Thread by @safe_breathe

🫁As a clean air advocate, I'm thrilled to see IKEA making air quality monitors more wallet-friendly and widely available. Just seeing air quality monitors on the shelves of a big retailer like IKEA will improve awareness as people get interested in a product they potentially haven’t seen or even considered before. Even better, they’re at prices that make them accessible to almost everyone.

But I wanted to try these monitors for myself before getting too excited. Join me as I dive into the details of the IKEA Vindriktning & Vindstyrka air quality monitors and discuss whether you should consider them! 🧵1/

Firstly, let’s look at the cheaper ($15) Vindriktning. This monitor has a minimalist design and a traffic-light LED system that conveys the current air quality to the user. While the design is aesthetically pleasing, especially for this price, the LED system is very flawed, and the thresholds for the three colours were seemingly chosen by someone without knowledge of indoor air quality. Why? Well, here are the thresholds of PM2.5 (in μg/m³) for each LED colour:

- Green: 0-35
- Amber: 36-85
- Red: 86+

The issue? 5μg/m³ is the annual ‘safe’ level of PM2.5 as set by the WHO, and 15μg/m³ is the 24-hour 'safe' level. Since the green light, which indicates ‘good’ indoor quality, allows for up to 35μg/m³, we can quickly see a big issue with this monitor. 2/

What’s worse is that testing by @airgradienthq shows that while the sensor in the Vindriktning underreports PM2.5 concentrations by about 65%, it does pick up trends when compared to proven PM2.5 sensors. With some adjustments, this sensor could likely be accurate, but the terrible LED system needs a complete overhaul.

My suggested improvements for this monitor are:

- Change the thresholds so they are based on research and not some arbitrary values.

And one of the following:

1. Add multi-coloured LEDS that can show more colours for further detail. Dark green -> light green -> yellow -> bright orange -> dark orange -> light red, etc.

2. Add a small screen that shows a value in μg/m³ instead of the LEDs.

I don’t believe either of these options would add much to the production cost of the Vindriktning. Even if they did, I would prefer to pay $20 for a functional product than $15 for a useless one.

As it stands, I love the concept of the Vindriktning, but I can’t recommend this air quality monitor. Instead, save $15 and put it towards the much better value… 3/

Vindstyrka! This is IKEA’s more pricey (but still affordable) $49.99 air quality monitor. Luckily, this monitor has much more going for it, so let’s get started.

This monitor instantly has a lot more to offer. For example, it can be used with IKEA’s smart home system, and it shows temperature, humidity, and VOCs (but there’s a caveat to this last one) alongside PM2.5.

However, I’m here to discuss the accuracy of these devices, so I will focus on this aspect. Interestingly, the Vindstryka uses a far higher quality PM sensor - the SEN54 from Sensirion. This is instantly a much more accurate sensor, and if you buy it for yourself, you’re looking at spending around $30 for this sensor alone. This sensor has been found accurate by a range of studies, and it tends to stay within its stated ±10% accuracy.

The best part? On the Vindstyrka, a screen is used. A screen that, you might have already guessed, shows the exact PM2.5 concentration recorded by the sensor. This is a vast improvement over the cheaper Vindriktning, and its arbitrary traffic-light system. 4/

Unfortunately, IKEA still felt the need to include one confusing measuring system on the Vindstyrka. In this case, however, it’s with how the VOC concentration is displayed.

Rather than showing a value (as with the PM2.5 concentration), they opted to use an arrow system which displays one of three arrows: up, right, or down. According to the manual, these represent ‘ increasing, stable or decreasing level of TVOC’.

Of course, there is no mention of what these levels indicate or the thresholds for each. To me, this makes the VOC arrows useless, and I consider this only a PM2.5 monitor. With that said, it's still an affordable PM2.5 monitor, and some people will be interested despite the frustrating VOC measurements. 5/

So, if you’re curious about how the IKEA air quality monitors perform, I hope this has provided some clarification.

While I can’t recommend the Vindriktning (the $15 traffic-light monitor) to anyone in its current state, I love the concept of making air quality monitoring more accessible, and I hope a second-generation model is released with the issues fixed.

On the other hand, the more expensive (but still cheap compared to the competition) Vindstryka is a much more appealing option. It’s provides accurate PM2.5 readings, just be cautious of the VOC system. 6/

If you're interested in learning more, I have full reviews of both monitors here:

Vindstyrka:

Vindriktning: breathesafeair.com/ikea-vindstyrk…
breathesafeair.com/ikea-vindriktn…

If you would like to subscribe to see my latest air quality monitor reviews and get more information on air pollution, you can do so here. Thanks for reading!

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One thing I forgot to mention is that these are available in every country with IKEA. I bought mine in the Philippines. IKEA is very good with availability!