Don't waste your money on those cheap wireless contact sensors from Amazon

I bought a 10-pack of those no-name wireless door contacts for $45 back in February. After 3 months, 4 of them stopped reporting to the panel and 2 more started giving false alarms. I spent about 6 hours driving back to that house and swapping them out. Has anyone else had bad luck with the bargain bin sensors or is there a reasonable middle ground brand worth trying?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer_johnson221mo ago

Had a buddy who bought a 12-pack of those cheapo sensors for like $35. He installed them all in his rental property and thought he was set. Three weeks later one of them started going off every time the wind blew. He ended up having to drive 45 minutes to go check it out and it was just the sensor being garbage. Then another one just straight up died after a month. He pulled his hair out for an afternoon swapping them and finally just trashed the whole batch and bought some used Honeywells off eBay. Those have been fine for like a year now.

sage_perry1mo agoTop Commenter

Respectfully gotta disagree here. @spencer_johnson22's story is a common one, but I've actually had pretty good luck with a 10-pack of some generic Z-Wave sensors off Amazon. They were about $50 and after a year, only one had a flaky battery connection that I fixed with a tiny piece of electrical tape. The key is picking ones with decent reviews from people who actually install them for a living, not just the cheapest no-name listing. You probably just got a bad batch or maybe a dud model, but writing off all cheap sensors isn't fair to the few good ones that are out there.