I know that the Kidde TrueSense line was discontinued and recalled, but my grandparents still have a TrueSense hardwired smoke and co combo. I was worried about if it would actually work or not so I tested it with an actual fire. It went off incredibly fast and stopped as soon as I took it away from the fire. It seems like the perfect smoke alarm to me.
If anyone has more information on the TrueSense line please feel free to share it with me.
It’s still advisable that it be replaced: to quote the CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission): “The smoke alarm and the combination smoke/carbon monoxide (CO) alarm can fail to alert consumers to a fire” (though given how rare they’ve likely become as a result of the recall don’t throw it away: feel free to keep it for personal/hobby use as long as it’s not used for actual life safety)
I may consider replacing it, but I’m not that worried as it seemed to at least work when I tested it and there is another hardwired, non TrueSense smoke alarm about 5’ away from it (I have no idea why the electricians wired the house that way, but they did and it works in this case). It is mainly redundant and being used for CO.
If I do decide to replace it, I will definitely save it as I know that they were only sold for a short period of time and were kind of expensive (we got it for around $50). We would have just gotten the basic photoelectric and CO combo instead of the TrueSense but they were sold out at they store we were at when we were shopping for it.
Interestingly, the other smoke alarm that we bought at that same time was also recalled. It was a Kidde dual sensor photoelectric and ionization battery powered detector. I know that one is fine because they were recalled because of a plastic cover being left over one of the smoke sensors after manufacturing. I checked the one that they had and it didn’t have that cover.