Tired, fatigued, or feeling congested? Sure, you might be sick or allergic to pollen. Or you could be living in a “sick building”. You should consult our top HEPA air purifiers comparison chart.
Sick building syndrome is usually represented by acute health issues experienced by the occupants of the dwelling. This includes fatigue, headache, and other symptoms that can’t be specifically associated with any one illness.
Where does Sick Building Syndrome come from? There is a variety of contributing factors that can cause these mild illnesses or symptoms. It could be the result of toxic materials used to construct the building, poor HVAC systems, or even plants or cleaning chemicals. This is why you should find a highly-rated air purifier for your home. A few great recommendations include the Germ Guardian CDAP5500BCA, Envion Ionic Pro, and the Coway AP1512HH.
So stop guessing and get yourself an Elgato Eve. At $79.99 it’s a no-brainer and at the very least, if nothing is detected, you can negate it as an issue as to why you feel so crappy during the day or at night when you arrive home.
Table of Contents:
Overview
Summary: An inexpensive smart air quality household sensor is without small fault, but a sound investment at just $79.99.
What We Liked
- Inexpensive for peace of mind
- Quick and easy setup
What We Didn’t Like
- Initial setup didn’t work – had to remove batteries/reset
- Only connects over Bluetooth, for now; HomeKit could enable anywhere connectivity
Setting Up The Eve
The setup of the Eve is straightforward and should be fairly painless. I stress fairly painless as my experience wasn’t without some minor issues. Included are a set of AA batteries, which will power the Eve for up to 6 months before you have to swap them out for new ones.
Once the batteries are installed you’ll need to download the accompanying Eve app and then follow the onscreen process to begin pairing. Provided you have Bluetooth activated on your mobile device – this is how the Eve Room connects to smartphones and tablets – the app will ask you to enter your Eve’s unique ID. You can do this manually, or automatically by pointing your phone’s camera at the back of the Eve box or the manual, which should display a unique number. Following that it should pair and activate the Eve.
However, in my case, it completed the initial setup and then wouldn’t show any readings or connect to the Eve Room. Since I knew it took some time for the Eve to collect data and analyze the compounds in the room I thought I’d try later that day – oh the pains of home automation. And later I did, to no avail. Whereupon I removed the batteries and in effect restarted the Eve. Presto, that worked and I was able to view data about the room. So lesson learned.
Room Readings and Measurement
The Eve automatically captures data throughout the day, allowing you to look back at historical numbers by month, day, and week, but also by the hour, which can be important for drawing corollaries. For example, why did the PPM (parts per million) increase at 8 am?
Accessing that data is simple as opening up the app and selecting the room in question. Of course, you’ll need to be within the Bluetooth range of the device to download the data, and assuming you are, it happens fairly quickly. Once completed, you’ll be able to review not only historical data about the room but the current air temperature, humidity, and air quality. Everything is displayed on a graph, showing the fluctuation over the day hour by hour. Or you can simply view a more generalized screen, which is probably best called an overview, displaying the temperature, humidity, and PPM. On the other hand, you can get a much simpler air purifier by checking out our Envion Four Seasons reviews.
Air quality value is displayed in colors ranging from red (bad) to green (excellent), and divided into “Excellent” (450-700 ppm), “Good” (700-1100 ppm), “Acceptable“ (1100-1600 ppm), “Moderate” (1600-2100 ppm), and “Poor” (above 2100 ppm). Elgato says that you should try to keep the air quality excellent to good, all within reason to who is in the room and what is happening. For instance, cooking and producing smoke will cause the readings to move into the red. This works great for a much smaller room but you can go through our Dyson TP04 Pure Cool Tower review, which works perfectly in about 400 square feet.
Examples of things that can cause “poor” or “moderate” readings: carpet, paint, furniture, printers, perfumes, cleaning products, tobacco smoke, or other household appliances.
Actionable Data
I have yet to capture a reading that remains in the red, though I’ve seen the data move in that direction, albeit for short periods, and then return to normal.
That being said, the graphs can be a bit cumbersome to navigate, but with some poking and prodding, I was able to get the data into a digestible enough format to lead me to believe that if something was glaring (i.e. a “poor” reading), I could utilize it to make some changes to my environment. Moreover, there is a compare option, which works only within the day and week views, allowing you to compare either the previous day or previous week to the current ones. Handy if you want to quickly compare historical data and see if there is a growing trend, which could indicate something is happening at that time of the day or week to cause the air quality to diminish.
Wrap Up
Look. At $80 you’d be foolish not to invest in an Elgato Eve Room. Setup issues aside, the data is invaluable, and provided it’s accurate, you’re making a small investment for some peace of mind. If you find that your air quality is poor, an investment in a HEPA filter, closing windows, or negating a cleaning product from your regimen could be the simple answer. But you won’t know until you capture the data and begin your A/B testing.
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