X-Sense Mini Smoke Alarm (Interlinked)

The X-Sense interlinked smoke alarm: when one sounds, they all sound. That is the whole idea. A fire that starts in the store room at the back of the house is announced in the bedroom at the front, which is the part that actually saves people.

• What an X-Sense interlinked smoke alarm changes
• No wiring, no hub, no Wi-Fi
• On the group size, X-Sense own documents disagree
• Sealed battery, ten years, then the unit goes
• What to add to it

One button on each unit tests and hushes it.

What an X-Sense interlinked smoke alarm changes

A single detector protects the room it is in. That is fine if the fire starts where you are, and close to useless if it starts in the store room at the back while the family is asleep at the front with the doors shut and a fan running. Interlink them and one detection sounds every alarm in the house at once. This is the difference that fire services keep pointing at, and it costs nothing except buying more than one.

No wiring, no hub, no Wi-Fi

They find each other by radio. You press the button on each unit to pair it into the group and they stay paired. Nothing runs through a router, an account or an internet connection, so a line outage, a router reboot or a forgotten password cannot quietly disable your fire detection. For most houses this is the right way round; the trade is that there is no notification to your phone.

On the group size, X-Sense own documents disagree

Their specification sheet says 18 units on one group. Their product description says up to 24. We have not been able to reconcile the two and we are not going to quote the larger number because it reads better. Either figure covers a normal house comfortably; if you are doing a block or a guest house and the exact limit matters, ask us and we will get it confirmed before you order.

Sealed battery, ten years, then the unit goes

The cell is sealed in and the unit is marked battery not replaceable. Working life is ten years, after which the whole alarm is replaced rather than serviced. That is the modern approach and it removes the commonest failure in domestic fire safety, which is a detector with the battery taken out for something else and never put back.

What to add to it

The X-Sense remote tests and silences the whole group from the floor, which matters once alarms are on a high ceiling. If you want a notification on your phone as well, the X-Sense WiFi smoke alarm does that, though it does not interlink by radio in the same way.

The sensor is photoelectric, the alarm is 85 dB at three metres, the body is 78 mm across and it is certified to EN 14604. X-Sense own site is x-sense.com.