After seeing the name Temtop come up in most conversations regarding consumer-grade air quality monitors, I’m thrilled to announce that I finally have one of their indoor air quality monitors for testing. Namely, the M10+. This monitor currently sits at the top of Temtop’s M range of indoor air quality monitors. If you want to learn more about this range and the differences between the monitors, please refer to the more complete post below:
Anyway, I’ve been using the M10+ for a couple of days, and I want to share my thoughts before my full review here. If you have any questions regarding the device or any topics you want covered in the full review, please let me know here, and I will do my best to answer them!
At first glance, the M10+ is a well-built, compact monitor. While it doesn’t achieve the tiny size of some air quality monitors like the Apollo AIR-1 or the Qingping Air Quality Monitor Lite, it is a very compact monitor that isn’t all that much bigger than a device like the Aranet4 Home or INKBIRD IAM-T1 (although, it’s certainly not pocketable unlike these two devices).
Below is a size comparison, but please don’t pay attention to the CO2 concentrations on each monitor, as the Temtop was not calibrated in this image.
Overall, I’m a fan of the general build quality, and I always love E-ink screens on air-quality monitors. It means that the screens aren’t viewable in the dark; it also means that they have fantastic contrast and viewing angles, making the screens a pleasure to view in the daytime or in the light.
However, I do have an issue with the screen, which shows only one pollutant at a time. For a device with a screen this large, I don’t see why I can’t see PM2.5, CO2 and VOC all from one view. Even my AirGradient monitor with an absolutely tiny screen is able to show all of these pollutants (and NOx) at once without the screen feeling cluttered. While I can change the pollutants shown on the screen via a button on top of the device, I feel quite let down by the fact that only one shows at a time. I recently expressed similar feelings with the Airthings View Plus. With that said, this is far from a deal-breaker, but it is an annoyance I have with the device.
One area of particular interest to me with this monitor is its use of a custom-made Temtop PM2.5 sensor. I haven’t tried one of these before, and I’m always extra curious about monitors that use custom-built sensors as opposed to sensors from big manufacturers like Plantower, Cubic, or Sensirion. While the VOC and CO2 sensors are from Sensirion (the CO2 sensor looks to be the SCD40 or SCD41), these are known to perform well.
I will need to keep an eye on the PM2.5 readings over the coming weeks, but so far, the values seem to read slightly above the Sensirion SPS30 and about half the Plantowers in PurpleAir and AirGradient devices. However, from my own findings, I trust the SPS30 more, so this is a good sign. Plantower sensors are also known to overreport, so again, this is likely a positive thing.
I have already found it quite interesting that the temperature readings on this monitor tend to be significantly higher than those on my calibrated Traceable monitor, my Aranet4 Home, and AirGradient ONE. While I need to spend more time looking into this, I suspect the temperature readings from this device are inaccurate. That said, it seems to be an almost systematic error so far.
Anyway, that’s it for now! If you have any questions about the device, please don’t hesitate to let me know.