$15 halitosis breath-tester at the 2009 CES Vegas conference

At the lower end of the breath analysis market, the sensors are normally MEMS Sensors (micro electro-mechanical systems). The cheap alcohol breathalyzers being examples. Some companies have also moved into the halitosis market, and have MEMs sensors that try to detect (usually) one or more Volatile Sulfur Compounds. There has been web mention of even Siemens putting a breath-checker in a mobile phone (but this was a few years back and no phone seems to exist yet). For many reasons the sensitivity and specifity of these halitosis checkers are currently questionable since we don't know much about them, but at least they are mostly very cheap.

One bad breath tester is on display at the Las Vegas CES conference. The Kiss-me-meter by Seju Engineering. Apparently $15 in Walgreens. There seems to be a few of these cheap-end testers on sale now. Dr Mel Rosenberg, the co-founder of ISBOR has one on sale called OK2Kiss by his company 'Innoscent'.

Perhaps you get what you pay for with these sensors. At the moment, scepticism seems a sensible approach. The Oral Chroma by Abilit seems to also be a MEMS sensor, but is expensive and used by professionals in a clinical setting. Hopefully the makers will find there is such a demand for such a product that the market will become as sophisticated as the alcohol breathalyzer market. Perhaps someday we can convince a maker to develop one that tests the breath for trimethylamine or other smelly compounds. Possibly for many metabolic body odor sufferers, sulfides will be part of the spectrum of smells, so in theory the bad-breath testers should overlap with the manufacturers target audience in that respect.

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Seju-Engineering page on the CES 2009 site
Engadget article abut the kiss-me-meter
Seju Engineering Kiss-me-meter page
Siemens page about one of their top MEMS inventors
International Society for Breath Odor Research
Oral Chroma by Abilit