibly large quantities. In other areas, the device has done a great job of feeling a lot more premium than the price would suggest - the screen is vibrant and bright, the design is very modern and eye-catching, and the connectivity is fantastic. If a visitor sees this device, I’m sure they would assume it’s worth at least double the asking price.
Set-up: The set-up process for the device was super straightforward and I ran into no issues at all. The device does not support 5 GHz WiFi (this is pretty common amongst air quality monitors and IoT devices, though) so I did have to connect it to my 2.4 GHz network, but since most of my devices are already here it doesn’t really matter.
Application: There isn’t much I can say here, because this is my first Govee device so I can barely scratch the surface of the app. With that said, I’m not a big fan of having such a big push to sell products through the app. I will definitely be connecting this to Home Assistant and using it there, as I only use one of the five tabs of the Govee app with this monitor.
While I still need to test the device more, there are some aspects that seem quite exciting (such as the 2s refresh time - but I’m unsure if these are actually new readings). I’m also quite curious to tear this device down!