Seems innacurate at best or defective at worst

1.0

Received this unit to measure formaldehyde levels inside my home and work areas precipitated by the recent stories of high levels in some laminate products. This "monitor" seemed like a better way to go than one-off test kits and I have other Extech products of acceptable quality, not expecting perfection but measurements to give us a ballpark and the unit claims a resolution of 0.01ppm. Now there should be a small amount of naturally occurring formaldehyde in the air and accepted target levels for in a home are < .08 (WHO) and < .05 (CARB) so my surprise when the monitor showed 0.00 in three different environments during multiple sample periods with older construction and various laminates in those environments, and 0 outdoors as well. The measurements of 0 does not give me much confidence, given the stated resolution of 0.01 I would likely see something registered so I spoke with Extech support about the measurements and at first indicated our air was clean, then agreed the unit could be defective given the same results everywhere. I will return the product for a replacement, however, I feel if the replacement also fails to register anything other than zero then it is simply not an effective tool.

Verified Purchase David McCann on Mar 31, 2015 I found this helpful (2)