There hasn’t been much activity on the smart smoke detector front lately. We still consider the Google Nest Protect to be best in class, but it could soon face a challenger: The Owl Wired.
Designed to replace not just an ordinary smoke detector, this home safety device can also be used for general home security. In addition to detecting the presence of smoke with its photo-electric sensor, the Owl Wired can also sniff out carbon monoxide using an electromechanical sensor, track temperature and humidity levels in your home, detect motion with a microwave radar sensor, and it has an onboard microphone that can analyze noise levels.
The motion detector can send you an alert if motion is detected when you think your everyone in your home should be at rest, and you can program its microphone to send you an alert when noises exceed a defined threshold.
Owl Home
The Owl Wired can report on a host of conditions inside your home.
The Owl Wired is outfitted with a Bluetooth radio, so you can set it up with your smartphone, and there’s a Wi-Fi 4 wireless adapter onboard, so that it can send alerts to your smartphone. Multiple Owl sensors connect with each other over Wi-Fi, so that if one detects an emergency condition, the multi-color light rings and sirens in all of them will sound off at once.
The Owl Wired depends on AC power to operate, although it has an onboard backup battery that can keep it running for up to three months in the event of a power outage. An Owl Wireless model that runs solely on battery power is in the works. The company says its smoke detectors will be HomeKit compatible and that they will also work with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT.
The manufacturer is taking preorders now at discounted prices: $139 for the white model and $149 for the black model. Regular prices will be $169 and $179 respectively. The Owl Wired is expected to ship in October.
Author: Michael Brown, Executive Editor
Michael is TechHive's lead editor, with 30+ years of experience covering the tech industry, focusing on the smart home, home audio, and home theater. He built his own smart home in 2007 and used it as a real-world test lab for product reviews. Following a relocation to the Pacific Northwest, he is now converting his new home, an 1890 Victorian bungalow, into a modern smart home.