Total Connect 2.0 Reviews

by Dunket123

I have had the alarm system for abt 3 yrs now. The alarm part works fine. The camera they could never get to work.. could not connect to my Wifi for some reason. The first attempt to get a camera was abt a year ago, I believe.. they took the camera back down and took it with them.. due to not being able to connect camera to my WiFi. Mind u, my WiFi works perfectly fine with every other wireless product I have had.. so I thought I’d give it another try and called them back out to try to install another camera before I was to leave for out of state for 10 days.. I’m goin to cut to the chase.. once again they couldn’t connect to WiFi and blamed it on att.. so att gave me new router and said everything looked good and in working order. Tried to get a tech back before leaving for vaca and after 2 hrs on phone and climbing up and down ladder trying things the guy on the phone was having me try, I asked to speak with a supervisor.. They could not get tech there before I was to depart so I argued to let me out of contract so I could go elsewhere and they refused..and needless to say, myhouse was robbed and glass sliding door busted out while I was gone. Would have been nice to have a camera working.. I’m still contemplating taking my police report and suing them for the price to replace door ( which I obviously had to do immediately upon arriving home) and my stolen property.. I definitely would NOT recommend amp or total connect.

by Mjmacinhack

Every new version of TotalConnect20 is better than the next one. In other words, it just keeps getting worse. Sensor bypassing used to be simple, intuitive, and right on the home screen on iPad. Now you have to go to a separate screen and even after bypassing sensors it is hard to tell if they are actually bypassed. How hard is that to get right? I would recommend working on connectivity issues which have plagued TotalConnect20 from the start rather than “tweaking” the UI which these current developers clearly understand little about. TotalConnect20 should be simple and intuitive to use and with rock solid connectivity. Currently it has neither. I paid hundreds of dollars for the hardware and am wondering if I will have to do that again with a different vendor just to get a decent iPhone / iPad app to control it? Come on Honeywell, hire some decent software developers!

Update - TotalConnect20 has become unusable and rarely is able to connect to the panel anymore... Zone Data Error... Cannot Connect To Panel At This Time... This Junk DOES NOT WORK AT ALL ANYMORE!!! PERIOD!!! How hard is this to do Honeywell??? Hire some competent developers and fire the clowns that ruined this rather simple to do app. I am going to have to switch vendors for my security system ... I am paying for this!!!

by Monnie1967

I am trying to customize our smart scenes so that we can control our garage security now that we have kittens who need to go in and out of our garage at any time on a daily basis. The garage door should automatically close at 90% at a designated time. It is difficult to figure out how to set up the Auto Scenes. TotalConnect20 is somewhat helpful but really is NOT intuitive to use. The professional company that set up our system did not clearly ID our entry points and devices, so I am struggling to figure out how to customize the settings to automatically secure our entire home. This is frustrating. Furthermore, I am not certain the house is adequately secured at each entry point. TotalConnect20 gives conflicting info, it seems. I will be further testing and seeking help. TotalConnect20 is interesting and can be useful. However, it is not optimally designed to be user-friendly. And we home owners who use these systems are basically “on our own” when using TotalConnect20. I do hope it is updated to be more functional. As a user, I need to be able to self-customize my settings and sync with our home security devices.

by H8DUKE

I upgraded to the new version of the TC 2.0 software. After upgrading, I can obtain a list of all the sensors, but I am unable to activate/bypass any of the sensors, if necessary. I contacted customer support through TotalConnect20 and received a Robo message referring me to the FAQ page. Obviously, if the FAQ page and answered my question, I would not have needed to actually contact “customer support“ to try and obtain a resolution. The only option that you have on TotalConnect20 is the FAQ page, or you can send a text through their app. Despite requesting a phone call to resolve it, I have not received one. I did receive, as part of my Robo response, a suggestion to contact my dealer. I made a point of explaining that I would not incur a site visit fee for a problem that obviously emanates from TotalConnect20 , only to be told by the service personnel that it is an app issue that they do not control. Very disappointing. I would note, that the website still works fine, but what is the point in having an app for convenience if you cannot perform the functions that you want/need to perform?

by Kensingtonuser

From 2021: still terrible. The same problems with functionality persist two years after my first review. Now even worse. The programmed events do not work. I have programmed a Monday through Friday open/close schedule. Every Wednesday at 1pm the system moves the temperature to the “off” hours temperature so into he winter we get cold and the summer we are burning up and have to go manually adjust the thermostats. Most days the program does. It turn on in the mornings. In the summer not a big deal, the AC catches up fast, but in the winter, my business is cold for two hours if I do not remember to raise the heat from TotalConnect20 while I’m still at home. My contractor that installed the product has been unable to figure out the problem. Totally unacceptable. I am building a second office and have instructed the contractor that we will not be using this product!

From 2018:
I have used TotalConnect20 for over a year and a half for my business. When controlling the HVAC it won’t accept a change in temp or fan setting on the first try. It has always required a second change before actually updating. The scheduling options are limited and time consuming to edit. The “circ” setting on the compatible wall mount control panel is not available in the programming options. I thought there would be an update to address this but still having the same issues I’ve had since day 1.

by Mollys Mom 2000

I’ve had TotalConnect20 for about 3 years as part of an upgrade to a wireless alarm system. I was told TotalConnect20 would allow me to arm and disarm my alarm in my driveway so I could open and enter the garage door without setting off the alarm. It worked okay off and on, but I haven’t been able to get it to connect to the alarm for several days. The alarm company verified that my system is working fine and they offered to send a technician over to “instruct me on how to use TotalConnect20 ” and charge me for doing it. I know how TotalConnect20 should work. I have deleted TotalConnect20 then reinstalled it. Still can’t connect. I rebooted my router and my iPhone. I loaded TotalConnect20 on my iPad. Nothing has helped it connect to my alarm. I just get a message that says “connection timed out” and suggests I check my wifi. My wifi works fine with everything else and I have strong signal everywhere near my house of 15 to 20 Mbps. In the past, the technician blamed Verizon for the problems now they are blaming me. I think its time to find another alarm company that doesn’t use TotalConnect20.

by 77tiger

The thermostats and the VAM (vista automation module) lose their connection
Frequently. Trying to set up the VAM is extremely difficult. You need Multiple attempts to find the internet connection and get it to connect. 3 hours the first time! There is no customer service from Honeywell because the alarm system controls the thermostats so I have to have an alarm tech come out for any issues. The website that I can go to to check the connection is so old and the security certificate expired. Not sure why Honeywell can not come up with a better site. The features of the thermostat are limited once it becomes part of the alarm network. Permanent hold is not even an option! They updated the total connect website but they discontinued setting the schedule for the thermostats. Now it has to be done by creating scenes... good luck trying to figure that out! Lucky TotalConnect20 still allows me to program the thermostats following a normal time sequence.

Two years of experience with these units and I should have bought another brand of thermostats.

by WWFchampion.!.

The system is impressive and it’s fairly user-friendly, but the “ring” style door bell does not notify you if someone is at your door or ringing the door bell. The house doesn’t even ring when the doorbell is pushed. The doorbell is basically just a live feed of the front door. Nowhere in the settings does it specific where you can enable notifications for the doorbell. Although there is a setting to enable push notification (which I have enabled), it still does not notify me when the bell is pushed. Had a lot of trouble with the lock-unlock switch on TotalConnect20 . That has since been resolved and is working fairly well. The lights, which can be switched on and off from TotalConnect20 , take some time to actually communicate with the light sensors, and sometimes the light will show in the “on” stitch’s (ie 15%) but the light not actually be on. There is obviously some thing that need to be resolved with TotalConnect20, but as of right now, does not really seem worth it to have. Unimpressed with it overall.

by Tiquinha

Response time for TotalConnect20 is a bit sluggish. The geofence option for alarm reminder is nice but I frequently find myself 5-7 miles (or ten minutes or so) beyond the limit before it sends a reminder. I guess if I am walking it would be a shorter distance (sarcasm).

Update: has been a while since the first review. With the new appearance, I had hoped for better improvement on the geofence. Instead, it seems even less reliable. I would guess the average response time has worsened. I found myself 20-25 minutes outside the fence several times before a response. Once I was more than 20 miles out. Once I didn't receive a response until I reentered and left again. Is this a difficult functionality?

Update 2.0. Wow. First time in weeks I suddenly start getting notifications that I left my geofence. Problem is that I left it 45 minutes before and I returned 30 minutes before the notification. So would anyone in the company like to make a comment about how this is being resolved? Because right now, it isn’t giving any advantage to have notifications.

by Tonster01

Hello! I’m a homeowner with your Honeywell system, who is very frustrated. Well, I guess I should be thankful that the basic system seems to be stable, and operates normally, but when I try to use the remote features, like the TC2.0 app, it’s got a lot of issues.
EVERY time I leave my designated geofence area, it will notify me that I have left my house unarmed, when in fact, I haven’t.
Of course, I always have to go into TotalConnect20 and verify, and when I open TotalConnect20 , the first page is ALWAYS green, saying “disarmed”. I must go further, to the keyboard feature, where it always confirms that I have in fact armed the system. Can’t anything I spend tons of money on, just work likening ya supposed to? ( p.s. my security cameras are inaccessible while away from my personal high speed internet at home. They need a tremendous amount of bandwidth, and hardly any place else on earth, other than my home, has what it takes to see my cameras. I should have gotten Simply Safe!!)

by Ross Holcombe

I use TotalConnect20 on my phone and Apple Watch to arm and disarm my home security system. It works flawlessly on my phone, but the latest version has been very buggy on my watch. TotalConnect20 frequently crashes, times out, or fails to arm the security system. More than 75% of the time I am unable to set the security system from my watch. It used to work flawlessly in previous versions, but after the most recent updates has it started failing more than it works. And this is on a series 3 Apple Watch, the latest hardware.

I tried to reach out to customer support to ask about these crashes, but in order to send them an email they require you to opt in to future marketing communications. I guess it’s not that big a deal to click “unsubscribe” once I start getting them, but it’s still pretty scummy that they can’t reply to my email without also making me consent to getting marketing communications at the same time.

I hope that TotalConnect20 is fixed for my Apple Watch in future updates. Until then, it’s basically unusable on the watch for me.

by Ilikenewme

As a new owner, we got an installation for the security panel which stopped working after two weeks. The guy who previously installed it came back and was very nice about the issue and reinstalled a new panel. About a week later, the events to see previous movement from the doorbell doesn’t work. I called to figure out what was the issue and the lady joked on the phone with me talking about how I need a Ring type camera system which I have no idea what she was talking about. Seriously, unprofessional. She stated that the entire issue seems to be down and that they are working on it, however she wasn’t able to assist me since I wasn’t home. I’m patient enough where I can understand issues, however, this is a security company that clearly has made a horrible first impression especially with not having the system for a month and two complications happening. Not only that, I get a representative on the phone joking about me needing a Ring door bell instead. Super inconvenienced, don’t feel like my house is secure, really want to drop them if I can any other issues within the next week.

by S2budd

It nice to lock a door or arm/disarm from the phone but TotalConnect20 doesn’t always work. The doorbell camera is the WORST doorbell cam on the market and costs more than the far superior Eufy or ring. That makes no sense coming from a powerhouse like Honeywell but it’s time to get out of the 2000s and into the 20’s Honeywell. A control 4 system from 2006 would work better than this. Don’t waste your money on cameras, I learned the hard way and ended up removing and trying to sell to recoup the cost which was not even worth the time. The cameras are glorified baby cameras… Dont waste your money on those.. The biggest annoyance of TotalConnect20 is in the name. TC 2.0. Ever since I’ve downloaded it EVERY single time I type 20, auto correct changes it to 2.0. The only solution and I’ve done it and it works is to delete TotalConnect20 . Yes, this is an apple problem too but why have the version in TotalConnect20 name. Just call it Total Connect and roll out new versions as they are released.

by Bass1702

In TotalConnect20 , we need the ability to trigger a panic alarm as if we were at a physical keypad. Fire, police, aux/medical all need to be available in TotalConnect20 . Why? What if someone broke in, my system is disarmed, I lock myself in my room and closet with no keypad. Yeah, we need the ability to trigger panics via TotalConnect20 . TO REMOVE: If a silent alarm is triggered, TotalConnect20 should NOT sound or alert on the phone. That defeats the purpose of it being a SILENT alarm. I accidentally triggered my Silent Holdup Alarm, keypads did nothing, but my phone went off with what the alarm and everything. Defeats the purpose of it being a silent alarm. These are things that should be rectified as soon as possible. There have been many time where I, or someone in my household, have needed to trigger a panic alarm (medical emergency) from our phone and we can’t. It needs fixed.

by IPad Paul

Update: I tried delete-reboot-reinstall and turned off Touch-ID and now TotalConnect20 seems to be less laggy, but the server still seems very slow and the connection between the server and my alarm is even slower.

Anyway, at least now I can get logged in before it times out and it basically works.

Previous Review: My guess is that the problem is a poorly written app that grinds away slowly on the phone which in turn is trying to connect to an egregiously slow server and the combined poor performance results in a time-out failure before you can even get connected. I pay my alarm provider a lot for this service and I’m not going to do that for much longer. Honeywell is not doing their brand any favors here. My next system will probably be one of those diy systems (I had one of those in my last home and it worked better than this one.)

by Mr Fire Man

I had this system installed in my home a couple years ago. We have two tuxedo touch keypad’s, thermostat, 4 cameras, and automated front door deadbolt, water sensors connected to my sump pumps. We have a bunch of lights and outlets connected to the system through Z wave technology. I’ve never seen a better system out there that doesn’t rely on your Wi-Fi is this is using a cellular radio so even when all the power goes out in the area our home and still protected unlike some of these do it yourself Systems you see on TV. I would recommend this to anybody because it’s amazing even the garage doors connected to it. We have what’s called a seen set up called going to bed that we click one button and it will go and close the garage door if it isn’t already, lock the front door, shut off a bunch of the lights including the outdoor lights, lower the temperature on the thermostat and armoire system. You cannot get all those features in one app with these do it yourself commercials we see so if anybody wants a real security system that is really going to work in the event of an emergency I would go with this one. Even all of the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors in the home are connected to it so I know when the middle of the night if something happens emergency help is on the way and all four of my kids and my wife are protected.

by Okie79

We have had very good experiences with TotalConnect20 and our Honeywell system in general. I like the feature that reminds you to arm the system as you travel away from home-but those alerts can come too frequently and can be a pain to listen to at times. One suggestion: it would be nice if TotalConnect20 were able to automatically arm and disarm the house at the same times each night. There are times we can't arm the system as there will be a pet-sitter coming in each day while we are on vacation. I just can't count on folks to understand how to disarm then arm the system when they come and go. If, however, I could set the system to auto-arm itself at midnight and auto-disarm at 6AM (when there is little chance of pet-sitters yet higher chance of break-ins) I would feel more at ease while traveling.

by Peanut+2

The reason I’m giving the system a two stars is because when I purchase it it was for the ability to view my camera system through my keypad. Now since I have upgraded the camera system it is not compatible to my keypad. Why would Honeywell make a product that’s does not compatible to upgrades based off of the users demand. I am presently waiting on a technician to reply in reference to Ackerman having a unit where I can view my cameras from my office or I might have to weigh my options and go with another security company ATT or somebody that can meet my requirements.
I will wait for the feedback from the technician or representative from Ackerman security company and then I will move forward from there!

by GM1

TotalConnect20 is mostly unresponsive, when I need it to work. Have been stranded and unable to turn off my alarm so I could get in the house. When it does work it takes way too long to turn off or turn on the alarm. It’s likely I will be dropping it and getting a standard remote soon. I do wonder if steel doors could be blocking the signal, but if I stand at the door long enough, it may eventually work. I’m sure what seems like a long time may only be a couple of minutes when it works, but it’s no competition for the remote that worked very well and from up to 50’ and inside my car. Well, I just updated the fix for Dec 18, and it seems to be working much better. I’ll try to use it for a few days and let you know if there’s improvement. Thanks for the update.

by Belle822

Still needs to be tweaked a bit, it’s still saving the same previously saved video instead of saving current selection 50%of the time (even after update that was supposed this correct that).
It would be ever so helpful if the event list would indicate the date - month and day -as well as the time of day - if u r searching for a specific clip ( esp since it wouldn’t save to ur photos s properly) its VERY tedious w out date information ( it used to display, but no longer does).
It is nice to be able to set or disarm from remote locations, and view camera images from anywhere u have a wi fi connection.

I hope that it will still automatically display an alert if u have a low battery in one of ur sensors as TotalConnect20 did before this major format change.

by RonM7

TC 2.0 has a host of helpful features. As a user of Voiceover screen-reader on Apple IOS, however, some of the buttons such as disarming and keypad are not labeled. In addition, I noticed TotalConnect20 shows a progress indicator after signing in, such that I am unable to arm the system from TotalConnect20 . This was not and issue with the previous version, but it seems to be now that I am unable to hear and activate the buttons for keypad, sensors, disarm, keypad. this happens randomly at some particular times. The progress indicator either keeps TotalConnect20 busy or masks the icons from voiceover speaking them also, in the my locations tab, it is somewhat difficult to determine via voice over whether the panel synch or user synch was complete. I thought this would resolve progress indicator, however it did not. other than that, TotalConnect20 is very helpful.