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Often the morn­ing after the hol­i­day there is a need to go some­where, but first it is impor­tant to under­stand whether it is already pos­si­ble to dri­ve or the alco­hol has not yet com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared. To find out for sure, they use spe­cial devices — ana­lyz­ers of the con­cen­tra­tion of ethanol vapors, and in a sim­ple way — breath­a­lyz­ers. How to choose a good breath­a­lyz­er for home use, we will dis­cuss with pro­fes­sion­als.

 

Editor’s Choice

Inspector AT750

Breath­a­lyz­er Inspec­tor AT750 is a handy device that fits in your pock­et and is use­ful for assess­ing the lev­el of alco­hol in exhaled air vapor. The breath­a­lyz­er from the South Kore­an man­u­fac­tur­er is dis­tin­guished by reli­able assem­bly, qual­i­ty and mea­sure­ment accu­ra­cy. At the same time, the scale step is only 0.01 ppm, which not every mod­el of breath­a­lyz­ers can boast of. There is also a set of 6 mouth­pieces in the kit — it is bet­ter not to lose them, since the mouth­pieces are not sold sep­a­rate­ly.

The breath­a­lyz­er is pow­ered by two AAA alka­line bat­ter­ies. The sen­sor readi­ness takes only 10–15 sec­onds, the purge time is 5 sec­onds, and the test itself lasts 3–10 sec­onds. The mem­o­ry is designed for 10 tests, so you can com­pare the results. How­ev­er, cal­i­bra­tion is required only after 500 tests, which is usu­al­ly more than 12 months.

Sep­a­rate­ly, I would like to note the styl­ish appear­ance of the breath­a­lyz­er — a black glossy case, an intu­itive inter­face.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

Top 9 rating

1. Delta AT-600

In a neat box they sell the device itself, instruc­tions along with a table of the ratio of alco­hol in blood and in exhaled air, as well as a set of sealed mouth­pieces. Pow­ered by an AAA bat­tery, you can charge it via microUSB, which is includ­ed. The analy­sis process takes about five sec­onds. The device has a mem­o­ry for the last ten mea­sure­ments. If you do not touch the device with­in 20 sec­onds, it will turn itself off. When alco­hol is detect­ed in the blood, the screen begins to flash red uneasi­ly, and the device emits a series of sig­nals. The result can be switched to dif­fer­ent units. Buy­ers note the qual­i­ty assem­bly. The details here are real­ly tight­ly fit­ted to each oth­er. The plas­tic is pleas­ant to the touch. How­ev­er, in the reviews, users com­plain that the device does not detect resid­ual alco­hol in the blood — the one that per­sists 8–10 hours after drink­ing.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Dingo E‑010

Characteristics

Pros and cons

3. Ritmix RAT-310

This is a sim­ple appli­ance from a Chi­nese brand of small house­hold appli­ances. But it’s wild­ly pop­u­lar in 2022 due to its afford­able price, which is why we could­n’t help men­tion­ing it in the rank­ing of the best breath­a­lyz­ers. The man­u­fac­tur­er also has even cheap­er mod­els, but there are too many ques­tions about the qual­i­ty of the mea­sure­ment. It comes with five plas­tic mouth­pieces in the pack­age. They are not dis­pos­able. You are expect­ed to process them after mea­sure­ment and reuse them. In prin­ci­ple, giv­en the posi­tion­ing of this device as a per­son­al device, there is noth­ing wrong with that. He pre­pares for the launch for 10 sec­onds and offers the same amount of time to blow into the mouth­piece. Ready for the next mea­sure­ment quick­ly enough. Users con­duct­ed exper­i­ments by blow­ing inside imme­di­ate­ly after drink­ing kvass. The device reacts to vapors in the oral cav­i­ty, but if you wait a few min­utes, it does not detect alco­hol in the blood. This is a kind of indi­ca­tor of good accu­ra­cy of the device.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

5. Alcogran AG-100

This breath­a­lyz­er is equipped with the most pop­u­lar sen­sor for mea­sur­ing the lev­el of alco­hol in exhaled air — elec­tro­chem­i­cal. Mea­sure­ment accu­ra­cy up to a thou­sandth ppm. Accord­ing to the instruc­tions, the sen­sor is enough for at least 1000 mea­sure­ments. After that, the device must be giv­en for inspec­tion to a tech­ni­cal ser­vice, where they will cal­i­brate or state unsuit­abil­i­ty for fur­ther oper­a­tion. It can show that the resource is not so big. We has­ten to dis­suade that by the stan­dards of breath­a­lyz­ers, this is a very good “mar­gin of safe­ty.” Local mouth­pieces are equipped with a check valve. Due to this, it will not be pos­si­ble to sim­u­late exha­la­tion. It is pow­ered by only one “lit­tle fin­ger” bat­tery. There is no way to charge the bat­tery from USB. Although one ele­ment for per­son­al use is enough for sev­er­al years, if the bat­tery is of high qual­i­ty. If the sen­sor detects intox­i­ca­tion, the device starts to emit a char­ac­ter­is­tic squeak, and the dis­play is high­light­ed in red.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

6. DRIVESAFE II

A high-pre­ci­sion device from Cana­da that mea­sures the con­cen­tra­tion of ethanol vapor in exhaled air. It has an elec­tro­chem­i­cal sen­sor. You can buy for enter­pris­es to per­form, for exam­ple, pre-trip inspec­tions of dri­vers. For this, it has the nec­es­sary cer­tifi­cates. If the sub­ject exhales insuf­fi­cient­ly, the device will not work and will sig­nal this. This way you can avoid cheat­ing. LCD dis­play with bright green back­light. The col­or changes, depend­ing on the degree of intox­i­ca­tion of the patient, to orange or red. The inscrip­tions on the case are Rus­si­fied

Characteristics

Pros and cons

7. SITITEK PRO2

One of the most rel­e­vant devices on the mar­ket for the best breath­a­lyz­ers in 2022. The sen­sor here is a semi­con­duc­tor — you can read more about their fea­tures in our review below. Mouth­pieces are not includ­ed, and there is nowhere to put them. Exha­la­tion must be done in a spe­cial hole. The device is com­pact and, thanks to its round­ed shape, lies well in the hand. The main fea­ture that dis­tin­guish­es this breath­a­lyz­er from its com­peti­tors is the watch. For them, a sep­a­rate screen is dis­played above the main one. It dis­plays not only the cur­rent time, but you can dis­play the air tem­per­a­ture and the timer. Or set an alarm. To be hon­est, the feel­ing that the man­u­fac­tur­er sim­ply stuffed an elec­tron­ic watch into the case does not leave, but maybe this will come in handy for some­one. Between tests, you need to main­tain an inter­val of one minute. The results are dis­played as a per­cent­age of alco­hol in the exha­la­tion or ppm. On one charge of two AAA bat­ter­ies, it can with­stand 200 tests.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

8. Alcohol detector Mark V

An inter­est­ing device, rem­i­nis­cent of a flip phone from the last decade. It is imme­di­ate­ly clear that Chi­nese engi­neers worked on the hull. Although, judg­ing by the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the man­u­fac­tur­er, this is a joint devel­op­ment with a com­pa­ny from the Unit­ed States. The device has pecu­liar elon­gat­ed mouth­pieces resem­bling a pipe. They are reusable. The device comes in a sol­id case. It has a col­or dis­play. You can order a pow­er adapter to work from a wall out­let. If more expen­sive kits with cable and soft­ware to enter all the results into a data­base of a com­put­er pro­gram. Up to two thou­sand last mea­sure­ments are stored in mem­o­ry. The device con­trols the dura­tion of the exha­la­tion and, in case of insuf­fi­cient time, will prompt you to repeat the pro­ce­dure. Oper­ates on four “lit­tle” bat­ter­ies.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

9. Airline ALK-L-01

We do not urge to take seri­ous­ly such a sim­ple device. It is rather a curi­ous sou­venir-toy. It comes with a key­chain and can be hung on a key­chain. And it also has a built-in LED flash­light — a nice bonus. You need to hold down the pow­er but­ton through­out the pro­ce­dure. Mouth­piece instal­la­tion is not pro­vid­ed here. The patient exhales direct­ly into a spe­cial hole on the body of the breath­a­lyz­er. There is no screen here. The result will show one of the LEDs. If you are clean, it will turn green. If the con­cen­tra­tion of alco­hol in the exhaled air does not exceed 0.2, then the mid­dle yel­low light will light up. For oth­er indi­ca­tors, red col­or. Between tests you need to take a break of three min­utes. The man­u­fac­tur­er also rec­om­mends Do not eat or smoke for 20 min­utes before the test. Although he accu­rate­ly deter­mines intox­i­ca­tion, so if you need the most bud­getary device, you can pur­chase it.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

How to choose a breathalyzer

We asked a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the MedPoint24 com­pa­ny, which man­u­fac­tures and installs com­plex­es for pre-trip med­ical exam­i­na­tions of per­son­nel, to tell about the rules and cri­te­ria for choos­ing the best breath­a­lyz­ers. The com­po­si­tion includes a breath­a­lyz­er, since the deter­mi­na­tion of the con­tent of alco­hol vapor in the exhaled air is a manda­to­ry pro­ce­dure, with­out which dri­vers are not allowed to board the flight. Says the com­pa­ny’s lead mar­keter Eka­te­ri­na Galustyan.

What to look out for

In the lan­guage of pro­fes­sion­als, a breath­a­lyz­er is called an ethanol vapor con­cen­tra­tion ana­lyz­er in exhaled air. Here’s what to look for when choos­ing a device:

• the abil­i­ty to switch the dis­play from mg / l to ppm and vice ver­sa;
• the pres­ence of con­ven­tion­al bat­ter­ies and a pow­er sup­ply;
• the abil­i­ty to change the fun­nel to the mouth­piece from the kit.

Types of breathalyzers

• With semi­con­duc­tor sen­sors. The small­est group. The sen­sor itself is a porous sub­stance. When a per­son blows air through it, it absorbs alco­hol mol­e­cules. The vol­ume of the sen­sor changes, and the degree of intox­i­ca­tion is deter­mined. The main dis­ad­van­tage of such breath­a­lyz­ers is that the sen­sors absorb not only alco­hol mol­e­cules, but also oth­er sub­stances that are sim­i­lar in struc­ture.
• With elec­tro­chem­i­cal sen­sors. Very com­mon. They work quick­ly, are selec­tive to ethanol and almost do not depend on the ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture. Inside is an elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell with plat­inum elec­trodes, which deter­mine the amount of exhaled ethanol.
• With infrared sen­sors. They have high mea­sure­ment accu­ra­cy. Absorb IR radi­a­tion from eth­yl alco­hol vapor. Such devices have absolute selec­tiv­i­ty for ethanol, but the read­ings are high­ly depen­dent on envi­ron­men­tal para­me­ters. The dis­ad­van­tages include a long analy­sis time

The difference between professional and amateur breathalyzers

We use pro­fes­sion­al devices, as We need high accu­ra­cy. They dif­fer from ama­teur ones in the abil­i­ty to trans­fer infor­ma­tion to a serv­er or com­put­er, the num­ber of mea­sure­ments between sen­sor cal­i­bra­tions, mea­sure­ment accu­ra­cy and price. At large enter­pris­es, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of installing pro­fes­sion­al devices at the check­points and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of inte­grat­ing them into access con­trol and man­age­ment sys­tems is also impor­tant.

Can an ordinary person competently use a breathalyzer

Every­one can use the breath­a­lyz­er if you fol­low the instruc­tions for use. In terms of com­plex­i­ty, it can be com­pared with a tonome­ter when fol­low­ing the rules, the result will be sta­ble and accu­rate. If the rules are vio­lat­ed, the read­ings will be incor­rect.

In pro­fes­sion­al breath­a­lyz­ers, man­u­fac­tur­ers try to exclude the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cheat­ing a breath­a­lyz­er; in ama­teur ones, this task is not worth it.