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A driveway alarm can offer a level of protection for your home when security cameras aren’t in the budget. Not only can they keep you informed of your family’s comings and goings, but an alarm can also alert you when there is an unwanted guest. These devices consist of a motion-activated sensor installed outside your home and a receiver inside your house. When vehicles or people trigger the sensor, the receiver lights up and plays a sound. Since driveway alarms can have a range of up to half a mile, they’re an ideal choice for those with larger properties and longer driveways.
We tested five of the top driveway alarms to determine which ones offer the best home security. After a week of testing, we found the HTZSafe Driveway Alarm to be the best of the bunch, largely thanks to its attractive design, reliable detection, and many sound options.
Bottom line: Driveway alarms are an affordable, effective way to enhance home security, with options to suit various needs and properties.
A clever design, a bevy of sound options, and impressive detection and transmission ranges make the HTZSafe one of the best affordable ways to add security to your property. It consists of a receiver designed in the likeness of an owl, along with a transmitter that also has an owl shape. When the alarm goes off, the owl’s eyes light up. There’s also an audio alert with 35 different sound options on the receiver, ranging from classical music to an owl call. Some of the sound options include voices naming specific locations, such as the backyard, garage, or front door. A single receiver is capable of supporting up to 32 sensors. The HZTSafe also allows you to assign different sounds to different sensors, which made it easy to tell which area was detecting motion.
This long-distance driveway alarm has three sensitivity settings. During testing, this helped us reduce the number of false alarms due to animals or passing traffic. It also has one of the longest ranges of any driveway security alarm we tested, working reliably up to about a quarter mile away with houses and hills as obstacles.
What our tester says: “The HZTSafe driveway alarm is accurate, has a long range, and offers some of the more entertaining designs and sound options of any driveway alarm.”—Tony Carrick, Product Reviews tester and writer
After extensive testing, we also highly recommend the following driveway alarms.