Best Buy Home Security Vivint
The partnership, which was launched just last summer, was significant in that it marked the first time a nationwide retailer had teamed up with an alarm company to sell a combination of connected home products and professional security monitoring.
best buy home security vivint
In an interview with SecurityInfoWatch shortly after the partnership was announced, Colby Winegar, vice president of strategic business development for Vivint, said that the arrangement would not only help increase their exposure and brand awareness, but also enable them to educate consumers about the capabilities of smart home products.
Though it may not be partnering with Vivint any longer when it comes to selling connected home and security products, Best Buy appears to remain committed to the market as the company announced last week that it has agreed to acquire GreatCall for $800 million in cash.
It was an interactive display with smart home products, including a smart lock, doorbell, cameras and thermostat. Intrigued, he tried all the gadgets. Then he worked with a smart home expert to design a system that was right for him. It was an unexpected purchase, but a valuable one.
Many customers want to make their homes smarter, but they often find it confusing to choose products, install them and monitor the technology on their own. The partnership between Best Buy and Vivint aims to simplify that.
Consumer awareness and adoption of smart home products are on the rise. U.S. sales of home automation products increased 57 percent in 2016, according to The NPD Group. Smart doorbells, locks and security cameras are leading the growth. And nearly half of households with those products are using voice commands in some manner.
Electronics retailer Best Buy is re-evaluating its partnership with smart home company Vivint, reports Bloomberg. The companies first began working together in May 2017, in a joint attempt to expand sales and reduce some of the issues with smart home setup and use.
The partnership between Best Buy and Vivint involved bringing knowledgeable smart home employees into Best Buy retail locations to assist customers in evaluating needs and to facilitate installation. Vivint employees took to the sales floor in about 400 Best Buy stores to offer advice on what sorts of hardware and services a customer exploring the smart home might need.
The potential dissolution of this partnership could offer lessons for smart home solution providers.Vivint was offering bundled products including home security monitors, cameras, lights, locks, and more. The range of products, even with the help of a knowledgeable salesperson, could easily have overwhelmed shoppers.
SSI and sister publication CEPro first reported in January that the two companies had quietly launched a smart home initiative, starting with seven stores in San Antonio, Texas. The arrangement eventually called for Vivint to staff smart home employees in retail locations across the nation to assist customers with making decisions on which hardware and services to purchase.
One day, two trucks carrying three men showed up at my home for an all-day installation of a Vivint security system. I shepherded my chatty 3- and 4-year-old boys out the door, and my wife drove them to get egg bites at Starbucks while I did the initial walkthrough. Then we left for the day, went into the city, did some shopping, got ice cream and returned to find our house newly secured.
Security cameras, a smart thermostat, a video doorbell, a connected deadbolt, over a dozen sensors of various sorts and more dotted our home -- though you wouldn't notice most of the accoutrements without peering closely. Another quick walkthrough and explanation (thankfully brief because I've written about smart home devices for years), and it was dinnertime.
In the following weeks, I tested Vivint's home security system -- checked the security camera feeds, timed sensor latency and so on -- thanks to the company providing the hardware and installation for a one-month trial period. And in general, Vivint worked great. The experience is far more unified than you get with standalone devices, and it's all made consummately accessible through the Vivint app and the central console: a touchscreen tablet affixed to your wall.
Priest: Before breaking down the Vivint system device by device, I want to talk a little about one of Vivint's key strengths: its integration. I've tested Wi-Fi-connected tech since before voice assistants invaded the home, and integration has always been both the greatest point of pain and the greatest point of satisfaction in that work. In short, when an integrated home works, it's awesome. When it doesn't, it's a massive pain in the ass.
Two primary problems have plagued the integrated home for years: the problem of power (Wi-Fi drains batteries quickly, but routers don't often communicate with low-energy radio protocols like Z-Wave or Zigbee), and the problem of continuity (some brands work with Alexa and Google Assistant, but not Siri; others are Apple-exclusive, etc.).
Whole-home systems like Vivint solve both of these problems: the Vivint Smart Hub has a Z-Wave receiver built into it, so low-energy devices like flood sensors and motion detectors (which you don't want to constantly be changing the batteries in) work seamlessly with the larger system; and since all the devices are proprietary or curated by Vivint, everything communicates without issue.
Not only is it easy to learn, but Vivint's tools are genuinely useful. I closed the garage from the park after forgetting when I pulled out the kids' bikes. The car guard alerted me when my wife was on the way home from a midday grocery run, so I could get our lunch started. The day after we installed the Vivint home security system, my 3-year-old dropped a glass plate in the kitchen downstairs and my phone immediately pinged me that the glass break sensor had gone off -- which I wouldn't have known otherwise, as I was on the opposite side of the house.
Finally, while Vivint works great as a smart home integration system, it's also first and foremost (at least for most customers) a security system. Again, as with its integration, Vivint is strong here: it offers 24/7 professional monitoring for $30 per month (a comparable price to most competitors). There's the standard options here, including empty-house monitoring and nighttime monitoring.
Priest: The heart of Vivint's smart home is a $500 package of devices including the touchscreen Vivint Smart Hub, two door/window sensors, a flood sensor and a motion detector. It's a bit pricey for the hardware alone, but if you think about it as the core smarts holding the larger system together, $500 might feel a little more palatable.
The operating system on the display and the Vivint app on your phone are both simple and straightforward to use. They give you a lot of flexibility, with setting schedules and learning about the potential of your newly integrated smart home, and they're also accessible enough that less tech-savvy users will be able to navigate the interface without much trouble.
DiPane: The Vivint security system centers around the Vivint Smart Hub. It's the main control panel for operating the system within the home, and an update that happened in September 2022 has improved the overall usability of the panel. From the Vivint Smart Hub you can control your smart home devices, view your cameras and make other system changes (like arming or disarming). I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't a huge fan of having a panel inside my home since I normally use the app, but Vivint has now made it so the panel can display things like the time, the status of your home security and even the weather while it's idle, instead of a blank screen.
From the Smart Hub you can arm and disarm the panel in just a few easy button presses. Additionally, should there be an emergency at your home, you can notify authorities by using the buttons for Fire, Emergency and Panic. One of the great features is the Duress Code, which allows you to put in a code that seemingly changes your alarm's status from armed to disarmed, but notifies Vivint of the emergency and sends authorities to your location. This could be used if you were being followed in your home or someone broke in and you were trying to keep things quiet. Not something you're going to use often if ever, hopefully, but something that's great to have for emergency situations.
It has an encrypted SD card for secure local storage of videos, which increases the performance a bit and allows you to view recordings a little faster. Overall, the new doorbell is a step in the right direction for Vivint and remains one of the company's best value video cameras. The actual doorbell itself is a little larger than the previous model and has a slightly refined design. It still comes in only one color option and the front plate is all black, with the exception of the ring around the button that can change colors when it's pressed or detects motion.
Priest: Sensors aren't the devices that usually get people excited about a connected home, but they're a core component to make the whole system run seamlessly. You can program your smart plugs to flip on lights when you open the front door, or you can make your thermostat turn down the temperature when your motion detectors haven't picked up any movement in over four hours. In addition, the various sensors add a ton of security to the house: protecting against break-ins, obviously, but also against leaks, fires and other hazards -- like kids cutting themselves on a broken plate.
The best camera device Vivint offers is easily its doorbell cam, which has a 180-degree field of view and a 1:1 aspect ratio -- meaning you'll be able to see people's whole bodies, even when they're standing a couple of feet from the lens. In addition, it can provide person and package notifications, all for $130. That would be a solid deal, even if it weren't part of Vivint's larger system. 041b061a72