Abode

It’s a great idea to have a truly HomeKit integrated security system, but their follow through is terrible and their customer service is a joke. It took a week just to get a phone call to buy the system, there’s zero help or support when something goes wrong, there is no help or contact us button in the app, and it has de-integrated twice in the past month and every time it does, I have to set up each and every window and door sensor in each and every room, organize them to the rooms I want them in in HomeKit, and redo all the automations. Which means the more products and equipment you get from them, the harder it is and longer it takes to set it up again. And after months of having the system with several instances of having to set it up several times in HomeKit, my keypad battery is low-totally fine and to be expected. However, I plug it in to charge it and have no way of knowing what the actual battery level is. Is it even charging? The symbol is green so I suppose it is, but the base station continues to beep at me every 30 seconds and there is no percentage indicator anywhere in the app as to the battery level. Is it at 1% or 50%? Will I know when it’s done charging? If anyone else integrates with HomeKit, I’d likely leave Abode, even if it meant losing all the money I paid for equipment. Honestly, here’s hoping they get their act together and focus on UI and UX because when you’re claim to fame is integrating with Apple, I think we expect more.

App works ok but every update seems to need a delete and reinstall. Sometime the app update logs me out or loses some devices … just wait a day or two they have come back so far. Service is really hit and miss, have had support staff that seem to know less about the tech than the average customer and motion sensors are a joke. The IP cameras are ok, live feed defiantly needs a good internet connection and cell backup has lots live feed. Motion cameras were all defective, even the 3rd replacements didn’t work. Overall though SimpliSafe was not much better and costs so much more, I am stuck with abode until a more reliable service and still affordable like abode comes along. Even this latest update was a full app crash, can’t even launch the app on an iPhone 12 with up to date iOS. Response time is not very fast, water leak sensors worked but if you don’t set up your own text or email alert then you will not get notified as abode will not call you about a leak. All in all it works, not super great but worth the money thus far in my years worth of use. Expect to do your own trouble shooting and have to tell tech support what they need to do, stay away from the motion cameras and the multi sensors are ok for temperature and light readings but don’t rely on them for motion alert coverage. Even on lowest setting and lots of distance between sensor and nearest object resulted in alarm trigger and cops all around the house at 4 am when not a sole was home.

The latest update from the end of May (5.0) broke the location services that were working perfectly fine up until the latest update. Even though it lists both my wife and I as inside, it states that our location services are off and never triggers Auto-Away. I’ve uninstalled, turned location services off and back on in the app and on both phones to no avail. I was enjoying the system and app until this latest update. Please fix this asap as it’s been over a week and this is a big feature that a lot of people use. It’s hard to believe that it made it through Beta testing without being noticed. I’ll change my review once this has been fixed. Edit: They have fixed the location services. The new app is still wonky from time-to-time but is on its way to being a really nice, smooth and functional app. The service itself is still really nice and I’d recommend it over most others on the market.