Smart/WiFi Smoke Detectors

[false_aesthetic]

Our landlord sucks in a LOT of ways. One of them is with the installation + maintenance of smoke detectors. So it's up to me to take care of things (and then deduct them from our rent).

Recently one of us left a pan on the stove to burn for a few hours (#facepalm) and that got me interested in purchasing a smart smoke detector (e.g. Nest) but I have 2 main concerns:

1. False alarms + fatigue from those notifications.
2. Security/hackability -- there's a reason why I don't have Alexa or certain apps on my phone.

I've read some reviews but they're mostly 2+ years old. Seems like a lot could change in that time period.

Anyone using these devices?

[rec head]

If you get too many notifications then the detector is probably in the wrong spot.

If you're worried about security the best thing is to have IOT devices on their own WIFI network. I try to buy that stuff from big name companies because there is a chance that they might update the devices with security patches.

Burnt pans, yuck. That stink doesn't come out for a while.

[xjoex]

I have Nest smoke detectors throughout my houses. They are great, send a txt when the batteries are getting low and available to monitor through an app.

-Joe

[gt6267a]

We have nest. No false alarms so far.

[false_aesthetic]

OK this helps.
Probably going to end up with a Nest.

Seems like the false alarms are more common with the smoke detector listening devices like this: Monitor - Kidde RemoteLync

I've read a few reports of things like glasses clinking or microwave beeps triggering the notifications.

[Chris Yates]

I installed Nest smoke/co alarms in January. No issues with false alarms at all. They're easy to silence when going a little overboard in the kitchen.

[C.Dyer]

We've got Nest smoke alarms. One in the kid's room, one downstairs. We've managed to set them off while cooking a couple of times, but I wouldn't call them false alarms. High heat meat searing scenarios that were legit creating a lot of smoke. I'm 100% certain our old "dumb" detectors would have been set off too. When that's happened, there's been two things that's made me really realy happy with our decision to install them:
1) They don't go straight to a blaring alarm. A female voice comes on saying "heads up, smoke detected in the living room...," which is way less jarring (and less scary to our toddler)
2) We've got high ceilings, so being able to disarm the detector from my phone rather than having to get out a stepladder is A++++.

I don't know about security concerns. They're connected to our private network, so I don't see why they'd be any more of a concern than our computers. But maybe?

[sbornia]

I tried a Nest about five years ago, and was really disappointed. I put one in our baby's room. It was no less susceptible to false alarms (from a humidifier and other unknown things setting it off) than a regular detector, and in our case the loud voice announcements were really no better than a blaring siren. Maybe they're improved now. I also found the company's customer service back then to be terrible. Actually, it was nonexistent -- no one ever answered the phone or my emails.

In our new place, I wasn't averse to modern technology (we have a Ring doorbell and three security cameras) but for smoke detectors I went old-school with units from Gentex. These things are kind of big and ugly, but they've been super reliable with zero false alarms over the last five months.