[jack12]

Anyone getting an air quality monitor specifically because of an interest in CO2 needs to be a bit wary, a lot of them claim to have a CO2 sensor but are actually just predicting CO2 levels based on other sensors designed to measure human occupancy. CO2 sensors are/were very popular for HVAC systems to use as a proxy reading of human occupancy levels and general air quality to meet air quality requirements. Now more modern (cheaper) air quality sensors are available which measure a mix of VOCs exhaled by people instead of CO2 but have an output mode that emulates the reading from a CO2 sensor at a similar occupancy level so that HVAC systems wouldn't have to redesign their control systems / formulas, usually marketed as "equivalent CO2" (or eCO2) readings.

Because they're called eCO2 sensors while being cheaper and lower power than real CO2 sensors, many air quality monitors have been using them and then surfacing their readings as "CO2 levels" under the mistaken belief that they can use the sensor to measure CO2. But it won't measure environmental CO2 at all, just predict the amount of CO2 the humans in a room would typically generate. Which is all you need for air quality monitoring, but just be aware you're not actually measuring CO2 if that's what you're curious about.

There are monitors with real CO2 sensors, but you'll want to look for a teardown to see what sensor is actually being used before you purchase. The Awair 2 seems to have a real NDIR CO2 sensor (Telaire T6703), for example: https://wiki.liutyi.info/display/CO2/Awair+2+inside#Awair2in...