Air Matters

This review is for Australia. I’m not sure how state monitors are added elsewhere. Here AirMatters has decided to add a government monitoring station for every suburb and locality. This is despite these monitoring stations not existing. This means if I’m located closer to a suburb centre than a community device the readings will be waaaaay off. As there are only a handful of community devices in my region this happens more often than not. I’ve deleted this app and started using AirCare instead. It’s a shame because AirMatters has a superior user experience. But that’s pointless if the data is wrong.

The app is great in terms of functionality but why is it 250MB? Ad tracking frameworks? Come on…

Too hard to pair gave up after several attempts with various settings Didn’t cost much and has some interesting info.

Widgets not working

Love this app. How to remove ads?

Seems to be taken from inside a house with a wood fire. All other local sites show very good-AQI of less than 10. This app shows “ very poor” AQI 120. Clearly is either incorrect or relies on very few measurements. Canberra Australia

Had this app for months but 2 months ago Sydney only shows the air quality at either 48 or 52. There have been days where I can see from the city up to the mountains and days where the sky is dirty but this app never seems to change the air quality rating. Need to find one that works

There seems to draw on a number of unofficial sources that all read AQI 120. I can change the source used, but it always eventually defaults back to a local useless source. Subscription cancelled.

The app used to take only official air quality data so you knew what you were reading. Not it utilises open access data time show many more map data points. That is nice in theory of course but practically suffers from that open source data often not representing what outside air quality is like. I have often seen values of over 200 and less than 30 next to each other. One is likely indoors in a filtered environment and the other reflects actual outdoor conditions (there are bushfires nearby). This is as bad if not worse then the algorithms some apps use which seem equally poor and estimating air quality when you you need it (that is when it’s not just good). The problem is you can’t tell what is what, it is very misleading and easy to think the wrong data is correct. Really disappointed the app went this way, especially when we need robust data with all the poor air quality we are getting at the moment.

Data only updates once a day at 5:00am, making it wildly inaccurate, real shame.