Making our Home Safer with Panasonic

Let’s face it, who doesn’t want to make their home more secure? With little ones, even more so. We’ve been testing out the Smart Home Starter Kit from Panasonic over the past couple of weeks. Out of the box, it contains one Smart Home hub, one window / door sensor and one motion detector (plus it all comes with the relevant batteries. Bonus).

To look at, the units have a uniform black-and-white plastic design that some may feel looks slightly sterile but personally, I like it and think it looks pretty slick. The design is striking and if anything, would hopefully act as a deterrent to potential thieves. The hub and the sensors can all be screwed to the walls if desired, or they can be left free-standing.

Next you have to sync the monitoring system’s collective parts using the hub. Simply connect the hub to your mains and Wi-Fi, then install the Panasonic Home Networking app to your Apple or Android device. You just search in the app centre for it and download. We used it on the iPad and on my iPhone as I always have my phone with me. You can connect several devices up to it. The process of connecting the device and the Smart Home hub system was all explained in the manual and it was as simple as it was explained too.

• You open up the app and run through the on-screen commands – it will prompt you to press the hub’s Wi-Fi connector button and pair it with your device. Once complete, the hub will automatically detect the sensors and smart plug and connects to them.
• Though we didn’t drill into the walls yet (as we are still deciding where we want the sensors to be permanently) the set up process took a matter of minutes.

When armed, the hub activates the the room and window / door sensors. The room sensor tracks motion or the window / door sensor is triggered when, as you’d imagine, a window or door is opened. You can set the app to alert you when the sensors are triggered, which if you are out of the house, makes sense to do.

The best things about the system?

• Your home is more secure
• The quick and easy set up
• There is no monthly subscription fee unlike other home security services
• Your smartphone becomes your home phone – you can make and receive calls through your landline using your smartphone or tablet, when you are at home

The downsides of the system?

• There aren’t many but as you have just one room sensor and one door sensor, you can’t secure the whole house, in our home anyway. We’d need another door sensor at least for sure. It is just called a starter kit though so I imagine that mpst people would need to purchase extra sensors, or cameras, if required.
  • However, if you do need to buy more, I was impressed that the hub has capability to connect up to 50 sensors and you can even get the cameras and you could have up to 4 of those.

The RRP is £129.99 and I think that this is a pretty decent price. You can get alerts about your home security and expand the sensors if needed. The system is pretty basic, as it is the starter kit, but I think it’s a good base and I really like the app and alert feature.

What do you think to this? Do you think it would be worth the money?

Rebecca x

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*the system was gifted in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

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