First Alert/Jarden SC7010BV Hardwired Talking Smoke And Carbon Monoxide Alarm by BRK Brands

I guess this is an adequate smoke/CO detector. These came with the new house in '11, and when I had one go bad, I just went for the quick fix and bought exactly the same model as the one being replaced. But I wouldn't do that again. I'm transitioning from these ionization detectors to a compatible photoelectric device (SC7010B). While ionization detectors are good in certain settings, they have two big problems that make them unsuitable for homes: (1) They're far more prone to nuisance alarms that condition people to ignore them, and (2) they're much slower to alarm in a smoldering fire with a lot of smoke, the very kind of fire that's most common in homes. That's why experts no longer recommend the use of ionization detectors in homes; they recommend only photoelectric alarms. And in case you're wondering--no, don't even THINK about a combination ionization/photoelectric device! They're virtually worthless, and I'm surprised they're still sold. First Alert/BRK is a good brand, and their photoelectric smoke detectors are perfect for residential settings.One more note: Whether or not you're getting a malfunction notification or end-of-life signal, you should replace ALL of your smoke detectors every six to eight years. All smoke detectors start to degrade after five years, and by year ten, you just can't trust them anymore with your and your family's safety. Half don't work, and the other half don't work well enough. Never wait ten years to replace all smoke alarms. Six or seven years is best; eight is okay, but anything more than eight is far too risky.

These alarms were installed in a brand new construction home. They were paired with BRK/First Alert Photoelectric smoke alarms for a total of 11 units. They were super easy to install and worked silently...for about 2 weeks. First, the alarms would randomly chirp 3 times once or twice per day. Then they started going off for no reason. Now I don't know if you've ever been sleeping in a home when 11 different smoke alarms/ carbon monoxide detectors go off, but I wouldn't recommend it! It's not fun! The alarms would sound for about 15 seconds and then stop so we did t even have time to run around and figure out which alarm was causing all the ruckus. Today the alarms went off again but this time they didn't stop. I ran around hitting silence buttons but they still didn't stop. None of the alarms was showing that it was the culprit and none of the silence buttons worked. After 5 LOOOOOONG minutes of screaming and running around frantically trying to stop the madness, we started to yank the alarms off the ceiling. I was livid!!!! I called First Alert and they offered to send me ONE replacement unit but it was up to me to decide which one had malfunctioned. Then I asked how to silence them the next time this happens since the buttons didn't work. I was told to get on a ladder with a hair dryer on the cool setting and blow air into each and every smoke alarm until they stop. REALLY????????? You want me to do that at 3:30 in the morning when I'm trying to decide if I need to evacuate my family or if it's just cheaply built smoke alarms creating a false alarm???? That's the protocol for unusable smoke alarms? Do yourself a favor and avoid First Alert like the plague. I'm currently shopping for new smoke alarms....after less that a month of usage in my brand new home. I just don't trust them to work when/if I truly have a disastourous situation in my home.

These things are apparently programmed from the factory to go off only in the middle of the night. The beeping is just loud enough that you can't just sleep through it. And the darn beeping occurs with too much of a delay so that when you do get up to find it, it takes way too long in the middle of the night to triangulate and figure out which one you have to take down so that you can go back to sleep and deal with it in the morning. It's like some torture game of hide and seek. By the time you figure out which one is malfunctioning, you've been awake and annoyed long enough that you're pretty much now wide awake. Is it some kind of North Korean/Russian plot to destroy the lives of normal mundane US citizens through intermittent sleep deprivation? First the election, now this.One chirp every 3-4 minutes means that the 9V back up battery is dead. Three chirps that go off every 3-4 minutes indicates that the detector as a whole is malfunctioning. Replacing the battery doesn't do anything. I've tried dusting them out with an air gun but usually doesn't work. Most authorities recommend replacing these things about ever 5-10 yrs or so. So far, about 5 years is about how long these have lasted in my house, and over the past several months I've been replacing one after the other. I've lost enough sleep on random nights over the past several weeks that I'm just going to replace all the rest of the ones in my house and just move on with my life.As a bonus annoying factor, the 9V battery lasts about 4 yrs. I just went through and replaced all the batteries less than 9 months ago, and now I'm going around replacing the whole darn thing. So that was a nice waste of money, especially since the new detectors come with new 9V batteries and now I have a small stockpile of partially used 9V batteries.The only good thing is that they are easy to replace, and much cheaper on Amazon than the local brick and mortar stores. And thankfully, I haven't had one go off because of a house fire or carbon monoxide buildup, so I can't comment on their effectiveness, but I guess it's one of those things you just have to assume will work when it needs to... like the airbag in your car.