Plume Labs: Air Quality App Ratings and Reviews

Amazing Air💨App

Last night I forwarded the Plume AQI Alert Warning to T&M (my family in Ft Thomas, KY).

Here's their reply this morning:

We’ve been sneezing 🤧

I've been using Plume over two years & elated when it displayed Moderate AQI at the time I was experiencing breathing problems outdoors (I do have asthma), but not really bothered until then. I thought it was my imagination or something else but delighted when Plume validated my poor breathing. I've been using it ever since, including determining best time to garden, walk, etc. I am extremely pleased with Plume & have highly recommend it to family & friends, especially with asthma & allergies.
Sadly my asthma Speciliast wasn't aware or interested in Plume when I tried describing how helpful it has been last couple of years. I'm taking him Report printouts & info on my next visit as I believe they should be telling their patients about it, instead of others way around. I treasure this app. I do have one request please. I can no longer bring up world view, (moving the map around), viewing varying degrees of AQI,especially in Middle East which had very poor AQI. Behold sat Israel with abundance of fresh air! Can you please bring back World View? Thank you for this amazing air app.

No longer any reason to keep

I used to be a happy Plume app user and now all that is gone. Don’t be mislead by the high rating, which this app is riding on the basis of the old version before its redesign for the worse. It always had wildly inaccurate information, but at least the ‘North Africa-through-Asia-black-belt’ on the full World Pollution Map it displayed gave you a conversation starter at parties. Now, the UI/aesthetic look has been refreshed whereas overall UX has tanked into this being just a sales platform for their indicators without which Plume can never get to data accuracy. I worry for Plume because it’s in a “no man’s land” and so succeeding in neither direction. It needs to squarely decide: is it a data company or a hardware company? Are we its customers OR its data providers? If the latter, for such an ambitious project as distributed world pollution tracking, it needs to figure out how to get the AQ sensors into people’s hands for free: either gift them with VC or grant money, or work towards a handset standard so people’s phones include these sensors built in. If the former, it needs to rethink its hardware focus from tracking to aggregating 3rd party AQ data which remains more accurate, and maybe deliver more value like gamify things like Niantic did with indoor mapping and Pokemon Go.

The Only App So Far That Delivers Accurate AQI Readings

Living in the Yucatán, dust comes and goes on the Tradewinds from North Africa and I know when the dust is at high levels, even inside the house, which can be terrible at times. There is no other app in comparison to this one, that provides the accuracy needed to prepare for these dust events. I have been testing different apps, mainly weather apps, for the last couple of years, and those figures are way off- There is a huge difference, mostly showing very low AQI figures, when the air quality, obviously, is very poor.

Good app but privacy reservations

Plume Labs has not provided its privacy policy to Apple, which would have allowed its users to easily understand its privacy tenets and, in particular, whether advertising cookies are used (they are) and if those cookies are good or bad Samaritans (I.e tracking you ALL AROUND the web.) Setting my privacy qualms aside for now, the app is good, albeit a bit heavy on the marketing side of their mobile pollution sensor.

EDIT: after reading Plume Labs privacy policies on their web site- I can confirm that they use third-party ad trackers (I.e those little « gremlin » trackers which follow you wherever you go….). For being late to fill out Apple’s own privacy labels and using me as a product to monetize without asking me if it is OK, I am removing one more star and will abstain from using the product for now

Look no further!

This app does what is says and quite well.

I’ve used it in Chinese, Japanese and English and the functionality was consistent across all three languages.

The limitations I could see were;

(1) there was no way to modify the city list; you have to first delete the cities and re-enter them in the order you prefer.

(2) when you delete a city, the last city in your list is “promoted” to top of the list. That makes it even harder to re-sequence your list...

and,

(3) there is no way to select which city appears in the widget, so if you want to see your city at a glance (in the widget) it has to be at the top of your cities. Otherwise you have to fiddle around with the list, back to (1) and (2).

Finally (4), there is no way to add air quality tracking stations that may not otherwise be listed in the city list.

Truth be said, these are really minor points that don’t take away from the functionality and useful information, at all.

Great app. Recommend it if you’re tracking air quality in your area.

Developer Response ,

Many thanks for your review and detailed feedback! I've passed on your concerns to our development team to take into account for future updates. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us and we hope to address your concerns in the near future. If you have any further suggestions don't hesitate to get in touch with us at support@plumelabs.com. Thanks again and all the best! Joe for Plume.

Everyone should be using this APP

I've been using Plume for almost a year and have introduced it to many people who were not aware of how important it is to monitor AQI especially when you have young children. My children also use this App on their own now.
I love the new improvements and the ease of use. As an outdoor athlete it has helped me tremendously in managing the quality and amount of time I spend outside over the last year which in turn has impacted my health and the health of my family. I highly recommend.

Plume AQI is totally out of sync with Airnow and purple air sensor s

Where exactly is plume getting its data from??!

We are experiencing some serious forest for smoke in my corner of the world, and plume lab keeps projecting AQI scores that seem to have nothing to do with reality. The nearest EPA and purple air sensors say our pm2.5 levels are high and ozone even higher, but plume has pm10 as the highest pollution, with pm2.5 and ozone as moderate. Maybe plume has it’s own AQI absolute scores, but it’s concerning that the pollution trumped aren’t ranked relative to one another the same way that nearby sensors rank them.

I used to trust plume to make decisions about when my children were safe to play out side and when I could ride a bike to work, but now that I see that plume’s projections do not correlate to any of the sensors around me, I do not trust plume. I also notice that when plume gets it wrong, they revise their AQI history retroactively.

I will just have to rely on purple air and the EPA Air Now sites to guess the present pollution levels.

I did direct questions to plume’s customer service before leaving this feedback, but they did not clarify anything with their response

So far so good!

Just learned about this and got it on the basis of the reviews. I intend to go with the Flow as well. I cannot judge the accuracy but it seems to offer so much more than the apps I had been using, and I am very susceptible to pollution-related health issues. I do have the luxury of choosing where I get my exercise and I expect this to help me decide where to spend time. If it helps me I will also be sharing information about this product with elderly neighbors as respiratory issues loom large in this part of the world.

Great if you have asthma

I use this daily so I know the best time to go out for exercise. You can set up morning and evening notification updates. Love that it automatically locates the city you are in which is great since I travel a lot.

The developer is very timely in responding to requests. Would like to see option for am/pm in addition to the 24 hour clock.

Under the Settings tab, there is an offer for a hand held air quality monitor for those who are interested in taking their own readings.

Developer Response ,

Thank you very much for your suggestion. We value all feedback from our users here at Plume, and I have logged your request as part of our ongoing development process. We are constantly working to make our global forecasting more in depth, but as you can imagine it is an incredibly complex process requiring extensive resources. Little by little, however, we are working to make the air you breathe more transparent. If you have any other feedback or requests, don't hesitate to drop us an email at support@plumelabs.com! Thanks again, Joe for Plume.

Effective, clear, useful.

The data visualization/interface is intuitive, effective and powerful. I have not analyzed the accuracy of the data, and I am sure that in a large city such as Toulouse it might be inaccurate depending on where you are, but as far as using it as a general indicator as when to plan our outings with our infant, it's useful. I wish there were more data samplings that would allow the app to differentiate pollution levels between a secluded park and a major motorway. If this could tap into amateur data readings, that would be ideal!