Review on 🔋 10 Year Sealed Battery Backup Photoelectric Smoke Detector - First Alert P1010 by Ron Thomas

As far as I can tell the instructions tell you all but the essential details of how to ACTIVATE the device. Since that process isn't entirely obvious, I almost got mine back. (The print on the instructions is really microscopic, I had to take a picture with my camera to read it, so it's probably in there somewhere and I missed it.) The activation instructions appear to be printed on the INSIDE of the DEVICE . To open them, you must unscrew them from the mounting base. The thing to know here is that the device *only works when screwed onto the mounting base*. The unit is intentionally supplied with a base that is frictionally attached but not inwardly twisted. This saves battery life, just like some products I have a plastic tab that you have to pull out to activate the battery. The problem I had, and I suspect others had, is that I wanted to test it before proceeding with the installation, especially with all the DOA device reports. You don't have to unscrew the base to do this, do you? And therein lies the flaw - fairly common use of an out-of-the-box pre-installation test is doomed to failure. And since most smoke alarms do not require attachment to a base to work, the user is unlikely to consider the possibility that the solution requires tampering with the base. And if the user never removes the base, they will never see any important instruction. by screwing the detector into the base for activation (!)