I didn’t have the highest opinion of the Roost Smart Battery when I wrote about it last October. The 9-volt battery will send a warning to your smartphone when it senses that the smoke or carbon-monoxide detector it’s installed in sounds off. It can also tell you when the battery itself is weak, long before the device starts chirping. And as far as that goes, it’s the same story that I got last fall. But the Roost you can preorder today (for delivery in September) is a much better product than that.
Here’s the key design change that won me over: The product I saw nine months ago was a completely disposable $35 battery. At the end of its five-year useful life, you’d toss the whole thing and replace it. The battery that will be delivered in September comes in two pieces. You’ll still (hopefully) recycle the Lithium battery portion, but not before detaching the module containing the tiny Wi-Fi radio. Now you’ll need to spend only $15 to replace the battery, which you’ll reattach to the module you retained.
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