Well, what is it that you're measuring? co2? Particle density?
You say that you want the sensor to measure what it says on the tin, but maybe you should start by defining what "air quality" means.
And then maybe you can find some simple one-off components that do all the individual measurements. I for example found a cheap and simple USB connected co2 sensor, that just changes colors based on co2 levels.
Particle density, TVOC, CO₂, temperature, humidity. With the first two being most important, the rest being extra.
My experience so far involved playing with sensors for all of these, except CO₂, that are popular with hobby electronics crowd. Back then I didn't really care about measurement accuracy, I was just goofing around. Since then, I've read all these sensors require significant work to get them to produce stable and reasonably accurate readings.
As for CO₂, I've only read about the options recently, but apparently the actual sensor is pricey-ish, so even in mass market products, the CO₂ measurement is inferred from TVOC, temp, Rh, and a magic lookup table supplied by the vendor (and accurate only in their test lab). This is the main example of what I meant by not reporting what it says on the tin.
Now, I'm not necessarily after high-quality absolute measurement values, as long as the relative change is detected correctly. But I don't know the space well enough to go around Aliexpress shopping for components myself, and every company that seems to have done some work to validate results and calibrate their devices also wants to shove their app down my throat, which is a no-go.
You say that you want the sensor to measure what it says on the tin, but maybe you should start by defining what "air quality" means.
And then maybe you can find some simple one-off components that do all the individual measurements. I for example found a cheap and simple USB connected co2 sensor, that just changes colors based on co2 levels.