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. It also has volume up and down buttons.
The Medical Alert Plus will cost you $35.99 per month and doesn’t require a contract. Still, that’s more expensive than competing devices including the MobileHelp Classic ($29.95 per month), the GetSafe Medical Alert Starter ($24.95 per month), and the Medical Alert At Home ($29.95). You can order the ADT system with fall detection, but that’ll cost you an extra $10 per month.
ADT doesn’t offer any of the additional services that you get with systems like the MobileHelp Classic and the LifeFone At Home Medical Alert System, such as daily wellness calls, medicine reminders, and access to medical experts for medical advice. Moreover, it doesn’t come with a mobile app or a web console that lets family, friends, and caregivers monitor activity and input medical information and emergency contact information.
Using the ADT Medical Alert Plus
Setting up the Medical alert Plus system is easy. Once you’ve plugged in the base station and turned it on, the Emergency and Reset buttons and the LCD will light up. A voice prompt will say, “system ready,” and after another couple of seconds, the date and time will automatically sync up with the cellular network’s date and time.
ADT recommends testing the system right away by pressing the Test button. The Test button will turn green and a voice prompt will tell you to press the emergency button or a pendant button. The voice will continue to tell you that a user test call has been sent to the emergency response center and doesn’t stop until you’re connected, at which time another voice will say, “user auto test completed”. It’s a good idea to test your pendant range from various parts of the house, including the yard, to make sure you can connect to the base station from anywhere in your home.
The Medical Alert Plus turned in speedy response times in testing (we measure response time as the time it takes to be connected to a live agent once the button is pressed). Its average speed of 16 seconds was faster than what we saw with the Aloe Care Health System (35 seconds), and significantly faster than its predecessor, the Medical Alert At Home No Landline System (61 seconds), but just a few seconds slower than the WellBe Medical Alert Plus System (10 seconds).
The pendant showed excellent range, connecting to the base station from the far corners of my house and backyard. I took it outside and down the street where it was able to connect at 400 feet, matching the signal range of the Bay Alarm Medical In-Home pendant. Two-way audio with the response agents was crisp and distortion-free, and the agents were always professional and friendly.
Fast Response Times, Light on Extras
If you require a cellular based in-home medical alert system that offers fast response times, the ADT Medical Alert Plus performed admirably in our tests, has big, brightly illuminated buttons, and offers clear two-way audio communication. Additionally, the backup battery will keep things running in the event of a power outage. That said, you don’t get any extras with this system—it lacks add-on services such as medicine reminders, daily wellness calls, and medical advice, and it doesn’t offer a companion mobile app that lets family and caregivers provide important medical information, edit contact information, and view system activity.
Our Editors’ Choice for in-home medical alert systems, the MobileHelp Classic, not only costs less, but offers web and mobile apps as well as medicine reminders and email status alerts. If you want a system that does more than connect you to an emergency response center, meanwhile, the WellBe Medical Alert Plus (also an Editors’ Choice winner) comes with a smart speaker and a smartwatch and offers medicine, appointment, and prescription refill reminders. It not only covers you at home and on the road, but will also play your favorite tunes and control your smart home devices.
