• droans@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    2 years ago

    Both kinds exist. Both have different benefits and drawbacks.

    You shouldn’t only be using one type in your house.

    Optical is great for detecting large smoke particles quickly. If the smoke is small particles, though, it’ll need to be rather dense before it’ll go off. Ionizing detectors have the opposite issue; they react quickly to small particles but can’t detect large particles that well.

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      No the sensitivity of radiation based smoke alarms tends to cause false positives which in turn causes people to ignore them making them less effective. Optical smoke detectors are overall the newer and better technology.

      That being said radiation based smoke detection is still a cool concept. There might be a few areas where they perform better still, though probably not.