Wireless Interlinked Smoke and Heat Alarm Scotland Bundle with 10 Year Battery Life, EN14604, CE Certified, Fire Alarms Scotland Interlinked, Low-Battery Alert, Pre Linked. 3 Pack

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Of the many features that distinguish the Google Nest Protect, the ability to receive alerts and silence the alarm in the Nest app is a real game-changer. If you’ve ever frantically opened windows and fanned a smoke detector with a towel in an effort to silence a false alarm, you’ll agree that pushing a button in the app to silence the alarm is faster, simpler, and less unnerving. Nest even delivers a ‘heads-up’ alarm that delivers a push notification to the app and causes the smoke detector to glow yellow, giving you a chance to dismiss a false alarm before the unit enters full-fledged alarm mode. Interlinking when one alarm goes off, all the connected detectors are activated. This can be particularly useful in a larger house.

Generally, detectors are battery-powered, hardwired, or plugged into an outlet. To determine the type you need, remove the detectors in your home from their mounts. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to use optical alarms in living rooms, bedrooms or downstairs hallways where you either have a lot of upholstered furniture and soft furnishings or the alarm is likely to be set off by cooking fumes. Keep ionisation alarms for upstairs hallways or areas where dust or exposure to the elements (say, through an open door) might potentially set off an optical sensor. If in doubt, go optical or use a multi-sensor alarm. Use of ionisation alarms is generally being discouraged by many fire services, and some manufacturers have now discontinued their ionisation products. Hardwired detectors require special wiring for power that’s typically found only in newer or renovated homes. You’ll know you have hardwired detectors if there are wires connected to them that run into a wall or ceiling. Pros: Can suit dustier areas, such as lofts, the area near your bathroom or rooms where people smoke.

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Erica Puisisis a product researcher and writer with years of experience testing and writing about home products and appliances. When researching the best smoke detectors, she compared models based on power source, sensor type, installation, and other features that make the smoke detector more user-friendly. All options on this list are UL-certified and have a 10-year lifespan.

With a linked alarm, all alarms are activated simultaneously, giving you and your family potentially life saving extra time to get out of the building. So, why not just install a basic, cheap smoke detector rather than a smoke and heat detector combination type? Smoke detectors are simple devices by design, but are available with features to integrate into your smart home or improve the functionality of the device. One of the most common features you’ll find is interconnectivity. According to Rodriguez-Zaba, “Interconnectivity is a really important safety feature that allows the detectors to be connected to each other and sound an alarm simultaneously in the event of a fire.” This means that even if smoke is detected in one area of your home, an alarm will sound on every detector installed in the house—helping to ensure that everyone in the home hears the alarm.

In addition, First Alert uses a patented design that provides 360 degrees of access to the sensors inside the unit, enhancing the responsiveness of the device to smoke. If you’re concerned about false alarms, don’t be. The unit features a test/hush button that silences the 85-decibel alarm. Interlinked smoke alarms will use the same optical or ionisation technology mentioned above, so, they're not a type of alarm in their own right.