{"id":7008,"date":"2018-12-04T11:15:30","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T03:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/?p=7008"},"modified":"2020-07-15T11:57:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T03:57:45","slug":"huawei-air-quality-monitor-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/blog\/huawei-air-quality-monitor-test\/","title":{"rendered":"How Accurate Is the Huawei Air Quality Monitor? New Test!"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I started building DIY air purifiers in Beijing to protect my lungs from this\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2026I wanted to test the air in my home, but particle counters were really expensive. Most cost around $1,000 or $2,000 dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But then there was the Dylos, which I bought for about $260.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Just like air purifiers, the technology behind particle counters is actually really simple and cheap. The detector is just a laser and a photo receptor\u2014nothing super expensive. Fortunately for data nerds like me, the market has capitalized on this basic fact and exploded with even-more-affordable air quality monitors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Smart Air tested<\/a> two of these more affordable particle counters\u2014the Laser Egg and the Air Visual Node\u2014against the Dylos. The results<\/a> were pretty good!<\/span><\/p>\n

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The machines correlated highly (r<\/em>s \u2265 0.90) with official <\/span>PM2.5<\/span><\/a>\u00a0measurements.<\/span><\/p>\n

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On average, the three machines deviated from official PM2.5 statistics by less than 10 micrograms.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But now there are even cheaper machines coming out, such as this Huawei Honor\u534e\u4e3a\u8363\u8000 particle counter. This sells for 429 RMB (US$63) in China.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But is it any good?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Test<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

With the help of Smart Air volunteer LQ in Beijing, we tested the Huawei against\u00a0<\/span>official PM2.5 numbers over two days in March, 2018. The data collection was small, just 25 hourly data points.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the range in outdoor PM2.5 was wide, from 28 to 213 micrograms per cubic meter. (For reference, <\/span>the average in Beijing for 2017 was 58 micrograms<\/a>)<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Results<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

Overall, the Huawei (blue line) tracked the official PM2.5 numbers (orange line) pretty well. However, the Huawei consistently undercounted. At worst, the Huawei undercounted by 52 micrograms. That error is 5 times <\/span>the WHO annual limit<\/span><\/a> for PM2.5, so that\u2019s pretty big.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Huawei Particle Counter AQI Test Open Data<\/a><\/h3>\n

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On the whole, the Huawei correlated highly (<\/span>r <\/em>= 0.88) with the official numbers, although it performed on the low end of all the particle counter Smart Air has tested so far. I should warn that the Huawei test was done at a different time and location than the earlier tests, so some of the differences could be due to the testing.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Next I analyzed the average deviation\u2014on average, how many micrograms of discrepancy was there between the particle counter and the official numbers? This is where the Huawei was clearly the worst performer. It had double the average error of the other machines.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bottom Line<\/div>
Bottom Line: How Accurate Is the <span>Huawei <\/span>Air Quality Monitor<\/div>
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All in all, the Huawei scored worse than the Egg, Node, and Dylos. However, the correlation with official PM2.5 was high, and it\u2019s certainly good enough to tell you if the air you\u2019re breathing is toxic or safe, 10 micrograms or 200 micrograms. From my perspective, the Huawei is sufficiently accurate to:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Test whether a purifier is making your room air cleaner<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Tell whether your air is in the good range or unhealthy range<\/span><\/p>\n

But it is not sufficiently accurate to interpret the numbers 100% literally. If it says 100 micrograms, it could easily be 80 or 120 micrograms. There are other more accurrate pollution monitors<\/a> out there which cost only a little more. Yet for most everyday uses, the Huawei will suffice. <\/span><\/div>

Smart Air<\/div><\/div>\n

Breathe safe!<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I started building DIY air purifiers in Beijing to protect my lungs from this\u2026     \u2026I wanted to test the air in my home, but particle counters were really expensive. Most cost around $1,000 or $2,000 dollars.     But then there was the Dylos, which I bought … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1035,"featured_media":7027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,169,257],"tags":[278,344,343,285],"class_list":["post-7008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-pollution","category-air-quality-monitors","category-pm2-5","tag-air-quality","tag-huawei","tag-monitors","tag-review","resize-featured-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1035"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7008"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11560,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008\/revisions\/11560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}