Verisure review: A home alarm system with 24/7 monitoring and smoke screen

The Independent's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission. Verisure review: A home alarm system with 24/7 monitoring and smoke screen Verisure is an alarm system with professional 24/7 monitoring, cameras, a smart lock and even a deployable smoke screen Verisure is a security and alarm company with 24/7 professional monitoring and emergency service response. Instead of leaning into smart home connectivity and a broader device ecosystem, like Ring, Eufy and Tapo, Verisure’s offering is closer to that of Simplisafe. Although it provides a smartphone app, a motorised smart door lock and similar door/window contact sensors to those sold by Ring and other competitors, Verisure’s primary focus is its responsive service. Operating 24/7, this sees a call centre agent respond every time your alarm is triggered. They can communicate with the customer either through a phone call, or through the microphone and speaker of the keypad and cameras of the alarm system itself. If you don’t respond to the call after the alarm is triggered, Verisure agents can use your camera to access the situation. If there’s an active incident, like a burglary, agents can call the police on your behalf and even deploy a smoke screen. Verisure systems vary by size and complexity depending on your home and personal needs. Components typically include indoor and outdoor cameras with integrated motion detectors, door/window contact sensors, a wall-mounted keypad and key fobs for arming/disarming the system, and a hub connected to your router. Optional extras include a video doorbell, a smart door lock, and the aforementioned ZeroVision smoke canister. Verisure’s alarm system can be controlled via either the SVK (siren, voice, keypad) control panel, or smartphone app. There’s no integration with smart home systems like Alexa or Apple HomeKit, making Verisure closer to a traditional house alarm with a little added tech, instead of a fully-fledged smart security system. Think Verisure is the right home security system for you? Read on to delve into our three-month review. Read more: Simplisafe review: A comprehensive home security system with 24/7 monitoring Read more: Best video doorbells, tried and tested by a home security expert Verisure - Best Alarm with professional monitoring - Wifi Yes - Cellular backup Yes - Base station range Not stated - Sensor/accessory limit Not stated. Scaleable by demand - Base station dimensions 105mm x 174mm x 32mm - Outdoor siren No - Professional monitoring Yes - Why we love it - Pro monitoring with emergency service calling - Professional installation - Lifetime hardware guarantee and support - Great customer support - Take note - Opaque pricing - Limited smartness - Some app bugs - Subscription mandatory Verisure is a big name in home security, thanks to its expansive alarm systems and professional monitoring. Unlike many other systems, every Verisure installation includes access to a call centre, where agents respond to triggered alarms, attempt to make contact with the customer, assess the situation and even call the emergency services if required. Verisure can also dispatch a third-party agent to the scene, and even deploy a smoke canister designed to block an intruder’s vision and force them out of your home. This is not a DIY system, so professional installation is required. Verisure employees assess your property to design what hardware it needs, then fits what’s required. At a minimum, this includes a base station that connects to the internet, a wireless keypad called the SVK (from which you control the system and speak to Verisure agents), an indoor camera, key fobs for controlling the system, and a door/window contact and shock sensor. Larger systems include multiples of these, plus the option for an outdoor camera, a video doorbell, a motorised door lock and the aforementioned ZeroVision smoke screen. Unlike all other alarm systems tested by The Independent, Verisure is very protective of its prices, and does not state any publicly. After much back-and-forth, the company was able to tell me its prices start at £399 for installation, plus £37.90 per month for a 12-month contract. This increases for larger systems, like the one tested here, but, frustratingly, Verisure refused to say how much the system I tested for three months might cost. Naturally, this makes it difficult to fairly review Verisure and compare it with rivals – including Simplisafe, which also offers professional monitoring with emergency service dispatch, for a lower price. During my three-month trial of Verisure, I found the system mostly reliable and easy to use, although the door lock sometimes failed to respond to a press of the key fob, and the hub once disconnected from Verisure’s service and required a reset. The hardware seems well-made and the system responded promptly when armed, disarmed and triggered. The SVK unit is particularly good, since all it takes to arm is a press of a button and a tap of the included key fob. This is how you arm/disarm via the new LockGuard door lock, too. Just press a button, tap the fob, and the entire system responds. The Verisure app is less good, with little in the way of customisation compared to other systems and, during my trial, a couple of bugs too. The indoor cameras are also quite basic, with no option for creating activity or privacy zones. The outdoor camera is better, but since it’s provided by Arlo you need to create an Arlo account and have the Arlo app on your phone. I was surprised to find the Arlo camera is not activated when the Verisure system is armed, and the alarm is designed to not be triggered by motion spotted by the Arlo camera. The simplicity of the Verisure app tells a broader picture. It suggests this is a set-it-and-forget-it system aimed at those who want a reliable alarm system with professional monitoring, but who aren’t interested in tinkering with settings and configuring their home security system to the nth degree. And that’s just fine. Verisure offers a hands-off approach where everything is taken care of for you, from how many door sensors your house needs, to where everything should be fitted. You even get a quarterly remote inspection report to confirm everything is working correctly, and customer support responds promptly via a WhatsApp chat initiated within the Verisure app. Verisure hardware The foundations of any Verisure system begin with the Central Unit, which connects to your router with an Ethernet cable, and what Verisure calls the SVK, which is battery-powered, wall-mountable, and acts like a keypad for controlling the system. But instead of featuring a set of numbered buttons, the SVK (which stands for siren, voice, keypad) serves as a place to arm/disarm the system, a siren to ward off intruders, and a way to communicate with Verisure’s professional monitoring service. If the alarm is triggered, they can conveniently be spoken to through the SVK. Instead of using a PIN or other type of code, the Verisure system is armed and disarmed by pressing the SVK icon corresponding to the alarm mode you want, then touching it with the included key fob. The system I had installed for this review also included a pair of wireless, battery-powered indoor cameras and one outdoor camera. The former have an integrated motion detector and are designed to be fitted high up, in the corner of a room or hallway. Since I have a dog, the installer suggested he avoid the kitchen and instead install one camera in the lounge, facing the door into the hallway, and one on the upstairs landing, facing towards the top of the stairs and primary bedroom door. As indoor security cameras go, Verisure’s are fairly large but also surprisingly subtle. I feared two cameras staring into my home would be uncomfortable, since I tend to install indoor cameras on shelves or window sills facing a specific target area, not the whole room and certainly not my sofa or bedroom door. But my partner and I quickly got used to the Verisure cameras, and soon ignored them entirely. It’s worth noting that Verisure systems can only be installed by the company itself. Where Simplisafe can either be fitted by a pro or with a DIY approach, Verisure inspect your home, decide what hardware you need to secure it, and install it all for you. The wireless outdoor camera with integrated siren – produced by Arlo and accessed via the Arlo app – was fitted to an external wall with a view of the garden and gate. Lacking a solar panel or power cable, the camera is battery powered and will need charging every few months. After three months mine had dropped from 100 to 62 per cent. Verisure also installed several door/window contact sensors. These two-piece devices work just like those from many other security companies, triggering the alarm when the door or window they’re fitted to is opened. I had these fitted to two windows in the kitchen, the back door, and a door between the lounge and garden. Verisure recommends the SVK is mounted to a wall by the front door (or whichever door you use most) but since this review kit was to be returned, I opted to rest it on a nearby shoe stand. Not ideal, perhaps, but this didn’t affect how the SVK worked, and meant I avoided any screw holes in the wall. Lastly, Verisure installed its new motorised door lock. This comprises a battery-powered motor on the inside of the door, and a wireless keypad on the outside. Simply press a button to arm or disarm the system and press your key fob against it to confirm. Green lights confirm everything has worked, and the motor whirs a second later as the door locks and the alarm is set. This wasn’t entirely reliable, and sometimes flashed red lights when it failed to read my key fob. It usually worked on the second attempt, but wasn’t quite as seamless as I’d hoped, and I wish it were a bit quicker to function too. It also can’t be controlled with the tap of a smartphone, or operated via geofencing or Bluetooth, as other smart locks can. Verisure software During daily use – arming and disarming – the Verisure system can be controlled entirely with the key pad and fobs. But if you want to adjust settings, control the system remotely, view camera images and check on the status of your system, you’ll head to the My Verisure smartphone app. This isn’t as slick as apps offered by some other home security companies, especially those that focus more on the smart, connected end of the market. But Verisure is aimed at customers who want an alarm system first, with additional smart features a secondary concern. As such, the app is functional rather than particularly impressive. It’s a handy way to check your alarm while away from home – and arm it if you forgot when leaving. It also lets you request an image from each of your cameras, but instead of showing a live video stream, by default you instead get a still, low-resolution image of the camera’s view. This helps save battery life, but will feel like a downgrade for anyone used to the live, high-res streaming capabilities of cameras from Ring, Eufy, Tapo and others. There are also no adjustable settings for Verisure’s indoor cameras, such as privacy zones, and small details like the app not properly filling the screen of my iPhone, as if it’s from a pre-iPhone X world, let it down. The outdoor camera is an Arlo device that can be accessed either through the Arlo or Verisure app. There, you can set activity and privacy zones, see a live video stream, check battery life, adjust spotlight brightness and switch between colour or black-and-white night vision. Everything you’d expect from a decent outdoor security camera, basically. Back to the Verisure app, and there’s a timeline page showing every time your system has been interacted with. This includes when it was armed/disarmed (and by whom, based on which key fob was used), when images were requested from the cameras, and when the alarm has been triggered. A routines system lets you add some automation to the alarm. This is basically a scheduling tool, where the alarm can be programmed to activate at a set time every night, for example. This all works well enough, but I encountered a couple of dead ends. Despite being prompted every time I opened the app, attempting to link my existing Arlo Secure account to the Verisure system never worked. The door lock has a setting called Door Assistant, with a scale from zero to 15, but with no explanation as to what this is. One indoor one camera had a ‘Privacy’ tab in its settings page, which was empty with no options to adjust. These are the sorts of failings I usually see (and can usually tolerate) on cheap security products from lesser-known brands. But from a premium alarm system like Verisure it’s disappointing. In better news, the Verisure app offers a handy way to manage maintenance visits, edit codewords (which are used to verify your identity and status during an incident), and check when batteries need replacing, with instructions on what to do. The app is also where you can initiate a WhatsApp chat with customer support, which I found worked well. Verisure monitoring and subscription plan This is where Verisure comes into its own. Professional monitoring is included with all Verisure systems, ensuring an agent will respond every time your alarm is triggered. This response sees them make contact through the wall-mounted SVK unit, and also by phone. You can speak to the agent through the SVK – handy if you’ve set the alarm off by mistake – and the agent can also assess the situation through your cameras. If a live incident is taking place, such as a burglary, the agent can activate your ZeroVision smoke canister (if your system has one). This deploys a dense, non-toxic smoke screen that’s intended to stop an intruder and encourage them to leave. At the same time, the agent will call the police and report your burglary. Local police will be informed and an officer will be dispatched when available. What happens when the alarm is triggered? When a Verisure alarm is triggered, a loud siren is emitted by the SVK unit. More likely than not, you then receive a text message and a notification from the Verisure app, saying the system believes the alarm was triggered “within the courtesy time”. This means Verisure’s system believes you triggered the alarm by mistake, usually right after setting it, and prevents false-positives coming through to the call centre. In my testing, the notification arrived promptly, but tapping on it sometimes opened the app to an error page that was impossible to dismiss without force-closing the app. If the alarm appears genuine, a call centre agent will reach out through the SVK unit, call the emergency services and/or dispatch a private security guard to your address. Call centre staff can also use your Verisure cameras to assess the situation. If triggered by accident, you can confirm your identification to Verisure by stating a previously arranged codeword. This is also used when contacting Verisure to make changes to your system. When deliberately triggering the alarm (by leaving for 30 minutes and returning via the back door without disarming the system), the siren sounded immediately. This stopped about a minute later, and was followed by a call centre agent asking for my code word. Their voice came through loud and clear from the SVK unit, and after accepting my codeword they checked everything was okay. I said I’d come back in through the garden and forgot the alarm was set, and with my permission they proceeded to disable the alarm. The outdoor camera’s siren did not sound, and although the Arlo app (which handles Verisure’s outdoor cameras) added a motion event to its timeline at the exact minute I triggered the alarm, the 20-second recording doesn’t include the moment I entered the garden or the back door. Interestingly, outdoor Arlo cameras installed as part of a Verisure system are not armed with the rest of the alarm, so you have to jump into the Arlo app and activate the camera separately each time you want it to record motion. And even when it does so, the Verisure alarm is not triggered. Only Verisure’s own devices can trigger the alarm, with Arlo cameras there to help give Verisure’s Alarm Receiving Centre a live video feed of the situation. Verisure price Verisure does not publicly state its prices. Despite repeated requests, the company was unable to say how much the exact system installed in my home would cost, or what the monthly fee might be. Unfortunately, Verisure also refused to say roughly how much a typical installation might cost, and declined to say what the typical monthly fee is. Naturally, this makes it difficult to fairly judge the system and provide it with a star rating. I was eventually told that installation prices start at £399 and the monthly fee starts at £37.90 for a 12-month contract. This includes the central hub, an SVK, three key fobs, one door/window contact and shock sensor, and one indoor camera. Haracio Perez, Verisure’s operating director, said in a statement: “Every home is unique, so the right security system and its associated costs vary from customer to customer... As our alarm systems are tailored, we don’t offer a ‘one-size-fits-all’ price. Our approach ensures that customers receive the alarm they need to deliver complete protection for their property as well as to deliver the peace-of-mind they are looking for. The costs for our systems, products and monitoring services are always shared openly with customers during the tailored security assessment helping them understand exactly what their security solution includes and why.” For context, Simplisafe – which also sells an alarm system with professional monitoring – is transparent with the prices for both its hardware and monthly fee, with the latter being £29.99 a month. Simplisafe hardware packages, which can be installed DIY or by a professional, start from £199.45 at the time of writing. Verisure smart home features Apart from its tie-in with Arlo (which provides the exterior camera and video doorbell), Verisure does not offer any form of smart home integration. There is no support for platforms like Alexa and Apple HomeKit. This is understandable given how Verisure focusses on offering a watertight alarm and security system with monitoring, not a system for smart home enthusiasts to tinker with. That said, I’d like to have seen some smart home features. Support for Apple Home Key would be fantastic, as it would let iPhone users open the door lock with a tap of their phone. Bluetooth tech for unlocking via smartphone or watch would also be welcome, as found on other smart door locks, but that’s not available here. The verdict: Verisure home security and alarm system Since I don’t know how much this product costs, it’s difficult to draw a conclusion. As a monitored alarm system it works well, with a good range of high-quality hardware, a very tidy installation, impressive ease-of-use and, of course, 24/7 professional monitoring with emergency service calling. The system is perfect for homeowners who value peace-of-mind over the latest, most customisable technology. Instead of being able to configure numerous preferences, then have the system interact with your smart lighting and kit from other companies, Verisure has set out to nail the security basics. It’s perhaps not a security system that’ll impress tech lovers. The app has its shortcomings; the door lock is relatively slow and lacks many of the features offered by rivals. But, and perhaps most importantly for a home alarm, it feels like a system you can trust. If only I could tell you how much that trust really costs. How Verisure was tested I had a Verisure system installed in my home and used it for three months. The system was installed by Verisure itself, exactly how it would be for a real customer, and included two indoor cameras, one outdoor camera, several door/window sensors throughout the ground floor, a set of key fobs, and Verisure’s new motorised smart door lock too. I was not able to try out the company’s ZeroVision smoke canister – and, while my house wasn't broken into during the trial, I intentionally set the alarm off to assess response time and understand how the professional monitoring service works. Why you can trust us The Independent is committed to providing unbiased reviews and expert shopping advice across a range of home improvement products. Our team of experts has spent years testing and rating the latest smart home tech in our homes, gardens and under real-world conditions, so you can be sure our verdicts are authentic and based on personal experience with each product featured. When it comes to security systems, our expert testers consider everything from app features and ease of setup, to ongoing subscription costs. Bookmark popover Removed from bookmarks