Anyone who suffers from allergies or any kind of respiratory illness knows that air contaminants can make matters worse. With the Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor ($59.99), you can keep an eye on particulate matter (PM2.5) levels in your home and trigger other Govee smart devices, such as an air purifier, when air quality is poor. It’s easy to set up and takes accurate measurements, but it doesn’t offer as many Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) readings as the Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor ($69.99).

Compact and Simple

The oval Smart Air Quality Monitor measures 2.5 inches by 5.3 inches by 1.5 inches (HWD) and has a glossy black LED screen that displays the current PM2.5 level, room temperature, and humidity level. An LED strip below the PM2.5 reading is green when the level is between 0 and 35, turns blue when it’s between 36 and 75, turns yellow when the level is between 76 and 115, and glows red when the level is greater than 115.

There’s an air quality sensor on the right side of the device, a USB-C power port on the back, and a function button on top that is used for pairing the monitor with the app, as well as cycling through the PM2.5, temperature, and humidity readings. The monitor comes with an 80-inch USB-C-to-USB-A power cable, a USB power adapter, and a user manual.

Govee App Experience

The monitor uses the same mobile app (available for Android and iOS) as other Govee devices, including the Lynx Dream String Lights ($69.99).

Once you've paired the monitor with the app, it appears in a panel on the app's home screen where you can see the temperature, humidity, and PM2.5 readings. The monitor also appears on the Device screen with the same readouts. Tap the panel to view hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly readings presented in colorful charts.

The monitor also supports Dew Point and Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) readings. VPD is a metric used by plant growers that takes temperature, humidity, and leaf temperature readings and combines them into a single unit of measure. Missing, however, are the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon monoxide (CO) measurements that you get with the Amazon Smart Air Monitor. Pressing the Export Data button at the bottom of the screen will send all the data to your email address.

Tap the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen to access the monitor’s settings screen. Here you can enable push alerts that will tell you if the air has become better or worse, as well as set thresholds for PM2.5, temperature, and humidity levels. You can also calibrate the monitor if the temperature and humidity readings aren't quite in sync with your thermostat, change between Celsius and Fahrenheit, set the display brightness level, and configure Wi-Fi settings.

You can call on Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant by voice for readings, but there's no support for Apple HomeKit or IFTTT.

Setting Up and Using the Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor

Installing the Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor is easy. I opened the app, plugged in the monitor, and tapped the plus icon in the upper right corner of the Device screen. I tapped the Bluetooth icon and my phone's Buetooth radio discovered the monitor immediately. I clicked the function button when prompted, gave the device a name, and tapped Done. I entered my Wi-Fi password and tapped Done again to complete the installation.

The monitor worked well in testing. I performed my usual air purifier tests, which include lighting a stick of incense and recording the PM2.5 levels as the air is being scrubbed. I placed the monitor next to a Smartmi Air Purifier P1 ($179.99) and compared readings as the P1 did its thing. Govee's readings were consistent with the P1's readings, which is good.

To see how the monitor interacts with other Govee devices, I linked it to a Govee Smart Air Purifier. With the devices paired and the purifier in Auto mode, the monitor triggered the purifier fan to run at high speed when the PM2.5 level hit 85. When the monitor reading fell to 80, the fan switched to medium speed, and when the reading hit 58, the purifier fan switched to low speed. At 0 the fan turned off. Additionally, the monitor’s real-time PM2.5 reading appeared on the screen of the air purifier app (the purifier itself does not offer any air quality information, it just scrubs the air).

Smart, But Limited

The Govee Smart Air Quality Monitor does a good job of measuring particulate matter, room temperature, and humidity levels in your home and will alert you if any of these levels reach a specific threshold. It can also trigger certain Govee appliances in order to bring air quality readings back to an acceptable level. The mobile app offers lots of charts that let you keep a historical record of the air quality in your home, but we’d be more impressed if this monitor offered more IAQ measurements. If you need to keep an eye on carbon monoxide and volatile organic compound levels in addition to PM2.5 levels, the Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor may be a better fit.