Typical price: £399
What is it: Home monitoring and security system
What we think: It's extremely limited functionality makes it difficult to recommend
Alertme Review
Reviewed on: 17 September 2008
There is a starter kit consisting of one motion sensor and a key fob -- but it costs £150. There's no service fee, no battery backup and no GPRS, as it relies solely on your broadband connection. Each text alert costs 15p, and you'll have to keep a minimum of £10 on the system on a pay-as-you-go basis. Additional sensors cost between £20 and £35.
Unlike most ordinary alarm systems, Alertme does not include an external siren box. Its makers say the reason for excluding this is that it would "only annoy the neighbours". This is a tad ironic, since annoying the neighbours -- via text -- is exactly what the system is designed to do.
Conclusion
We'd only recommend the Alertme to people with more money than sense. Yes, it sends you texts to say whether someone's broken into your home, but for most of us, that doesn't seem particularly useful. We recommend you buy a £5 Web cam, set it up in motion detection mode, configure it to send email alerts about 'break-ins', and sit back as it sends you actual photos of whoever is threatening your inner sanctum.
Edited by Marian Smith
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