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Tanzania, Dodoma
1 Level
693 Review
38 Karma

Review on πŸšͺ Genie ALKT1-R Aladdin Connect Smart Garage Door Opener: Alexa & Google Assistant Compatible Kit by James Yarbrough

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Very unreliable and disappointing. Poor integration with smart home.

I've had it for over a year and I really regret the purchase. My garage is less than 30 feet and 2 walls from my wireless router and this thing keeps losing connection. It was a hassle to set up and I could barely find my router in my house when I installed it. In everyday life, I never know whether I can rely on the device actually being connected and working. Then half the time it says it's connected I get no response when I try to close or open the door. Rules are useless because you can't schedule them for specific days. For example, I want the garage door to close if it's open for more than 30 minutes on a weekday. Most likely I left and forgot to close it. But I can't plan this rule in a time frame. So it closes on weekends when I'm not working. Which wouldn't matter much if the app actually opened the door. Okay cool I just tell him to notify me when he's open between 9am and 3pm. Oh wait, you can't choose which notifications you want to receive, so you'll either get a notification EVERY TIME the door opens or closes, or you won't get any notifications. I either call half a dozen times a day or I get nothing. So I never know if the notification popped up because I closed it when I left in the morning or if it's still open without going into the app and checking notifications. If you then turn off notifications, the app will remind you EVERY TIME you use it that you need notifications to know when the door is open. So for now I'll just ignore the stupid little dot in the app. None of that includes the fact that it offers almost no smart home integration. They just added an Alexa skill (after a year of ownership) that works poorly at best. You can't tell Alexa to just close the garage door like I can tell my Serena Shades, Caseta Lights, or any other smart device I have. No, you have to ask Alexa to use Aladdin Connect to do something. It then doesn't recognize the names of the doors, so you pace back and forth until you tell it to close all the doors (I hope you only have one door), then you have to use the pen. You can close the door faster manually. And there is no home kit support. So I'm having no luck with Siri or my AppleTV. I am currently looking for a new device, I would not recommend it to anyone who wants to use it for any form of reliable garage door opening. Because of this, my mother-in-law was stuck outside my house for not working when she left her remote control for my door and her house key in her other car. I don't think I can use it for my rental cars so now I have an extra remote for them. By any measure, this product is a terrible failure. Look for something different.

Pros
  • building materials
Cons
  • unreliable