I’ve tested lots of smart home systems, but I like this one best

Price When Reviewed

Customer chooses elements. As reviewed, this technique would price: $2,729.93; plus, $54.99/mo for skilled monitoring

Best Prices Today: Vivint Smart Home Security System

Most house safety methods give attention to simply that: safety. Their intention is to discourage criminals from breaking in, and if deterrence isn’t sufficient, to provide you with a warning and—when you subscribe to skilled monitoring—summon a police response if burglars do get inside your own home. The finest methods additionally defend you from the hazard of fireside and water injury.

TechHive focuses totally on DIY merchandise, however when you’re not snug putting in your individual house safety system, Vivint Smart Home deserves your cautious consideration. Unlike another service suppliers—ADT, for instance—Vivint doesn’t provide the possibility of transport you the elements and letting you set the system up by yourself, however you can customise and develop it after that.

Paying an expert technician for this work isn’t low-cost, in fact, however Vivint offers you the choice of paying for all the things over time with no curiosity. The draw back of that possibility is that it’s essential to signal a long-term contract—usually three to 5 years—with the preliminary month-to-month charges various in line with the preliminary {hardware} set up. If you don’t like that concept, you’ll be able to pay for all the things up entrance after which proceed with a month-to-month settlement. The system reviewed right here would price about $2,800, plus the price of skilled monitoring that may summon assist in police, hearth, and medical emergencies.

A fundamental Vivint good house system consists of a central hub—aka a management panel—together with a movement sensor and some door/window sensors (4 of those sensors are bundled with Vivint’s Smart Hub–pictured up high–for $600). Most individuals will add an indoor or outside safety digital camera and/or a video doorbell to that package deal, however Vivint additionally gives a variety of different house safety gadgets on an à la carte foundation—starting from smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to glass-break detectors and water leak detectors.

Those fascinated with folding good house options into their house safety system can go for Vivint’s personal good thermostat ($199.99) or a Nest Learning Thermostat. Other good house elements vary from good lighting controls to Vivint-certified third-party gadgets, together with Kwikset good deadbolts and Chamberlain myQ good storage door openers. And by way of the Works with Vivint program you’ll be able to add Amazon Echo or Google Nest good audio system and shows, or a Nest good thermostat. Notably, Vivint doesn’t restrict you to including simply these merchandise to your system—particularly by way of good lighting—as I’ll talk about in additional element later.

Vivint Smart Home

As with most house safety corporations, the technicians Vivint employs should not licensed electricians, to allow them to’t set up new shops or in-wall lighting controls. While almost all of the sensors the corporate makes use of function on battery energy, its safety cameras depend on AC energy and its video doorbell relies on low-voltage wiring. If you don’t have shops close to the place you need to set up the management panel or safety cameras—or an current doorbell energy transformer—you may end up restricted as to the place you put in cameras.

The hub is the guts

Vivint methods revolve round its Smart Hub, a central good house management panel with a 7-inch (diagonal) shade touchscreen. The Smart Hub is AC-powered, nevertheless it has on onboard battery for backup. It connects to your own home community over Wi-Fi—hardwired ethernet is out there you probably have the infrastructure in place—and it has a mobile radio within the occasion your typical broadband community goes down. These back-up options defend you from burglars who reduce your energy, cable or fiber, and/or phone traces to disarm your safety system.

The hub has an onboard siren for when the system goes into an alarm state, however in an emergency, you’ll be able to join on to Vivint’s monitoring service to request a dispatch from the police, the fireplace division, or an ambulance. The panel has each Wi-Fi and Z-Wave radios onboard. Cameras talk over the panel’s non-public Wi-Fi community whereas Vivint’s door/window, movement, smoke/CO detector and most different sensors talk with the panel utilizing radio spectrum within the 345MHz band.

Vivint’s personal good thermostat, and the Kwikset good deadbolts the corporate gives, talk by way of Z-Wave. And it’s the Smart Hub’s Z-Wave radio that offers you essentially the most choices for customizing the good house components of your Vivint system.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Like most house safety methods, Vivint’s has three basic states:

• Disarmed: Used once you’re house however you is likely to be entering into and outdoor however not leaving house, otherwise you may need home windows open for air flow. In this state, the system’s movement sensor is disabled and its door and window sensors gained’t set off the alarm. But you will have the choice of getting the management panel announce—in a feminine voice—when monitored doorways and home windows are opened.
• Armed Stay: You’ll put the system on this state once you’re house and don’t anticipate individuals coming and going with any regularity. The movement sensor is disabled, however the door/window sensors are actively monitored. Opening a monitored door will set off a delayed alarm state, providing you with a minute or so to succeed in the panel and disarm the system earlier than the countdown ends. Opening a window that has a sensor on it, alternatively, will instantly set off an alarm state.
• Armed Away: This is the state you’ll put the system in when the final particular person leaves the house. This arms all the system’s sensors, together with the movement sensor. Opening any window will set off an instantaneous alarm state, however opening a door will set off a countdown to provide you a chance to succeed in the panel to disarm the system.

Some sensors, such because the smoke/warmth/freeze detector, are all the time armed and can set off the hub’s onboard siren in addition to ship you a push notification when activated. In the occasion of a detected break-in or hearth, Vivint’s monitoring workplace might be notified and somebody from there’ll name you or your designated consultant to confirm the emergency earlier than requesting a first-responder dispatch.

Michael Brown/Foundry

They’ll finally dispatch the police even when they will’t attain you or your designated consultant, however their intention is to scale back false alarms that antagonize first responders—and relying in your jurisdiction, lead to fines. Vivint’s water-leak sensors, which may additionally monitor the ambient temperature and provide you with a warning to the form of freezing chilly that may result in a burst water pipe, are likewise all the time armed, however these are solely warning gadgets—they don’t connect with one thing like a Flo by Moen smart water shutoff that may flip off your fundamental water provide to stop burst pipes.

Smart Actions

The Smart Actions instrument in Vivint’s smartphone app makes it simple to create automations primarily based on system occasions. Smart Actions are very very like IFTTT applets in that they encompass two circumstances: A set off (“When this happens…”) that causes an motion (“Then do this…”). Smart Actions triggers might be primarily based on preset instances or schedules, together with dawn and sundown; safety occasions, comparable to an alarm being triggered; when a sensible deadbolt has been locked or unlocked or when your storage door opened or closed; after different doorways or home windows have been opened or closed; when movement is detected or a digital camera detects an individual in its discipline of view; when a customer rings your Vivint doorbell; or when a sensible gentle swap or outlet is turned on.

Michael Brown/Foundry

The actions—and there might be a number of actions—that observe set off occasions are organized into the identical broad classes: the alarm system, good locks and good storage door openers, lights, and safety cameras. Here are just a few examples of Smart Actions that I’ve tried: If the system goes into any alarm state, every of Vivint’s safety cameras will document video with the intention of capturing the occasion(s) that triggered the alarm. At the identical time, all of my good lights inside and out of doors the home will activate. Another Smart Action locks all my Vivint-certified good locks at 11:00 p.m. daily and when the system is armed “away” or “stay.” You can even have an authorized good lock arm the safety system when it’s locked from outdoors, or disarm the safety system when the right code is entered on its keypad.

The hub maintains an in depth occasion historical past, which you’ll be able to view within the Vivint app in your smartphone. Every occasion is tracked on a timeline, together with when doorways and home windows are opened and closed, the system’s cameras detect individuals of their fields of view, doorways with good deadbolts are locked and locked, movement detector will get triggered, and when the system is armed and disarmed.

Smart lighting

Michael Brown/Foundry

Vivint gives its personal good lighting controls however given the presence of a Z-Wave radio in its hub, you is likely to be shocked to study that Vivint’s resolution is predicated on Zigbee, not Z-Wave. It consists of a number of Zigbee good bulbs, coin-cell-battery-powered Zigbee dimmer switches that match over your current in-wall switches (as soon as their covers have been eliminated), and a Zigbee-to-Wi-Fi bridge that should be hardwired to your router. I’ve tried these out and might’t say I’m a fan, principally for aesthetic causes: The on-wall controls stick out like sore thumbs.

Vivint doesn’t promote this as a characteristic, however its clients are free so as to add Z-Wave gadgets—significantly lighting controls—to their good house methods. Those gadgets will seem within the Vivint app, the place they are often managed and built-in into Vivint’s Smart Actions, however the menu for including and eradicating Z-Wave gadgets is locked behind a set of hidden menus which might be usually accessible solely to Vivint’s set up techs. But when you name or chat with Vivint’s customer support division on-line, they’ll unlock that menu—after verifying your id and providing you with the password—so you’ll be able to entry it.

While Vivint doesn’t bar its clients from including any kind of Z-Wave machine, solely Vivint-certified good locks can do issues comparable to disarm the safety system when a resident’s PIN code is entered on the lock. Non-certified locks will in any other case function as good locks, however they will’t arm or disarm the safety system in the way in which an authorized lock can.

Security cameras

Michael Brown/Foundry

Vivint gives one indoor and one outside safety digital camera (the latter is out there with or with no good highlight attachment); and a video doorbell. Each of the cameras is tightly built-in with the management panel and has sufficient onboard storage to allow 24/7 recording—a $6.99-per-month possibility on high of a $5-per-month charge per digital camera.

The cameras can stream stay feeds and motion-triggered video recordings to the management panel’s show in addition to to your smartphone. The cameras additionally assist two-way audio, with the indoor mannequin having a considerably distinctive push-to-talk characteristic that permits an individual on the digital camera to push a button to provoke a dialog with you by way of the Vivint app in your telephone.

Apart from that characteristic, the Vivint Indoor Camera Pro is comparatively fundamental, offering 1080p decision with HDR, a 150-degree discipline of view (horizontal, its vertical discipline of view is 80 levels), black-and-white evening imaginative and prescient, and the two-way discuss I’ve already talked about. It’s mounted to an articulated stand that may be mounted to a wall, the ceiling, or rested on some other flat floor. It depends on an AC adapter with a 9-foot wire for energy.

Michael Brown/Foundry

No house safety system can be full with no video doorbell, and Vivint’s entry is especially good. The Vivint Doorbell Camera Pro has a high-resolution picture sensor with a 1:1 facet ratio (1664 x 1664 pixels) that captures guests from head to toe with HDR. I’ve beforehand written an in-depth review of the doorbell, so I gained’t do this once more right here.

The Vivint Outdoor Camera Pro (Gen 2) digital camera contains a 4K picture sensor with HDR, however its most decision continues to be restricted to 1080p. It has a 140-degree discipline of view, and its picture sensor permits it to supply 3x optical zoom with 10x digital zoom. It carries an IP65 weatherization ranking, which in line with our IP code decoder, means it’s fully protected against mud and that it may possibly stand up to water jets wanting a blast from an influence washer.

When enabled, a Smart Deter characteristic triggers the digital camera to play a loud sound and illuminate an LED gentle ring round its lens when an individual is detected lingering in its discipline of view. The thought is that the sound will immediate the lurker to current their face to the supply of the sound—the digital camera. But this era of cameras doesn’t have true AI and even the power to acknowledge acquainted faces. As a outcome, I’ve left Smart Deter turned off.

Michael Brown/Foundry

The outside digital camera might be powered by by way of an ethernet cable, because of its assist for Power over Ethernet (PoE) assist, or the installer can join it to Vivint’s personal Wi-Fi bridge, which can use energy line connectivity (PLC). The Wi-Fi bridge must be put in indoors, as it isn’t weatherized. The digital camera options black-and-white evening imaginative and prescient with as much as 55 toes of vary, however you’ll get shade evening imaginative and prescient when you pair the digital camera with Vivint’s Spotlight Pro.

The Spotlight Pro works together with the second-generation Outdoor Camera Pro—the sunshine can’t function by itself—and it’s wonderful. It’s a bar-shaped machine with three teams of stacked LEDs on three sides that produce as much as 1,800 lumens of brightness with a cool shade temperature of 5,000 Kelvin. Mounted beneath the digital camera, the sunshine can even operate as a general-purpose floodlight, which you’ll be able to activate and off—and dim—utilizing the Vivint app.

Used as a safety machine, it is going to activate in response to movement—however provided that the digital camera associates the movement with an individual in its discipline of view. What’s extra, when the digital camera is in “deter” mode, it is going to set off the sunshine’s LEDs to return one by one to trace an individual as they transfer throughout the digital camera’s discipline of view, focusing a highlight on them till they depart.

Should you purchase a Vivint Smart Home System?

No service supplier gives a greater professionally monitored house safety system than Vivint, and nobody gives such a completely built-in and good house system that clients can develop with out incurring further set up prices. This is a uniquely complete house safety system that features all of the good house options wanted for consolation and comfort.

This overview is a part of TechHive’s in-depth protection of the best smart home systems.

Vivint’s good lighting phase can be its sole weak spot if it didn’t supply its clients the choice to self-install Z-Wave controls. As is typical of house safety distributors, Vivint’s technicians usually should not licensed electricians who can set up in-wall lighting controls. But the corporate doesn’t bar you from doing that your self. And when you don’t thoughts the commercial design of its Zigbee good lighting merchandise, you don’t even want to fret about that.

Vivint’s providing isn’t low-cost, however it’s in line in comparison with the competitors. Here’s a breakdown of what the system reviewed right here prices, up entrance and for ongoing companies: