Review ID: 50080

Review Text: SmartSensor from a Home Security Point of View. This review was written based on its use with the SmartCamera, SmartSensors for doors/windows and the Haven monitoring service. I don't own an ecobee smart thermostat, but these smart sensors can double as motion sensors for its ecobee's home monitoring solution. I'm a big fan of when engineers find innovative ways to use devices that are already on the market for a completely different purpose. Bravo to ecobee for that. For the most part, I can only say good things about the sensor; they come in two-packs and are easily added to an ecobee account (they'll need an ecobee thermostat or an ecobee smart camera to be used as a central base station). When used with the Haven service, the sensors easily pick up motion and report back as activity alert notifications. The sensor itself is compact and runs off its own battery. It can either be mounted on a wall with the wall mount or used with the magnetic base. Again, all great things. I have no complaints with this piece of hardware. So what complaints do I really have? It's the service required to run this thing as a home monitoring device. In order to get motion alerts from these sensors, you'll have to pay for the Haven service. Other home monitoring/security solutions provide notifications as a free-to-use; most of the time, you're really paying for cloud space to store recorded videos. But to pay for notifications is a bit much. I'd say that if you're already deep into the ecobee ecosystem with the thermostat and SmartSensors, then it's a natural progression to pay for the Haven service because you already own the hardware.

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