Poorly designed smoke detectors are a real problem. They can be overly sensitive to some kinds of fire and completely miss out on other kinds. Tests are extreme

Poorly designed smoke detectors are a real problem. They can be overly sensitive to some kinds of fire and completely miss out on other kinds. Tests are extremely irritating and difficult to perform, so people don't perform the tests. Low battery warnings are just irritating enough to let you know there's a problem, but not consistent enough to let you know where the problem is. (I once replaced every battery in every smoke detector in the house, twice in a week, before I finally figured out that the low battery chirp was coming from a long-forgotten CO detector behind the refrigerator.) And nuisance alarms can be very difficult to dismiss, so people disable the alarm entirely, and then have even more difficulty getting it back in place. These are real problems. The Nest smoke detector ($129) seems to solve these problems. The thing is, if you've got these problems, you've probably spent less than $20 on smoke alarms in the last decade, either living with whatever came with your house/apartment, or buying the cheapest ($5-10) smoke detectors on the market. User-friendly smoke alarms are available for about $30, and they solve most of the same problems the Nest solves. They're not as slick, or network connected, but they'll do the job.