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Gabe Turner: Hi, folks. This is Gabe at Security Baron. I've had an idea, a belief, a conception,
a conviction, one might say, that you're into simplicity, so today I'm reviewing the Notion
Home Security System. [music] Gabe: In today's review of the Notion Starter
Kit, I want to go over what you get in the system, how easy and convenient it is to set
up, the professional monitoring options, the customer support. Finally, the mobile app so that you have all
the information you need to make the right decision. If you'd like to see a list of our favorite
home security systems, Google "Security Baron, Best Home Security Systems." If you have a question about today's review,
leave us a comment, and I'll get back to you.

I want to begin today's review of the Notion
Starter Kit, talking about the components beginning with the Notion Bridge. The bridge covers 1,800 square feet. It serves as the hub for your Notion Security
System, allowing each of your sensors to interact with the Notion app. I do want to note that Notion does recommend
that you get a Notion Bridge for each one of your floors because it does serve as a
range extender to make sure that every part of your system is connected to every other
part.

The entirety of the rest of your Notion system
is comprised of these sensors. The starter kit comes with three and a magnetic
accessory for sliding doors and windows. This little sensor here can detect glass breaking,
motion, heat, sound. It's an entry sensor you put on your door,
your window, and you're ready to go. That is what's really impressive about the
Notion system is that you can order these individually or packs of three and know that
you're going to get all the things you want to know about what's going on in your house
in one piece.

This is what you get in your Notion Starter
Kit. Now that we've talked about all the components
of the Notion Security System, let's talk about that installation process. The setup for the Notion is pretty easy. It's pretty straightforward. You're going to have that mobile application
downloaded and begin by plugging in your bridge. Make sure your bridge is connected to your
WiFi. It takes less than a minute. Then you'll jump into setting up your sensors. Right there in the mobile application is where
you set up your sensors. Once your bridge is ready to go, you go and
put the sensors. It says, "Add sensor," and you'll assign it
task.

The first one I did was a just a door sensor. Kept it simple. I didn't assign it any more tasks, but I could
have been like, "You know what? I also want to know what the temperature is
around my door." That is what I did with my second one. I just said, "Hey, let's just have this be
a temperature sensor in the middle of the room." Now I know in this part of the room, near
my couch, this is what the temperature always is.

Then I started to stretch things out a bit
with my third sensor which I put on a window. Then I said, "I want to know if there's a
water leak in here. I also want to know the temperature. I want to know if someone is opening and closing
this window." You can assign multiple tasks to each sensor
with your Notion Starter Kit. When it comes to orientation and where you
place it, it isn't that complicated because the Notion sensor will actually calibrate
to wherever you put it. Overall, in terms of both a digital and physical
installation process, it was really easy with the Notion Starter Kit. Now that we've got everything up and running,
let's talk about professional monitoring and your Notion Security System.

While there is no professional monitoring
with the Notion Security System, we'd like to see the option to have that 24/7 team of
professionals ready to help you out with anything going on your home. That's not going to happen. With Notion, it's all going to be self-monitoring. What's also an issue for us with the Notion
Security System is the lack of cellular backup. If you're doing all the self-monitoring yourself,
that's one thing, but if your power goes out and you can't do any self-monitoring because
there's no cellular backup, that's another thing.

No cellular backup and no professional monitoring
with the Notion Security System. Let's move on to customer support with the
Notion Security System. There are three ways to get in contact with
Notion to get the help you need. You've got an online forum. You've got an online support center. You can just give them a call. In our experience, we had a number of questions
for Notion. We wrote them an email, essentially. They got back to us within two hours which
we thought was really impressive because we did have some questions about various things. They got right back to us. We also want to know what are other people
saying about Notion. It is a newer company. There are a few Amazon reviews out there. We actually just found three reviews that
specifically mentioned customer service. Two of those three were positive. We don't think that's necessarily a great
representation of how the company will fair in the future related to customer support. We do want to mention that, overall, in Amazon,
they got 4.1 out of 5 stars.

Of course, we had a positive experience, but
we can't speak too much on a more general customer support experience when it comes
to the Notion Security System. Let's move on to the mobile application with
the Notion Security System. What you want out of a mobile app is two-fold. You want it to help facilitate the installation
process of each of the components of your system and also be an intuitive way to control
your system. In my experience, Notion does both of those
things. When you're adding a sensor to your system,
you do it all right there in the app. You designate what you want it to focus on. It was really solid in terms of an experience
because it was seamless.

I was done with the installation process quickly. Then when it comes to actually looking at
things in the app, I also found it to be pretty intuitive, maybe not the most intuitive app
I've used, but I definitely was ready to go instantaneously. Those are my experiences. Let's look at what other people were thinking
in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, beginning with what I was using, an
iPhone. iPhone users gave it a 4.2 out of 5-star rating
in the App Store, which is really solid. It's actually pretty solid in the Google Play
Store with a 3.5 out of 5-star rating. That is significantly less, and so we looked
into why that was. It's because a lot of Android users complained
about the app crashing on their phones. That's really problematic. You need to be able to see what's going on
in your home security system, especially a system like Notion that relies on self-monitoring. However, one thing that we noted that was
a very positive sign was that Notion had responded to each one of these customer reviews' relationship
to the app crashing.

That's what you want to see from a home security
company is they're really on the ball responding to their customers' concerns. Now that we know how I feel about the app
and what others feel about the app, let's look at the Notion mobile application on my
iPhone. Let's look at the Notion mobile application. If you note on the home page, you get all
your sensors right there, obvious. I have three sensors set up. Those are the three sensors I got in my starter
kit. We've got the entrance sensor which, for me,
is on a window. For that window, I wanted to know what was
the temperature, whether or not there was a water leak, and whether or not the window
is open or closed. Here, you can get all that information right
there. That's impressive, because basically you assign
task to each of your sensors with the Notion Security System.

For two of my devices, I just have temperature
or whether or not the door is open. For that one, I was like, "Let's go a little
bit deeper." I want to know if water is getting into my
place or if the window is open. I just want to know what the temperature would
be there. I can go in and look at the task details. You can check whether or not you are let known
about something, a temperature above or below, which is really useful. You can send alerts when home, send alerts
when away, send alerts at night.

I want to take off, for example, the send
alerts when home because I can just look when I'm at home and know what's going on, but
I do want to get those alerts when I'm away, or even at night. If I go to the door app, you see here are
my task details. I can check out the task details or look at
how things have been going on with my app. For the purposes of shooting sometimes, we
connect and disconnect the app, but you can get an idea of how well it works and functions
just from what happened today and earlier this week. If I were to tap on the account button below
that, it would give me details on my account with Notion, or I can go to system.

System has a little bit more, your general
info. I named the system the Baron Zone, located
in Brooklyn. Then I can go to sensors on the top, tells
me the signal strength. Once again, the bridge covers 1,800 squares
feet. We have far fewer than that right here. Then we have the bridges. I've only got one bridge attached. You can see that it's connected. If I wanted to add a bridge, I'd tap on Add
A Bridge at the bottom. Going to my settings. One, what are the network outage notifications,
and when is it nighttime? To the right of that, you have your various
integrations. Finally, you can go into support. Support, you have frequently asked questions,
general feedback. You can say if something isn't working. There's even an open-source link. To go back to that home page, you'll note
that the Notion Security System has a lot of functionality in terms of letting you know
what's going on in your home. You can assign various tasks to each of your
sensors.

That's useful for getting a complete picture
of your home environment. That's me checking out the Notion Security
System mobile application Now that we've thoroughly reviewed every element
of the Notion Security System, let's talk the pros and cons. It is a aesthetically-pleasing home security
system that has the functionality to back it up. You get heat, motion, glass break, entry detection
from this really beautiful sensor. Those are things you're not going to get from
an entire home security system, let alone just one sensor. On top of that, you get integrations with
IFTTT and Nest. In terms of the functionality of the Notion
system, that's really beautiful. Some of the cons is that it doesn't have professional
monitoring. It doesn't have that cellular backup that
we've come to expect from our home security systems. It doesn't have a video component that integrates
into the mobile application.

That being said, my personal take is that
I can probably learn to live with those things, because in terms of getting a complete picture
of the environment of my home, the comings and goings, you're not going to beat the Notion
Home Security System. With this bridge and just a few sensors, I
know exactly what's happening in my home with the exception of actually seeing what's happening
inside my home. In that sense, I really, really like the Notion
Home Security System. [background music] Gabe: That concludes our review of the Notion
Starter Kit. If you appreciate today's video, give us a
like. Hit that subscribe button. As always, this is Gabe at Security Baron. Be secure..