X-Sense Smoke Alarm and Carbon Monoxide Detector Review – Safety for your Home

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X-Sense Wireless Interlinked Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Detector Review Video

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I think one of the most important things you can have in your home is protected from fire when you need it.

It’s one of those things that you don’t need until you need it.

My father-in-law has this routine where every year on April Fools’, he updates all of the batteries in the smoke alarm in their house.

I think this is really smart and it puts you ahead of that horrible situation when you’re lying in bed at 3:00 a.m. and every few seconds, there’s this incredibly loud audible beep to let you know that the battery is going flat in your smoke alarms.

I personally find this a terrible disruption.

And so the idea of having that routine every year to change the batteries in your smoke alarms is smart.

With X-Sense, however, this is unnecessary because X-Sense comes with a sealed lithium 10-year battery in their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, which means you can fit them with confidence and know that they’re gonna last for a jolly long time.

Of course, you’ll still get the beeps when the unit is coming to its end of life, but with a 10-year lifetime on that, it’s certainly one disrupted sleep every 10 years, rather than more frequently than that.

I like the idea of the battery-sealed units because even the ones I have and have had hardware store units for maybe two or three years have just given up completely. I’ve put new batteries in, but they’re still beeping like they’re not well at all.

I think living in a fairly coastal area, there’s probably some build-up of salt and corrosion that have just worn them out.

This is something that I’m not expecting with the X-Sense with its sealed battery.

What’s in the box?

The box comes with the smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector unit, which is of course an all-in-one unit. 

It also includes a wall or ceiling mounting bracket with all the screws that you need, including masonry plugs if you need them.

There’s also a very straightforward manual, which gives you everything you need to know on how to operate the unit and a vast range of different warnings and different warning types that you can look up on the device when you need them set up. 

As it should be, setup is incredibly straightforward. 

I’d like to write a lot more about it, but the unit really is quite simple to set up. 

It immediately kicks into gear with a small switch on the back that is an on-off and end-of-life switch. You go from off to on, and the unit powers up immediately and is ready to go.

At its end of life, you can switch the switch all the way to disposal and that then prepares it for the afterlife.

Connectivity

When I say this is almost part of the smart home, the beauty of the X-Sense smoke alarms is that you can connect up to 24 units together. 

This is particularly brilliant for residential buildings that require a lot more units and require people to be notified across multiple floors or multiple sections of a building. They do say they are not for commercial use but I’m not sure of the regulations there.

Included in the box as well is a couple of safety stickers, which gives everybody instructions on what to do in the event of a carbon monoxide or fire event.

There are also spaces on the stickers where you can mark emergency contacts and meeting points. 

So, if you are going to use these in a busy home, you’ve got everything you need to get set up. I thought the addition of the information stickers was brilliant. 

Connecting the X-Sense units

The connectivity between the units is incredibly easy to do. 

You simply press four times on one unit, which sets it up into a pairing mode. And then on the other unit that you want to pair, you click twice, the units both make an audible sound together, and those two units are then connected.

You can then continue to do that across the full range of all of the X-Sense units that you may have purchased. 

As I say up to a whole 24 units can be linked, and that’s not to say that you then can’t buy other units and link those as well in a separate mesh-style configuration. 

The linking simply means that if one alarm is triggered, that the others will also trigger at the same time. 

If you have a small fire or carbon monoxide incident in let’s say the basement, and then you have fire alarm units through the building all the way up to the top floorF, all of the alarms will trigger in series to alert everybody that there is an incident that they need to evacuate or pay attention to the alarms.

Build quality

The build quality in these is really solid.

Compared to the local hardware ones that you might buy, these have a nice, solid weight to them and feel like really high quality.

There’s some clear instructions on the front and an LED light, which can offer different flashing indicators for different situations.

When the unit is in normal operation, there’s a simple green flash every so often just to let you know that the unit is on operating and is functional.

The display on the front of the unit will also show you a real-time numeric value of CO levels, which could be particularly handy if you are in a carbon monoxide exposure event.

Siren

The siren is loud.

I compared it to another smoke alarm that we had in the house and I can certainly tell you that I had complaints from the family on how loud these things were.

It’s loud because it needs to be loud, and piercing. So, I definitely give that a thumbs up.

The siren is actually around 85 decibels, but the frequency that it’s pitching at means that it can cut through a lot of noise, which is what you also want.

85 decibels is a pretty significant volume, which is what you need when you need it. It’s not rock-concert-loud, but it’s very loud and your Apple Watch will likely tell you you might damage your hearing (jokes.)

A few other general observations

As I’ve mentioned, this is both a smoke detector and a carbon monoxide detector.
The unit is also fully UL certified, which is particularly important with any electronic device that you’re going to use in this kind of environment so that you have safety that it’s passed all the certifications that are required for a unit like this.

Summary

In summary, if you’re looking for a powerful smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector for your home, with the option to link up to 24 units to keep all the rooms and spaces safe, then the X-Sense is a great choice.

Build quality, sealed lithium battery with a 10-year life.

The X-Sense smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are now a permanent part of my home and I hope that I never have to use them.

Any questions – fire away in the comments below and I’ll happily answer.

This post was last updated on 2025-01-15 / Some images from Amazon Product API & some links may be affiliate links which may earn us a commission from purchases.