As the review title indicates, there are a lot of good things to like about this DIY home security system, but at the price point, I want to (and need to) love it, and I’m not there yet. The cost is a lot for what is a bit of a middling security experience. Packaged components out of the box are the base station, keyfob remote, a pair of sensors and power cord. Bear in mind this is a starter kit, and after installing the two door sensors, it feels short for my small house in terms of parts. The base unit itself is a stationary 1080p camera on top of an Alexa Z-wave hub and speaker unit, including a light feature base (colors and strobing for various modes and functions) and decently loud siren functionality. Well-constructed and sleek, but with its own shortcomings (see below). The key fob has four buttons covering the basic security modes- a little large for a keychain, and too small to be a real remote, this unit lies somewhere between. The door/window sensors are well made, and were easy to apply to both a standard front door and a sliding patio door.
The setup was a breeze after downloading the intuitive looking app and essentially identifying and registering all of the aforementioned pieces. Everything went as advertised, and within no more than 10 minutes, we were ready to experiment and learn the system. This is where we started to identify what felt like shortcomings for the end user. This base unit is great looking, but as a stationary camera unit, the only place that made any sense for security purposes in my house was on top of a china cabinet, where it could capture both front and rear door. I love the 140+ degree angle of view, it really does well getting the whole house front to back in, but as a cylinder-based design, this really begged for some ability to pan or move the camera. I have a much lower end camera in my basement to watch my dog when we are at work, and for less than $40, I can pan almost a full 360 in most directions. This at least could look at left-to-right action. Night vision and motion detection were pretty spot on, although I was getting more than a few random motion alerts during the day with no corresponding video capture of anything of use, indicating a false alarm. The live-streaming was a good experience, but the feed would have difficulty loading about 25% of the time. Overall ability to review 15000 video clips over 30 days for free is great. In general, we loved the capability to peek in during the day while at work, whether to check on the house or see my kids get home from school. The two way mic works good as well, good for a quick hello to a child just home from school. The sensors worked spot on every time, and although the alerts seemed cumbersome to me at first (you can customize when and what type of alerts you get…), I really started to get a sense of personal security while away when I received indication that the front door opened and closed just when I expected the kids home from school, or my wife home from work.
Facial recognition was not the opportunity it should have been, and isn’t close to there yet. It (mostly) recognizes my face, not so much my wife, and only allows for two profiles in total. I could set up the kids, but the odd ability to only use the facial recognition for a two hour window has me ignoring the feature completely at this point. At the price point, it should be a home run feature, not a lingering unfinished detail. Another great feature is the Geofencing ability, which creates a circular zone around your phone location to auto-enable the away mode once you get out of a certain range. This starts with a 60 second countdown (beeps) before arming that allows family members without phones (kids) to hit the fob and let the system know they are still home. My only issue with this feature is that the smallest zone is still a little too large, I can be out at the convenience store getting milk and I’m still ‘home’.
I also happen to own an Amazon Alexa tall speaker, and was really hoping to retire that one to another room, but the Alexa functionality in this unit is so limited (at this time, Honeywell has promised it is seeking to expand this) it really offers no real reason to get rid of the other one yet. Outside of the basic command functions that allow you to set the level of security you want, it is otherwise really basic in scope, and misses some real opportunities with SMS, music streaming, etc. Some of those to come, from what I have read, but it doesn’t live up to the price point.
Some real shortcomings out of the box that may have you reconsider your choices is a lack of professional monitoring as an option, or cellular backup. It is really a simple self-contained solution, but one that is really small in its offering for the asking price, and a bit of a mixed bag for what you get. To feel complete for a small house, I will need another camera for a separate level, an exterior camera and at least two more sensors for other doors to complete a ‘base’ package, but that would bump the costs to almost $900. There are too many vendors offering similar parts and pieces or entire packages for less that are more feature-rich, I’m not sure that the benefits exist yet with this particular system to justify the costs. Honeywell could provide some software updates that unlock some of this potential and erase some of the doubt over lack of features, or polish to the features it has, but it isn’t there yet. I like it enough to use it, but I should love it at the cost required to get in the door. Not recommending at this time, but I'm hoping time and updates to the overall software allow me to revisit my first impression. It really is a great base to start from, but not at the asking cost and 'alpha test phase' feeling. Needs some maturing.
