Setup is unacceptable – Onelink Home by First Alert Review

I replaced my expiring Nest Protects with First Alert One Links. The Protect's hardware is much nicer in features, user experience and build quality, but it is now owned by Google. Nest’s night light has motion sensor, Onelink’s night light does not. OneLink’s app is terrible. The app has earned the 1.5 App Store rating. Each alarm took several setup attempts. On average I spent over 45 minutes setting up each alarm in the app. That does not include the hardware installation, which was simple. For the price, I expect better. There were many, many timeouts "accessing device data", setting up wifi, etc. The app would often tell me something went wrong, with a button to finish setup. This never, ever worked. It would spin for minutes at a time. I have a video over 14 minutes long of trying to set up the last one, and that was only half the attempts. It feels like whomever wrote this software is a contractor. They got paid and are out. Surely there is no way this was written by an in-house team, because if so, they should be asked to set up the current hardware on a vaulted ceiling with this app on a hot day. The Onelink PHONE support has been good. I had an issue with one alarm that chirped every minute and said the battery was low. The FAQ said to replace the battery but it was brand new, so I called. The person told me that the alarm had to "click" into the mounting plate as there is some pressure sensor. I reapplied the alarm to the plate and it seemed to fix it, although I also reconnected the adapter. It was nice to get support on a Saturday. I am able to ask my HomePod "is there smoke upstairs?" or "Is there smoke in the vanity room?" and Siri responds pretty quickly that no, there is no smoke indicated. So that's a good sign. But the setup is simply unacceptable and I cannot recommend this product until First Alert completely overhauls their app. If the hardware is the issue, then the hardware needs updating. But app just spins and spins for multiple minutes with no feedback and then just says an error occurred. It's infuriating compared to how easy the Nest Protects were to set up, and that was seven years ago. There is no excuse for this poor level of software performance. I have not had an alarm trigger, as I just installed them so I have no idea how well they function as a smoke detector. Lastly, First Alert needs a light on their hardwired unit that indicates power is on. The night light only works if the night light has been enabled, which it is not while setting up the unit. Knowing that the writing is correct before beginning setup is important.
Review by Steve Riggins on Onelink Home by First Alert.