"Really poor item and service"

The key fobs to activate and disarm the alarm are terrible. Constantly failing on me and a complete waste of money. Abode know there is a problem with the key fobs yet they still sell them and don’t offer refunds for unusable items

"Not much into gadgets especially when…"

Not much into gadgets especially when using apps. Got to say installing an Abode home system when very smoothly- really impressed.
Had an issue subscribing to the annual payment, the online staff were very helpful . Excellent service all round.

"The worst"

The worst. Hub not working properly . Plus they changed their service terms ! Now you can’t enjoy the automations for free and the detailed notifications ! Everything is made to make you pay even If you think you will use HomeKit instead . Pro plan not available in Quebec but they let you pay anyway. So no monitoring and no cellular backup lool .
Finally, Very poor support

"Its junk - it might seem cheap and private and contractless - but its not"

Every time I try to connect to my two downlights via blue tooth something has changed in the app and nothing works. Its almost as if they deliberately what to make it the worst experience ever! Every time I go to use it it suddenly needs some new permission, for example it suddenly started needing to use location then it needed a wifi connection then it wanted the camera - its a coloured light FFS! This stuff is junk! All I wanted was to turn on some coloured lights and set the colour - but it is NEVER simple- I have to mess around with passwords and locations and blue tooth and reset this and reset that! ITS STUPID! dont waste your money.

"Abode refuse to resend or refund stolen security kit on delivery"

I ordered from Canada with a mandatory $50 expedited shipping and paid over an additional $60 in customs and DHL just dropped off a $400 package at my front door without asking for a signature or handoff. Abode has been unresponsive for over a week and after continuous emails to their customer service, they finally responded saying they’re not going to refund or resend my purchase. It's the seller's responsibility to get the package into the customer's hand. This is the worst customer service I have ever had. Avoid abode

"Average equipment wish I had purchased…"

Average equipment wish I had purchased ring instead!!

"Abode alarm"

The alarm itself is great, works pretty seamless with Apple home, I just wish more of their products did too. The monitoring is inexpensive and much cheaper than some of the alternatives.

"I’ve been having lots of problems with…"

I’ve been having lots of problems with the Abode hub connecting and maintaining a connection to the Apple HomeKit gateway.

"Cost"

I like the idea that you can monitor yourself instead of a subsription

"Camera and recordings are not good"

Cameras and recordings are not good:

-Cameras video quality is not the best, but at their cost that was not completely unexpected.
- There is no smart recording setting for vehicles; car, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, etc. It misses all that unless set to capture all motion.
-The big problem; the cameras only record for the first 30 seconds, then must shutdown for 30 seconds before being able to record again.

If a security camera can only work, at most, half of the time is it really a security camera?

For me the answer is a hard no.

Recent example of the issue:

Set to “capture all motion” it recorded me walking towards my car and the camera shut off, per design. While the camera was off in its “cool down period” I got in the car and drove off. It didn’t record any of that.

Say a smash and grab occurs in the same duration, the camera wouldn’t record any of the crime per the design.
Depending on the camera angle, which window was broken, and tint of the glass you might not even be able to determine when it occurred.

I regret purchasing Abode

The rest of the system seems fine enough so far, but it took me a while to figure out the holes in the recordings was not spotty internet or wireless connections and instead just the poor camera/software design, so other shortcomings may take some time to reveal themselves.