Originally published at: https://breathesafeair.com/purpleair-flex-and-purpleair-zen-review/
When I first started this website back in 2020, there were two air quality companies that I was well aware of even before writing my first articles – IQAir and PurpleAir. While I got a chance to test monitors from the former earlier this year, until recently, I never got to test anything from PurpleAir, which is quite a surprise considering how well-known and respected its monitors are! After many years, I finally got my hands on a few PurpleAir monitors about one month ago, and I’ve been testing them since. I received three monitors: 2x PurpleAir Zen (PA-II-Zen) and…
I sent this review to PurpleAir to see if they had any comments, and I got the following reply based on the downsides I mentioned regarding the monitors. I thought I would share it, both as a way to comment on the reply and as a way to remain transparent in the case that I update this review in the future.
- LED Behavior: We have found that tapping it more gently often leads to the best results. You also mentioned that the lights didn’t seem to remember their previous status when regaining power after a power loss. The latest firmware for the sensor should solve this. If you still have issues with it, let us know, and we’ll be happy to assist!
This does not change how I feel about the LEDs randomly changing when I haven’t actually touched the monitor, but it’s good to see firmware updates to fix issues like the LED status not being remembered between the device losing power and regaining it.
- Log in with Google: You don’t have to log in to see private sensors; you can use the link from the registration email instead. We plan to add other OAuth options in the future.
This was a mistake in my initial review. I am glad to have been corrected regarding this, and it is good to see more options are coming in the future. I’m a big fan of this change!
- Data Disagreement: I’m curious about the disagreement between the Zen and Touch data. By default, the map uses ATM data for outdoor sensors and CF1 for indoor sensors. Do you recall how the data was downloaded? This could at least partially explain the differences between the Zen and Touch data, as ATM and CF1 are different formulas from the Plantower sensors. Using the API, the same data type can be downloaded to ensure the most accurate comparison. Please let me know if you’d like to dig deeper into this.
I will need to come back to this once I’ve had the chance to run more comparisons. However, I exported (what I thought was) raw data from each monitor, and this might account for that difference. However, I also downloaded the data from both monitors with the EPA correction applied, and from what I know, this should have been applied similarly to both sensors’ data. I will need to re-run this testing again, as it turned me off the PurpleAir Touch quite significantly, and if the mistake was on my end, I will need to make some big updates to the article.
- Downloading Data: What was the issue you ran into with the download tool? We’d love to help! Something that might be of interest to you is that you can download data directly from the map graph. The real-time limit is still two days, so this won’t resolve all of your concerns, but I figured it might help ease some of your data frustrations. We’re also happy to assist with any API-related challenges.
I spent a long time, both before and after the review, trying to download data with the API tool, and I had so many issues that I just gave up. I will test this again, though, in time for my PurpleAir Touch review. I am still not a fan of the limit on data, though.
I appreciate all of this feedback from the team and I will certainly be testing these elements again in the coming weeks to see if my initial review needs some updating!