ADT offers fast in-home alerts, but few frills
The Medical Alert Plus ($35.99 per month) from ADT is an in-home medical alert system that connects you to a live emergency response agent with a single button press. It uses cellular technology to make the call and doesn’t require a landline, and it’s equipped with large backlit buttons and an easy-to-read status LCD. The system performed flawlessly in testing, but it’s more expensive than most of the competition and doesn’t offer a mobile app or any of the add-on services that you get with our Editors’ Choice winner, the MobileHelp Classic. Features and Pricing The ADT Medical Alert Plus comes with a cellular base station, a wearable pendant or wristband help button, and a user guide. The base station looks identical to the one that you get with the MobileHelp Classic and is in fact a later generation of the same model. The wedge-shaped device has a white finish and contains large teardrop-shaped Emergency and Reset buttons, a smaller Test button, a 2.2-inch wide LCD, a speaker, and a microphone. A power cord is hardwired to the back of the device, where you’ll also find an on/off switch and a mini USB port (reserved). Inside is a cellular radio that uses AT&T’s network to connect you to a 24/7 emergency response center when the Emergency button or a pendant button is pressed. There’s also a backup battery that will provide up to 30 hours of power in the event of an outage. The oval pendant help button is 1.7 inches long and 1.4 inches wide, and has a range of up to 600 feet from the base station. It is waterproof and can be worn in the shower. When powered up, the base station’s Emergency button glows red and the Reset button glows blue. There’s no way to dim these buttons, so keep this in mind when selecting a location for the base station. The Test button glows green when activated and the LCD gives you the current room temperature, the date and time, the internal battery level, and the cellular signal strength.
