If your home is already adorned with a large amount of smart-home products, you can be considering your next addition to be some smart smoke alarms. But are they worth the investment in the first place? Here are some thoughts on the topic.

Smart Smoke Alarms Don’t Necessarily Offer Better Smoke Detection

One advantage to consider is that they somehow provide improved detection of smoke over non-smart smoke alarms. The word “smart” itself suggests that they should be better at doing that, right?

In reality, smart smoke alarms have the same smoke sensors (ionization and photoelectric sensors) as any other regular smoke alarm. Hence, no real additional benefit in that sense.

It’s Just About Convenience

The handiest feature of a smart fire alarm is having the ability to manage it from your phone and receiving alerts whenever an alarm detects smoke or fire.

The annoying thing is when you get a false alert (like from cooking dinner) and you have to reach over to it and hit the silence button before your eardrums explode. However, with a smart smoke alarm, you’ll be able to stop the alarm from your phone. The smart application will even warn you on your phone that smoke levels are rising before it officially blares its alarm. So, that’s the cool part.

You will get smart alerts

Receiving alerts whenever your smart smoke alarm goes off is handy also. Particularly if you’re on vacation or simply at work. With those types of alerts, you’ll be able to get ahead of the situation and hopefully stop your entire house from burning down before it’s too late.

The other factor you’ll notice on most smart smoke alarms is that you can connect them. They synchronize up via their own wireless network. If one alarm detects smoke, all the alarms go off—useful if you’re in a big house with many rooms. However, you’ll be able to get this feature with regular smoke alarms, too.

You don’t interact with them often

The biggest factor to contemplate when considering a smart smoke alarm is that you don’t interact with your smoke alarm much in the first place. You set it up and dump it until it does its job (which should hopefully be never) or when you need to replace a battery or perform a check with the alarm.

Yes, being able to silence the alarm from your phone is pretty cool, but you are not really going to do that quite often. And, as a matter of convenience, you will always be able to check the alarms and test them from your phone, which will avoid you climbing a ladder to press the little button.

In the end, just like with most smart home gadgets, you’re paying more for a few conveniences. How much that really matters to you depend on your requirements. However, a smart smoke alarm will keep you just as safe as its cousin who performs just as well though without the additional conveniences.