When I was a kid, I was afraid of monsters in the dark. As an adult, I’m afraid of my apartment burning down when I go on vacation. $99 can’t buy you protection from either, but it can get you greater peace of mind, in the form of the Leeo Smart Alert Nightlight. It’s a connected nightlight with soothing, customizable colors to light your way at night. And when you’re not at home, it listens for potential smoke or carbon monoxide alarms, ready to send you a notification if one happens to go off. It’s not nearly as advanced as the Nest Protect ($119.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , but it’s a good start for Leeo, and potentially worth it if you’re in already in the market for a nightlight.

Design and Setup
The Smart Alert  definitely looks a lot cooler than your average nightlight. Shaped like the wide end of a cone, the front half of the device is made of matte white plastic, while the back where the light comes from looks milky and translucent. When it’s plugged in, all you see is Leeo’s logo on the front, beneath a series of holes for the microphone. The device measures 3.4 inches around, and including the prongs, 1.9 inches deep. Although it might be possible to fit a (very) slim plug in an outlet below the Nightlight, I wasn’t able to find any small enough for the job, so keep in mind that this will likely take up two outlets’ worth of space.

The Nightlight is currently only compatible with iOS devices, so Android users are out of luck. If you have a device running iOS 7 or later with Bluetooth 4.0, setup is simple. All you have to do is download the (free) Leeo app from the App Store, make sure you have Bluetooth turned on, and the app will do the rest. After automatically detecting and connecting to the Nightlight, the app will ask you to create an account and provide the address at which you have the device installed. You’ll also need to connect it to your Wi-Fi network, so the Nightlight can send you notifications when you’re not within Bluetooth range.

App and Nightlight
The Leeo app is clean and spare. The home screen shows the temperature and humidity of the room the Nightlight is placed in, towards the bottom third of the screen. Below that is a gear icon, which brings up the Settings menu, and a sunlight icon, which allows you to control the color and brightness of the light. Another toggle in the upper left corner slides over a new window that lets you control additional device settings as well as your account info. I feel like there’s a bit of wasted space here, as the upper two-thirds of the screen is basically blank; it’s saved for alerts, but it usually just tells you that everything is “All Clear.”

Since it’s built into the name of the product, let’s start with a rundown of the nightlight performance. Out of the box, the light feature is set to remain on for as long as the device is plugged in. You can change this by tapping on the main Settings menu, which allows you to select the Ambient Light function. This uses a sensor to automatically turn the Nightlight on when it’s dark, and turn it off when it’s bright. The light emanates in a circle behind the back of the device and has a very soothing quality to it.

Changing the color and brightness of the light is easy. After tapping on the light icon, you can just drag you finger across the color block on screen to select from a possible 16 million colors. Of course, most of these variations look more or less the same, and a button for Quick Colors at the top of the screen puts 10 different colors at easy reach (though you can’t add your own custom colors). At the bottom of the screen is a sliding brightness scale, which allows you to adjust the intensity of the light. I found the brightest setting to be too bright for sleeping, but dialing it down about halfway was just right. Changing settings has a bit more lag than using a Philips Hue ($199.99 at Verizon)(Opens in a new window)  bulb, but it never hangs for longer than a couple of seconds.

Alerts and Notifications
If the Smart Alert were strictly a nightlight, it would be pretty much perfect, but the other half of its feature set is arguably more interesting. The Nightlight actually listens for smoke or carbon monoxide alarms in your home, and is ready to send a series of notifications if it hears one go off.

The app guides you through the process for adding your alarms, which is fairly easy. All you have to do is hit the test function on your smoke or carbon monoxide detector, and the Nightlight will automatically pick up on it if it’s within range (Leeo says the microphone can hear an alarm from up to 75 feet away). It had no trouble detecting a nearby carbon monoxide detector and identifying it as such, thanks to the type of pitch used by the alarm. Once it was added, I was then able to select emergency contacts to be notified in the event that I don’t respond to the initial alert.

To test the alert function, I activated the alarm on the carbon monoxide detector. On the third series of beeps, the light on the Nightlight changed from white to red, and I received a notification on my phone, all in less than a minute. The notification contained a five-second audio recording, which allowed me to identify the sound of the alarm and determine whether it was real or false; it gives you the option to call 911 if it’s real.

I then tested the function again, but didn’t respond to the notification on my phone. I then received an automated phone call, which clearly stated the purpose of the call and played the five-second clip for me to determine the validity of the alarm. If you confirm that it is indeed real, you can choose to be sent a text message with a number of for the local fire department, or be given a list of local emergency services.

Finally, I triggered the alarm yet again, and ignored both the push notification and the phone call. A call was then automatically made to fellow PCMag analyst Will Greenwald, who I listed as an emergency contact. I was then sent an email telling me that Will received the alert and verified the alarm. Reliability is key here, and the Nightlight didn’t let me down.

There are a couple of caveats, though. The first is that, as mentioned before, the Nightlight needs to be within range of an alarm in order to hear it. That makes me a little worried that it could miss out on a distant alarm if there’s other noise in the background. Also, there’s no backup power source here, so you can potentially miss out on an alert if your power goes out.

Conclusions
For $99, there’s little reason to recommend the Leeo Smart Alert Nightlight over the Nest Protect, unless you’re primarily interested in the nightlight function. For the same price, the Nest Protect doesn’t listen for alarms, because it is an alarm. And it offers a lot of functionality the Nightlight can’t match, like If This Then That (IFTTT) compatibility, and safety history that can help you understand when alerts happen and why. The Smart Alert Nightlight, on the other hand, is more like a great nightlight with a very cool security feature on the side. That said, this is an interesting first product from Leeo, and if you already have all the alarms you need, it’s worth a look.