SOS Everywhere or LiveLife Alarms: prices, fees and inclusions, side by side

What the two are

LiveLife Alarms is an Australian company selling the LiveLife 4GX Mobile Alarm, a pendant, and the LiveLife 4G Mobile Watch Alarm. Both are family-first alarms: the device texts the wearer's location to the emergency contacts and then calls them one by one, and a professional monitoring service is offered as an optional extra. Its product pages say the devices arrive set up, with the contacts programmed, and that support is Australian based.

SOS Everywhere is the SOS Everywhere Pendant and the SOS Everywhere Watch, sold by Ecotelco Pty Ltd from Varsity Lakes in Queensland. Both are family-first too. Hold the button for two seconds and the device rings up to 10 contacts in the order you set, each for 15 seconds, up to five times round the list, and the SOS Everywhere app shows where it is. Our 24/7 monitoring is an add-on for the same 12 months, and it takes the call when none of your contacts answer. We set it up and ship it, SIM installed, free, Australia-wide.

So the shape of the two offers is the same. What differs is what you pay, when you pay it, which networks the SIM uses, how many people it can call, and a few details of the hardware. Those are the rows below.

Prices and fees, from their pages and ours

Our side of that table is short, because there is one price. The pendant or the watch is $487, and that includes 12 months of SIM service with unlimited alarm calls and alarm texts. With 24/7 monitoring for the same 12 months it is $527. There are no other charges: no installation, no call charges, no dispatch fee. Shipping is free.

LiveLife prices the pendant and the watch differently, at $567 and $597, each with one year of emergency calls and texts included. Its professional monitoring is a monthly option, listed at $39 a month. Read the two product pages yourself before you decide; the links are in the table and in the sources at the foot of this page.

Renewals: year two and year three

This is the row that decides the three-year cost, and it is the one most families do not ask about in the shop.

LiveLife's product pages say the renewal is currently $95 a year from year two, with the first year free. Its own comparison page, on the same site, gives the year-two figure as $90. We have recorded both, with their sources, and used the product pages' figure because that is the page a buyer orders from. If you are quoted a different number, the table's date tells you when we last looked.

SOS Everywhere renews at $69 a year for the device's SIM service, or $109 a year with 24/7 monitoring, paid once a year. The 12 months start at the first successful test, not the order date, and the renewal reminders go to whoever you name as the renewal payer, 60, 30 and 7 days before the term ends.

Over three years, then, the pattern is: LiveLife's first-year price, then two renewals at its published figure; ours, then two renewals at $69, or $109 with monitoring. Write the three lines down for each and add them up yourself. We do not print the totals here because prices change and the table's dates matter more than a sum that could be out of date by the time you read it.

Coverage, as each company states it

LiveLife's pendant page says the device uses the Telstra 4G network and cites coverage of 98.8 per cent of Australia's population. Its watch page says the watch works with a Telstra 4G signal and cites 99 per cent of the Australian population. Those are LiveLife's words and figures, and Telstra's coverage is wide.

SOS Everywhere's SIM uses Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. Works on any Australian mobile network, everywhere there's mobile coverage. The practical difference shows up at one address, not on a map of the country: a house in a valley or a unit at the back of a block where one carrier is weak and another is strong. Before you buy either alarm, check the wearer's address on each carrier's coverage map, indoors as well as out. Our guide to choosing a personal alarm says how.

Falls, water and contacts

Both companies build fall detection into the pendant and the watch, and both say so plainly. LiveLife's pages say fall detection uses a 3D accelerometer and alerts the emergency contacts. SOS Everywhere's sensor detects hard falls and raises the alarm itself, with the sensitivity set from 1 to 9 in the app. No fall detector catches every fall. That is true of both companies' devices, and our fall detection page explains what it means in practice.

On water, LiveLife rates both devices IP67 and describes them as showerproof. The SOS Everywhere Pendant is rated IP67 too, for the shower and the rain, off for swimming. We have not yet published a water rating for our watch, and we will not until it is confirmed, so if the watch is the one you want and showers matter, ask us before you order.

On contacts, LiveLife's pages say up to six emergency contacts, and that the device can call 000. SOS Everywhere rings up to 10 contacts, in the order you set, each with its own call and text switch. There is no 000 slot on our pendant: the person who answers, or our 24/7 monitoring provider, calls 000 with the address from the app. We think that is the safer design, because Triple Zero needs a caller who can say what has happened and where, and a pendant cannot. You may weigh it differently, and the row is there so you can.

Warranty, returns and what is in the box

LiveLife's pages give a 12-month warranty, a 30-day money-back guarantee, free express delivery and, in the pendant's box, the pendant, a charging station, a lanyard, a wristband and a belt clip, a USB cable, a power adaptor and the guides.

SOS Everywhere offers 30-day money-back. In the pendant's box are the pendant, a lanyard, a magnetic charging cable, a wall plug, the nano SIM already installed and a setup card. The belt clip and the arm band are add-ons rather than in the box, chosen on the buy panel. The charging dock is sold separately.

Which suits whom

Choose LiveLife if you have compared the two product pages and prefer its hardware or its inclusions, if Telstra is the strong carrier at the wearer's address and you want a single-network device, or if you want the option of monthly professional monitoring rather than a yearly add-on.

Choose SOS Everywhere if you want the same price for the pendant and the watch, three networks on one SIM, up to 10 contacts, and renewals of $69 or $109 a year paid once a year. Read the pendant and the watch pages, and if a scheme might pay, read about Support at Home before you pay privately.

We sell one of the two options on this page. We have kept it to numbers and sources so you can weigh that for yourself. If a fact here is out of date, tell us and we will correct the table, which changes every page that uses it.