Gabe: Hey, folks. This is Gabe with Security Baron, and today we're checking out a new
marsupial in the home security market, the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor home security
system.
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Gabe: In today's review of the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor home security system, we're
going to go over some pros and cons. The feature set, installation experience, professional
monitoring options, customer support, before finally diving into the mobile application,
the Kangaroo app, to make sure you have all the information you need to make the right
decision.
If you want to see a list of our favorite home security systems, google "security brand,
best home security systems." If you have a question about today's review, leave us a
comment and I'll get back to you.
Let's kick off today's review of the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor home security system
by talking about some pros and cons beginning with the pros. When you're installing it,
it's a really easy process because it's just powered up, two AA batteries and it's hubless.
You're ready to go within five minutes of downloading the app and opening up the box.
On top of that, it has a very affordable professional monitoring service. On the con side, it's
a bit limited in that, it only detects motion and entry from any of the doors and windows
that you have one of the sensors placed.
On top of that, it doesn't have cellular backups. If your power goes out, you have no WiFi,
you're basically going to be defenseless as it will not be able to get you a notification.
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Gabe: Now that we've gone over the pros and cons for the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor
home security system, let's talk about the feature set. The feature set reflects the
components themselves, that is pretty minimal. You'll note here that you just have this entry
sensor and this motion sensor, and that's it. There's no hub. They directly connect
to your WiFi.
On top of that, there are two AA batteries built into the motion detector which can last
up to a year which is pretty impressive. Basically, you can set it up and forget about it for
a year. In terms of their capacity, the motion detector can see up to 20 feet with a 110-degree
field of view.
Once you place these together, they'll note whenever your door has been opened or your
window has been closed. One thing I'm actually pretty impressed that they've been able to
accomplish here is the ability to have pet sensitivity.
As long as your pet is not above two feet and four inches tall, it should be able to
run around to its heart content without giving you a barrage of notifications throughout
the day. You have those impressive elements with your Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor
Home Security System.
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Gabe: Let's talk about the installation experience with your Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor.
It's pretty straightforward. You're going to download the Kangaroo app, input some cursory
information, and then you're going to go to add a new device.
It'll ask what you're adding, we put in Motion and Entry Sensor and then you're going to
pull the yellow tab in your motion sensor when it tells you to do so. From there, they
will sync. You'll get a little blink on the motion sensor itself, and then it walks you
through actually installing the system in your home.
You decide if you want to put it on a door or a window. We went with the door. It's interesting
in that it tells you to actually place this sensor between four feet three inches on your
wall and four feet nine inches which is a little bit lower than we're used to seeing.
Once you've put it in place, it will actually test the system for you so you can open your
door or your window, and you can walk around to make sure that the motion detector is actually
picking you up.
We really like the fact that it's pretty thorough in the installation process, so you don't
have to think about it again later. Overall, the installation process is pretty straightforward.
One thing you'll note about the Kangaroo Motion Sensor is that, yes, it has all the elements.
Your sensor is here, your magnet is here, but there's also a Kangaroo button.
You'll see a little Kangaroo. This is actually how you can bypass the system if you're in
your home and it's armed. You want to know when doors and windows are being open, but
you need to go through a particular door.
You can actually press here and it gives you a short window of time to open that door and
then, you get a one minute grace period essentially to conduct whatever business you have.
There's more to the home security system than what you get in the app. You can actually
physically use the system. That's something we found interesting about Kangaroo in particular.
Let's have a look at the installation experience for Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor.
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Gabe: Hold on. I hope you're enjoying today's review of the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor
Home Security System. If you want to be kept up-to-date on the newest in Smarthome security
systems, VPNs, password managers, smart bulbs, and a host of other devices, subscribe to
our channel, Security Baron. We're dropping new content weekly.
All right, let's get back to the video.
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Gabe: Now that we've got our Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor Home Security System setup,
let's talk about the professional monitoring options. Professional monitoring is very important.
It gives you that extra layer of security in case something is actually going wrong.
They can alert the proper authorities and get them to your home.
We typically like to see cellular backup coupled with professional monitoring in case your
power is cut and you don't want to be vulnerable in that situation. While they do not have
cellular backup, Kangaroo does have professional monitoring.
The professional monitoring takes two forms. You can buy it monthly for $9 a month or for
a year saving a lot of money for $60 a year. You're not locked in necessarily, but you
do have those two options. The distinction between the basic, or no professional monitoring,
and the professional monitoring are actually pretty significant.
You can get text and voice notifications along with Alexa integration and, of course, the
fact that they'll actually call the proper authorities to your home if they do not get
that safety word from you on the phone. It's pretty useful to have the professional monitoring
with Kangaroo and we think that they give you some pretty affordable options for making
it a reality.
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Gabe: Let's take a look at the customer support for Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor Home
Security System. They give you a lot of options to getting in touch with them. Of course,
you have your online FAQ. They can probably answer a lot of your questions there. If that's
not enough, Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, you can
live chat them.
You can call them. A lot of that you can do right there in the app. They will call you.
You can hit Call Me. They'll call you. You can go to chat and get a live chat going on
or you can just email them and probably get an answer back within 24 hours.
Overall, they're bringing a lot to the table, put a lot of thought and effort into making
sure you get your questions answered. Don't just take our word for it, but those online
people seem to really enjoy it.
Of the reviews that we read that specifically mentioned customer support, a little bit shy
of 70 percent of them were positive. Overall, the customer support for Kangaroo seems to
be pretty great.
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Gabe: Now I want to jump into the mobile application for the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor Home
Security System, the Kangaroo app. This is where the rubber hits the road, where you're
going to be interfacing with your home security system and making sure everything is hunky-dory.
People seem to appreciate that experience on both iPhones and Androids. In the Google
Play Store, it has a 4 out of 5-star rating and in the Apple App Store, it has a striking
4.9 out of 5-star rating. Let's go ahead and check it out on my iPhone.
Here I am checking out the mobile application for the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor Home
Security System. You see here at the top it says, "Security Baron. Home is disarmed. Disarmed
by Security Baron." Right smack dab in the middle you have your three most important,
let's say, settings for your home security system.
The far left is the unlocked, locked icon. In the middle, you have the person inside
of a home, and on the far right, you have the locked lock. Each three of these icons
represent a different setting. Right now we're disarmed. Let's go ahead and arm this system,
just the doors and windows. We're going to go ahead and open the door to see what that
looks like.
I will go ahead and tell you that it is a not insignificant delay when it comes to letting
you know. It's about a 15-second delay. There you go. Now it says, "Security alert," and
now, I can dismiss and disarm or I could just dismiss. I can call 911 but it did say, "Open
detected at 11:13 AM." I'm going to go ahead and dismiss that.
Now, you see that it still says, "Open." It's going to take a moment for it to say, there
it is now. Now it says that the close has been detected. Every time there is a change
in state of your entry sensor, it will let you know when your system is armed for the
doors and windows. We have this in our front door. Now let's go ahead and say, "Dismiss
and disarm."
This is off completely. If we wanted to arm the system for motion detection and doors
and windows, we'd go to the far right icon. We click on there and now it says, "Home is
arming."
You may note right there in the middle it says, "Home will arm in 4 minutes and 51 seconds."
That's because it takes five minutes for the system to arm, giving you plenty of time to
get out of the house, make sure you have your shoes on.
You could probably make some ramen noodles, eat it. You'd be ready to go in the time it
takes the Kangaroo System to arm. Let's go ahead and hit disarm, stop that process. That's
what you have right there in terms of the main feature set for the motion and entry
sensor in the Kangaroo Home Security System.
Now, moving on to what you see below those three main icons. You see Kangaroo Baron,
which is what we named the Motion Sensor Home and Security System. I can click there. You
just see the device name. I can change the device name if I wanted to. If I wanted to
say Kangaroo Baroness. I can change the device location. We have attic, back door, back entryway,
bathrooms one, two, three and four. If you have more than four bathrooms, I think you
may have problems that I'd like to have.
Let's go beyond that. We have voice notification, text notification. You can see your battery
life.
One thing to note here is that they do tell us that the second wave of batteries, once
your first batteries die with your Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor, will actually last
even longer. Now, the last thing you'll note is it says device WiFi signals. We have a
strong signal. It lets you know that you can remove the sensor, and warns you that this
action cannot be undone.
Below that, you have add a security device. This is the last thing we'll touch on for
the home page. This allows you to add other motion sensors, other motion, and entry sensors.
They do have sirens and a climate sensor coming out in the future. You can be sure that Security
Baron will give those a run through as soon as they come out.
Let's go ahead and move on to settings. Now, you see on the bottom right, you have the
gear icon for settings. I've tapped on it, and now I see the different settings. You
have a really honestly nice clear display in the Kangaroo app.
You know exactly what you're getting from the get-go. They spent some serious time making
it an intuitive experience. I can invite other users to have access to the Kangaroo app.
In the top right corner, my home address. I can have a safety word. I can look at my
plan. Now, we have the Kangaroo complete plan billed at five dollars a month. You get it
yearly. Let's go ahead and go back. You have the different integrations. Right now, it
does integrate with the Amazon Virtual Assistant. They state that Google Home and IFTTT are
coming soon.
If I look at the device management, you'll see that I can actually change it to battery
saver mode, which will actually increase that arming time, which is already a pretty lengthy
5 minutes to an entire 10 minutes. You can also go through and look at your system notifications,
so you can get, of course, the in-app push notification, text notifications, voice notifications.
Then if you want to, you can turn on contacting authorities. Now, this is a pretty not intense,
but this is an element of the professional monitoring. It says if you do not respond
to the follow-up call from our monitoring agents, authorities will be contacted and
sent to your home.
You can create a safety word. Let's say my safety word would be security. This was what
they'll use as your safety word when they call you in order to verify your identity.
That's an important element with any professional monitoring system. Let's go ahead and knock
this out. Turn it on, turn it off for now. Those are the options you have in settings.
The final tab that I want to show you is the bottom left where it says support. Here, you
see the customer support options. It says skip the line, let us call you. They actually
will just call your line directly. You can message the support team, which is pretty
great that you have the ability to live chat from 9:00 to 9:00 Eastern time.
You can just go visit their FAQ section just to maybe not have to talk to someone to find
the answers to your questions. As you can see, the resources and effort that they have
put into this customer support tab in the mobile application just reflects the general
consideration they seem to have put into making the app experience both intuitive and useful.
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Gabe: We've broken down the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor Home Security System, but
you're trying to see if it's the right thing for you and your home. I'll say this. It is
a minimalist system that gets your motion and entry requirements covered, while also
offering an affordable and flexible professional monitoring option.
Now, if you're someone who wants a more comprehensive system or cellular backup, you're going to
want to look somewhere else. Kangaroo is not going to provide that. For $30, you can jump
aboard this startup's first foray into the home security market.
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Gabe: That concludes our review of the Kangaroo Motion and Entry Sensor Home Security System.
If you appreciated today's video, give us a like and hit that subscribe button. As always,
this is Gabe at Security Baron. Be secure.
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