Support & Community

No, this device is not a carbon monoxide alarm.

Do not rely on this device to protect life, health or property. We are not to be held liable for any damage resulting from use of the device which contradicts this advisory.

Airgeek does include a carbon monoxide (CO) sensor for long-term monitoring of your background CO concentration. Consequently, it can also detect when CO concentration rises to a potentially unsafe level. We believe it would be very irresponsible on our part if the device just ignored this condition and remained silent, and thus we did include an acoustic alarm.

This feature must however not be relied upon, as it isn't the device's intended function. It's the last line of defense in case everything else (such as a dedicated, certified CO alarm) fails. Airgeek is not a certified CO alarm.

We highly recommend that you educate yourself about the dangers carbon monoxide may pose in your home, and you should definitely buy a dedicated, certified CO alarm, as it may save your life some day, or the lives of your family. Unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning resulted in 289,000 deaths globally^[1] in 2021.

Please reach out if you have any questions.

No, this device is not a fire alarm and is not capable of detecting fire.

Do not rely on the device to protect life, health or property. We are not to be held liable for any damage resulting from use of the device which contradicts this advisory.

Please reach out if you have any questions.

Volatile Organic Compounds are an important class of indoor air pollutants. Examples of VOCs include ethanol (alcohol), formaldehyde, acetone, various scents of perfumes and hundreds of other chemicals. Indoors, these chemicals are released from cleaning agents, paint, vinyl flooring, furniture, etc. Many VOCs cause irritation of the eyes, nose and throat; some are known carcinogens.

At first, the omission of a VOC sensor may thus seem like a flaw. After all, most household and office air quality monitors on the market measure VOCs—so it can't be too difficult?

It's incredibly difficult (and thus very expensive) to measure VOCs right. The vast majority of consumer devices on the market uses metal-oxide VOC sensors which are inexpensive but come with serious drawbacks:

1. They are broadband sensors: They react to hundreds of different gases, but their output is a single number. There is no way to distinguish between the chemicals.

2. Their sensitivity varies widely with the chemical. As an illustration, a single molecule of ethanol might elicit the same sensor response as 2,000 molecules of formaldehyde.

3. They are subject to drift over time, as the chemical reactions occurring at the hot plate of the metal oxide sensor continuously change its characteristics. This is why these sensors don't output a direct measured value, but rather an “index”: this is the measured value relative to past measurements, usually 24 hours.

4. Device-to-device variation: Even brand new and calibrated, two metal-oxide sensors typically differ in readings up to 15 %.

This means that:

• It's impossible to compare measurements from different devices because of the large device-to-device variance.

• It's impossible to compare current measurements to past measurements, because the value is a relative index.

• When the index is very high (indicating poor air quality), it can either mean a very harmful VOC is present in a very high concentration, or it can mean a completely benign chemical is present in a tiny concentration, and there's no way to distinguish between these cases.

• When the index is very low (indicating great air quality), it can mean the air is completely fresh and clean, or it can mean it's extremely poor, but still the best the sensor has registered in the past 24 hours, and there's no way to distinguish between these cases.

To put it bluntly: the output of a metal oxide VOC sensor is virtually useless, because it's impossible to interpret what it really means, if anything at all. This is true for all metal oxide-based VOC sensors, regardless of brand.

Instead of an elusive air quality index, Airgeek measures the concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) using a high-quality, accurate and absolute NO₂ concentration sensor. NO₂ is an important indoor air pollutant and is moderately correlated with the presence of many other VOCs.^[1]

We believe it's much better to have an accurate measurement of a single important pollutant, rather than an inexplicable value representing hundreds of assorted chemicals.