Customer Reviews

First Alert SC07CN Battery Operated Combination Smoke/Carbon Monoxide Alarm with Voice Location

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

WARNING: The detector is built with a "feature" that First Alert thought was a good idea... Allow the user to "test" the alarm with a Remote Control. Hold either the Channel or Volume key down for 3-5 seconds and the alarm will run through it's 20 second tone / voice alarm test.

We have normal size bedrooms in the house and the thing goes off constantly in a three bedrooms. It's funny when it happens to the kids, but in our room, at midnight, just pisses you off.

I called First Alert... Sorry sir, there is now way to disable the feature.

Don't waste your money. Buy something else. Ours are going into the trash.

UPDATE - UPDATE UPDATE - UPDATE

First Alert called me back... Turns out there is a way to disable the Infrared Sensor for the Remote Control, IF it was manufactured after November 2009:

1) Remove the batteries from the cradle.
2) Put the batteries back in the cradle.
3) Hold down the "Test" button and slide the cradle back into the alarm
4) Release the "Test" button AFTER the first chirp.

It worked!!! I think I'll leave the one's in the kids rooms alone :-}

Kudos to First Alert for calling me back wwith the information!

A smoke and carbon monoxide detector with voice alert and 2 easy accessible AA batteries for a good price... sounds good, right?

Well, not at all. This product fails on all levels. Not only every feature turns to be badly designed, I found my 3 units to be also quite defective. Bottom line: avoid this product. Not worth your money and time investment needed to return it later.

Now for the details:

- First the look. It's subjective but quite frankly it's bulky and doesn't look that good. The Kidde ones are more stylish.

- The "easy" tray with 2 AA batteries. Good on paper but fails on reality: it's really hard to open the tray to change batteries once the device hangs from the celling. I end up have to unmount it, so it's not really more beneficial than a back-loader battery compartment and it probably contributes in the bulky design.

- Voice alert. Also good on the paper. You pay extra for that voice, but in fact instead of a nice calming voice, you get a distorted scream that is incredibly painfully loud (86dB IIRC, kind of like a big jet at take-of) and yet manages to be hard to understand.

- Easy to trigger test mode with a flashlight. Also good on the paper. But there it goes from brilliant idea to a blatant marketing lie-by-omission: what the ads, the amazon text and the vendor's marketroid all fail to indicate is that ANY remote control or ANY neon light, including the now omnipresent compact fluorescent lights will actually trigger that alarm! You only learn that when reading the manual in the box. Want to change the radio volume? Boom, alert test mode goes on! Want to turn on the light at night? Boom, alert test mode goes on again with the atomic loud screaming voice! You're supposed to put that in a bedroom, not a medieval basement!

- Initial setup: a bit tricky, you just need to push a button at the right time to indicate which zone name you want. Unfortunately you need to listen to the 86dB loud screaming distorted voice at arm length, assuring you'll be pretty much deaf after. I seriously had to cover my unit with a pillow and move to the garden to avoid traumatizing the family to do this setup.

- Reliability: zero. Let's just say that on three units, I got the same issues: the loud screeching voice started randomly going on during the night, at like 1 or 2 AM, waking up everyone. Nobody got any clue whatsoever the unit said, it was not intelligible. Two unit did that soon after I got them, at first I thought it was a fluke. Fine. But an hour later, same loud voice comes on. And then again. In the meantime my other Kidde alarm could detect no issue, nothing burning and the furnace was off. That was a complete false alarm. So I returned 2 of them as defective, and now the third unit is doing the same. Unfortunately it's been more than 30 days so no Amazon refund for me :-/ [Update: Amazon customer service was as usual above expectations and actually refunded me the last one too.]

Now, think about it: with so many people having the same issues with these alarms in *idle* mode, is it worth the trouble? Would you trust it to actually perform in case of fire? Get another brand that actually works.

Really, a pitiful product that should be best avoided and taken off Amazon.

WARNING: The SC07NC CO/Smoke detector has a feature where you can test the alarm using your IR remote control. It runs it loud a test ANY TIME you use your remote. There is no way to turn this feature off. The package does not mention this fact, though on page 3 of their user's manual, they state that you cannot install it where you use a remote. Be warned: Do not buy this remote if you use or plan to use a remote control in the same room.

Beyond that, I like that it comes down easily with a twist of the product. Most products have this, too, such as the KIDDE Nighthawk.

The product runs on two AA batteries. It does not have the ability to wire to house power.

I purchased this alarm for my condo about six months ago. The smoke alarm and carbon monoxide alarm are constantly going off for no apparent reason. The alarm has gone into test mode from my remote control. At 5 am this morning the fire alarm went off instructing me to evacuate my condo. There was no fire, causing me great early morning stress. Possibly I purchased a defective model, but needless to say I have removed the batteries and am looking for a replacement smoke alarm.

I bought this stupid thing thinking the price and description indicated a good safe investment. I hung it on the wall near my computer. Occasionally it would wake me up in the middle of the night for no reason at all. I don't know if it was self-testing or just defective. I tried to get to it quick enough to figure out what the "voice" was saying, but I could never get to it in time. Today it went off and so did I. I smashed it to smitherines and threw it in the garbage. First Alert? Never again!

Utterly terrible product. I can't say how many times this stupid thing has woken us up in the middle of the night screaming, "WARNING - CARBON MONOXIDE LEVELS..." in its ear-piercing, shrill voice. It has false positives all the time; it's totally defective. Further, the battery tray is very hard to use. I will never buy a First Alarm product again.

We had a small fire on the stove that created a LOT of smoke, yet our "First Alert" SC07 smoke detector didn't activate! The batteries were brand new, and the unit tested fine just one month prior. Talk about a false sense of security!

So why did it fail? Turns out, the "slide out" battery tray is a dangerously undependable design. The battery tray has no hard connection to the circuit board! Closing the tray is SUPPOSED to cause two chrome-plated wiper contacts to press against solder lands on the circuit board, but it's really just hit or miss.

This kind of 'design'(?) may be fine in a toy, but for a safety device such a design is unconscionable. All it takes is a little bit of corrosion, a slight bend of the contacts, or a wobbly plastic tray, and the connection will fail suddenly at any time. And you'd never know it, especially since these kinds of failures tend to be intermittent.

This thing is garbage.

This unit will randomly screech a voice warning yelling at the entire house to evacuate because "ZERO ppm CO2 detected". This is obviously a defective product judging by so many other Amazon users having the same issue, and it should be recalled by First Alert. Horrible, unsafe product.

Our ownership of these ended with me tearing them off the walls and smashing them to smithereens in the early hours of the morning. What idiot engineer designed these things? These detectors go into 'test' mode at random times and BLAST throughout the house. It is annoying because a certain sound will set off the 'test' mode. The middle of the night the baby wakes and gossips a little baby talk, you sneeze, you close the lid to the washer, it's when you least suspect it: TESTING TESTING TESTING BLAST BLAST BLAST BLAST BEEP BEEP BEEP for a minute waking the whole house!!! No sane family would want these in their house interrupting their peace at the worst times. I am all for having the ability to test the fire alarm system, but these idiotic things are far from being family friendly. They have disrupted our household and have awakened the entire family for the LAST TIME!

Since six months ago I first bought this alarm. I have went through three replacements since then. Each alarm beeped three time fast which means "replace alarm" within the first month of operation. I call their support and they replace the alarm. Their support told me to try putting it in a different location which I did and within a couple weeks the replace alarm sounded again. I have a Kidde brand combination alarm just up the hall that I have never had a problem with.